WordPress

Notes

about a blogging tool

WordPress as CMS? After WordPress 1.5 was released, I decided to try using WP as a CMS (Content Management System) to build a complete website. I thought it might be easier to add content to WP rather than adding HTML pages and constantly changing menus to incorporate the added content.

I started out using Pages and it was indeed possible to use php coding and WP tags to build a working menu structure. However, in WP, Pages themselves are not easily added. It still took effort to add content and it was nowhere near my intented set up of using ecto or even email, to send content to WP. So I changed course and had a fresh look at posts and category pages. Some of my findings are contained in this section.

My recommendation to everyone looking at WP with a similar purpose would be: when you’re setting out to define your goals and requirements, simplify your wishlist first. There’s quite a lot possible in WordPress, but not everything.

Also important, WordPress, as well as other blogging software, hinges around the date of posts. Somehow, in most of the WP Tags and in almost all of the themes I looked at, the date of a post is its most important attribute, its defining reason for being, taking precedence over title or content. Navigation in blogs, for instance, is defined by “previous post” and “next post”. Which is, of course, very well for navigating a blog chronologically, but can only be used when title or content of a post are less relevant to the user. In a context where users are expected to find specific content, this emphasis on date-of-posting priority is not much help.

The biggest challenge, I would say, is therefore to find a way to bend WP (using existing tags, modifying templates and adding some php coding) to acknowledge that the content of your posts is the reason for your website’s existence and that the title of your posts will form the backbone of its menu’s and navigation.

In the end I decided against going all WP but to integrate the blogging software into the existing web site set up. WordPress is very well supported by a huge number of knowledgeable and enthousiastic fellow users. There are countless plugins and themes available (all free) to enhance functionality. And somehow, there is some sort of a club mentality around the whole thing. All kinds of people from all sorts of backgrounds, all using this same WordPress platform. It may sound funny, in an internet environment, but I can’t help feeling being part of a group I am willingly a part of, when I check the Forum or browse other people’s WordPress blogs. That alone, I would think, is as good a reason as any to choose WordPress.

These notes were written late 2005. I no longer use WordPress. Since version 2.6 I think it was, when the underlying database structure was altered in favour of tags but to the serious detriment of CMS use.