I used WP for a friends church website. He knows zero HTML, but can use word. So, I jigged with the admin page so that it would be familiar and – hey presto! – he has a CMS that he can use to power his whole website.
WP is great!
well, i am comfortable using WP for a lot of online stuff. and I do link to WP site from all teh sites. But they are not all blogs. So, thats why I asked.
Regarding using WP for CMS, can I clarify with you folks what this really means? When WP added the pages functionality, this allowed folks to put up ‘timeless’ elements on a site, and through the admin interface, let non-technical users update the pages. (ie. non-techies could manage their website that way) Is this the basic essence of what ‘using WP as a CMS’ really mean, or am I missing something?
Cheers,
Tommy
Tommy, you can certainly clarify it… but this thread isn’t a “timeless” element for sure – the last post before yours is from August 2004!
Since then several WP version came out, so it’s quite irrelevant.
Interestingly, I am moving from a CMS to WP. While there will be some things I “lose” in the transition, what I plan on gaining out-weigh those loses.
My content are my blog posts. Being able to tag those, have pingbacks, etc. are more important than having some of features in e107. And I suspect that as I get into WP more, I’ll find most of what I am giving up can be done in WP.
Paticoflange,
Thanks for your question and I hope you post your findings here later after you’ve used another CMS or WP or whatever you do as I’m often in the same boat as you are (need more than WP can offer). I’d very much like to know what you choose (Mambo, Drupal, etc.).
There are some examples of sites that use WP that aren’t blogs on this topic. I also mention at that topic how I’ve been using Drupal for my more “community” sites, but any of them I can move to WP I am in the middle of. I tell my clients that “The best software (or tool) is the one you know how to use.”
I’ve spent about a year working with Drupal and about two years with WP and I keep coming back to WP. It’s just so much easier for me–and my clients–to work with.
When it came time for the users/members of one of my CMS (non-WP) sites to add an image and it took a phone call and a help video, I knew it was time to move the site to WP.
Again, please post your experiences here.
Best regards,
– Bradley
Like likoma, I keep falling back to WordPress. I’ve spent some time with “real” CMSs like Drupal, Plone, Modx, Typo3 and Mambo, but everything is indeed bloated, too hard for clients to use and a waste of time configurating. (For the mainstream customers like small enterprises etc.)
With the CMS listed above, it’s about downsizing and configurating functions. With WordPress it’s about adding and configurating. I like the latter because it never gets messy.
Heavy CMSs like Plone and Typo3 has it’s uses, but Nasa is currently not in my clientele. When that time comes, I will concider something heavier than WordPress – if there’s no wp-heavy-CMS-plugin yet, of course.
Go WordPress!
I actually was just playing around with various CMS scripts when I ran into WP. Not a CMS but I thought I would give it a whirl and see what happened.
What I found is that I really really loved WP, not sure what hooked me but I just really like the look and fee. Its very polished and I like the way it “does” most things.
Now the bad. If you’re not looking for just a blog then you quickly run into a wall. You have to start hacking and making compromises. Which I know some people will say WP is what it is. But I think that misses the point. WP could be so much more and you can do it via plugins, those that don’t want a feature don’t have to use it.
I for one require a forum (and yes punBB is great but getting it imbedded into a theme is hit or miss), a photogallery, event calendar and a wrapper (allows you to imbed other scripts inside your WP site). More often then not I find myself having to settle for something I like less then WP b/c WP can’t do what I want it to do without turning myself inside out.
WordPress can be as functional as any cms. There are great exmaples around of WordPress being used in other non-blog forms.
+ aj | http://www.devlounge.net
I’m actually selling a CMS solution based on WordPress. It’s not heavy duty at all, but it covers most of Web site builders’ needs (and sure as hell bloggers’ as well). I’ll be building more CMS-oriented features slowly. Time is scarce, you know!
It’s called Turbocharged.
