WordPress.org

1. maxwolfie
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   G'day

   I've been recommended to check out WP as a basis for my company's website, as it's apparently easy to build, use, update etc and it looks good! - I've been asked to build it as I probably have the most know-how out of the people in the company when it comes to web related stuff, design, gfx etc.

   Anyways, being completely new to WP, I am unsure of the limitations and I am not sure whether it's feasible as a basis for the site. Our current site is very outdated, ugly and difficult to navigate. But I suppose I should concentrate more on what we WANT, not what we HAVE already. So, here it goes:

   1. Simple, clean layout that's easy on eyes, easy to navigate etc
   2. Products and services section, including product pictures etc
   3. Fold out menu system, here's an idea of the "hierarchy" of the menu, with > denoting another menu "level"

   Note that we want two different ways of accessing our products:

   1. By accessing directly via product group or category
   2. By accessing indirectly via industry type or category, which includes products specific to selected industry

   Home
   
   Products  
   
   > By Product Type 
   
   >> Material Handling
   >>> Airtube Systems
   >>> Lift Systems
   >>> Transcar System
   >>> TrolleyGuard
   
   >> Entrance Security
   >>> Electronic Article Surveillance
   >>> Auto Entry Gates 
   
   >>Cash Management
   >>> Traditional Safes
   >>>> SOHO/Day Trading
   >>>> Medium Grade
   >>>> High Grade
   >>> Smart Electronic Safes
   >>>> Cash Deposit Safe
   >>>> Change Vending
   
   >> CCTV
   >> Alarms  
   
   >By Industry Type
   >>Retailers
   >>Hospitality
   >>Healthcare
   >>Residential
   >>Commercial
   >>Industrial  
   
   Support
   > Request Service
   > Download Manuals
   > Download Brochures
   
   About Us 
   
   Contact

   That's about it for the primary requirements, for now I just wanted to get some feedback as to whether something like this would be possible

2. Ivovic
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   people think a content management system is rigid, or something... some are, but most are not.

   WordPress certainly isn't rigid.

   Don't think in terms of what wordpress can and can't do... that's only going to lead to threads like this where you ask if wordpress can do something it's not even responsible for.

   Instead, think of wordpress as a back-end system for writing content and storing it in a database. It does that quite well and with a high usability score, as evidenced by the mountain of technical illiterates writing content.

   The rest is really up to you. The presentation of that content is done with an extremely flexible templating system. It's so flexible because it's not really a system at all... more of a toolbox, and even then, it's not limited to the tools available, you can add more tools anytime with a little PHP.

   Anyone with some broad PHP skills can design any kind of website (mostly with HTML and CSS) and then use a few select and not particularly complex snippits of PHP to call a variety of wordpress functions into play, *anywhere* in that design they see fit, and if you don't like the wordpress functions for extracting content, you really don't have to use them.

   Chances are you'll find most of them useful, but if you really need your templates to do something unusual, then you're just free to make it happen.

   That's why I like wordpress over any of the CMS' out there with a fixed templating language.

   So, in summary, wordpress handles the data entry part - if you can get over the nomenclature of everything being somewhat blog-related, then you can see that a database record is a database record, right?

   A post can be a widget in a catalogue, and with that a category can be an index of almost anything. You can create a template to display the same "posts" either as full articles, or as songs in a playlist, it's completely up to you how much of each post you extract, and where you extract it. The nice thing about it is that you can filter everything by simply attaching 'categories' to your posts....

   Lets say you DO really want to display a playlist of songs along side your articles. If you file a post under the Song cateogory, your template can extract only those posts and display them as songs - while treating everything else as an article.

   Now lets say you also want to use wordpress as a makeshift CRM... no problem, just add a "contacts" category, with subcategories "clients", "suppliers", "logistics" etc... and proceed to post contact sheets to those categories using completely ad-hoc custom fields of "address" and "phone number"...

   now you've got articles, songs and contacts all of which look nothing like each other simply because your "contacts" page has been templated to look like an address book.

   Want to turn a contact into a song? easy, just put it into the Song category - in fact, if you want, you can have it be both things at the same time.

   There's nothing more flexible than having no rules.

   I hope that's helped a bit... perhaps it's caused more confusion, but I think that's OK, because confusion is the first step in dropping the shackles of nomenclature. Just forget that your data is traditionally supposed to be a blog post, and you can do anything with it.

3. maxwolfie
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   Great post, cheers!

   That helps me out a lot - it seems as though I am only limited by my imagination in this respect

   What's a good website for themes? Either paid or free, I'm looking to get away from the standard "blog" format and more into the biz themes, such as this one

4. Ivovic
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   I'm the wrong person to ask about prefab themes... but they seem to be everywhere... I just don't pay much attention to the sites I see them on.

   I'm sure there are better sites for business-related layouts, but the only one that comes to mind is Template Monster, because of their 50,000 affiliates shoving them down your throat at every turn.

   Some of the designs are pretty good, I must say, but the concept of selling "uniques" for two grand once they've already been downloaded 20 times is pretty funny.

5. jonimueller
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   There are a few premium themes out there, and darn few are worth the "premium" that is charged. However, iThemes aren't bad, particularly the corporate or ecommerce templates. They can be completely customized, if you know what you are doing. Which leads me to my next thought.

   It might be better to hire a professional to achieve what you want, if off-the-shelf doesn't appeal.

6. mores
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I think the reason these "premium" themes are "premium" is due to the easy editing.
   You just download something and select some dropdowns and klick some checkboxes and you adapt your site.
   Which will not make it stand out - it'll be another flavor of the premium theme.

   It's best to start with a layout, just like in the "old days" when all sites were programmed from scratch, then have a WP-savvy person create a theme from your layout.

   I like Ivovic's post. Great explanation and it really puts on display the versatility of this CMS.

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