The power of WordPress as CMS

Reasons why we like WordPress.

WordPress can be a great all round solution for nearly any type of website on the internet. Whether your goal is a simple blog or a complex content management system, WordPress is accessible to all.

Licensed under the GPL, WordPress is free and open source. Beginners, or people looking for a free option can be writing on the internet in no time at all. Designers and developers can download, install and start adapting WordPress very easily. Many hosting companies now have a one button press strategy to install and have WordPress working on your desired domain.

WordPress as a C.M.S. (Content Management System)

WordPress is a powerhouse blogging and development platform, but can it be used as a serious CMS? Forget using wordpress as a blog and think about it as a regular website and how you would engineer a site. By learning the basic principles of the code or by utilising existing plugins you can adapt WordPress into something amazing. You can even hide the fact that it is WordPress by changing the appearance of the ‘back-end’ and login system.  In WordPress you have the ability to categorize, tag and add detailed custom fields, it makes indexing data and searching really easy. The logorunner website is a great example of how to adapt WordPress.

So here are the reasons why we think WordPress is great to develop with:

It’s Simple

WordPress is a really straight forward system to setup and use. Adding content with a WYSIWYG editor is straight forward and familiar. The only task is producing interesting content. We also recommend adding a few well written plugins to enhance the basic install. A plugin to manage photos and pictures easily and a good flash / video player.

It’s Flexible

You can change the look and feel of your site in a matter of minutes. WordPress supports themes or templates that are built to give it a unique look and feel. Themes are completely decoupled from your content allowing you to custom change CSS parameters without fear of loosing your information. There are a number of sites dedicated to providing WordPress themes.We usually find a theme that we like to use as a base and then modify it so that it is just what we want.

It’s Powerful

It uses AJAX, is dynamic, social, interactive, and interacts with just about any other web 2.0 / social media site out there.
WordPress is built on a three part architecture that keeps people honest. The first is the WordPress engine. It is an OpenSource project created by a diverse group of developers with a simple mission of creating great software.WordPress is search engines friendly right out of the box. With the addition of a few plugins like All-In-One-SEO, and Google XML Sitemap Generators, your installation of WordPress will become Google’s best friend. The WordPress community give it all the love and support it could ever need.

Plug and Play

The WordPress architecture supports the addition of custom functionality through plugins. Plugins are individual software programs adding specialized features and functions to WordPress. Plugins are desiged by developers around the world. Whether you are interested in making your installation of WordPress more accessible to search engines or publishing your audio files to iTunes, there is a plugin for everyone. WordPress plugins are literally plug and play (both to install and maintain)

It’s popular

WordPress is a widely used platform. The popularity of WordPress is no coincidence and the points mentioned above are a big reason why WordPress is such a popular blogging and CMS platform. As far as support is concerned WordPress has one of the best support communities. If you have a question head on over to the support forum.

WordPress is the first choice for many personal blogs all over the world. You can make it look and feel just how you like, for free. With a little more knowledge of CSS and WordPress PHP basics you can turn it into a powerhouse website, content managed and search engine friendly.

There have now been enough versions to have proved that it’s a stable solution. Once setup, your site just works. Allowing you to create content rather than troubleshoot errors. To conclude, WordPress is great for writers, software designers/developers, and the internet overall.