Using Wordpress as a CMS works like a charm
This week i worked on a site development project for one of our clients. Basically the idea was to pimp their current site by implementing a Content Management system (CMS) on the back end.
Because I was very familiar with the WordPress system I knew it would be the perfect solution for this case.
The WordPress Administration environment is so basic and straight forward that it becomes ideal to use it as a CMS tool for clients who don’t have that much (online) knowledge.
Before I began I started drawing a hierarchal structure of the available content. So I could get a clear view on how to reuse the available WordPress functionalities. Here is what i found out:
- There are a few (approx. 10) static pages, obviously I will use the WordPress Pages to create and manage these static pages.
- There is one static page that needs to display a list of services the company offers. Every service comes with one or more sample projects.
- Every service the company offers will be managed through the WordPress Categories function. Where one category represents one service.
- The WordPress posts functionality will be used to create projects within each service (read: category).
- Then there is a list of partners and a list of press releases (short articles). I will use the Links functionality of WordPress to manage these two lists.
After copying all the content from the old site in to WordPress (new site) I had to look at the current design and reuse it within my (yet to build) custom created WordPress Theme.
Getting a user account at http://codex.wordpress.org/ and searching a lot with google helped me with finding all te available template tags, functions and parameters to get the output I wanted, all within the powerfull WordPress engine.
These articles on the web helped me during my development:
- http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/02/19/so-you-want-to-create-wordpress-themes-huh/
Describes basic knowledge on how to set up a custom made theme. How you let WP know that a certain .php file is a template etc. - http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page
Use the function reference to see what tools you have available for outputting WP content in your WP template.
- http://www.schloebe.de/wordpress/admin-management-xtended-plugin/
Gives you a little more control in the WordPress admin environment, like ajax style dragging and dropping Pages to create a new order. - http://www.web-templates.nu/2008/08/25/wp-extra-template-tags/
Gives you a few more simple php functions to play with in your templates.
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