I want to build a small commercial website using WordPress. Most of the pages will probably be static. I have some limited knowledge of xhtml and css. It appears that WordPress is being used mostly as a blog. Are there any examples of WordPress being used as a more conventional website? I have looked hard at Joomla and I believe it is more complex than I need. Am I barking up the wrong tree with WordPress? Thanks!
[resolved] Is WordPress appropriate for a small commercial site? (14 posts)
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jtsymbo
Posted 5 years ago # -
ladydelaluna
Posted 5 years ago #WordPress is more than acceptable for this task... I use it for almost all of my clients and their business sites.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/52093 - there's a long list of people there who do it...
and you can always check this search:
http://wordpress.org/search/using+wordpress+as+CMS?forums=1 -
Dgold
Posted 5 years ago #With the wide variety of themes to choose from, and the fact you can hack/modify them to suit your needs... WordPress may be perfect for your small business needs.
It's perfectly capable of making static pages that can contain pretty much any HTML or CSS you can dream up. You can also hack things out of your theme that make it look bloggish, such as Dates.
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While I agree that WordPress is robust enough to use in this fashion, it really is very heavily blog oriented.
Yes, you can use it as a CMS because it has a wide variety of generic functionality that is useful in this respect, but it does take a bit of work and other CMS packages may be more appropriate or faster to implement, for your specific needs.
There's a *lot* of open source CMS packages around, so you might want to look around a bit more... you might run across the perfect fit.
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Posted 5 years ago #Thanks for such prompt replies! Do you recommend any particular themes free or paid that would be right for the site I plan to build? I would start with that as my foundation than adjust as necessary. Thanks.
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Posted 5 years ago #Otto, what particular cms' do you recommend? I looked at Mambo/Joomla, and for me they seemed complex and I believe bloated. In addition, the section, catagories, content structure confuses me. I also worried about slow page loading. WordPress seems leaner and you add as needed. My site will be primarily a "business card" informational site, telling prospective customers what I do and where we are. Thanks!
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Posted 5 years ago #jtsymbo - from my experience, mambo/joomla is very bloated, and even more so is typo3 (stay far away from that one!)
go to http://themes.wordpress.net and check out the themes there - you're sure to find the free one that closely meets your needs, and will require little customization outside of the standard removal of "bloggy" stuff.
Just a note: categories refer to dated posts, articles, etc. for a CMS, you'll mainly be writing pages, not posts.
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Posted 5 years ago #I recently built a small biz site, mostly static (tho it has an Articles section they can add to)... I used the Urban Giraffe 2 theme and found it to be very flexible from the way it's made in the first place, plus I hacked it to be less of a blog and more of a static business card. I have it showing 1 post at the top section, and I use the Adhesive plugin to make 1 post always sticky. Therefore this 1 post is static on the front page always. I put the business-card content inside that post. I also made some Pages on the site.
For hacking, I just went into the templates code and removed places where it was showing bloggish things like the Author and Date. I don't want my top post to always say "May 2006", I wanted it to be undated. Easy enough.
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Otto, what particular cms' do you recommend? I looked at Mambo/Joomla, and for me they seemed complex and I believe bloated. In addition, the section, catagories, content structure confuses me. I also worried about slow page loading. WordPress seems leaner and you add as needed. My site will be primarily a "business card" informational site, telling prospective customers what I do and where we are. Thanks!
Well, like I said, it really depends on your needs. If you needs happen to run to a reasonable amount of static content and perhaps some dynamic content that will be updated as time goes on, then WordPress will work wonderfully. If you need a lot more than that then WordPress can certainly serve as a good starting point to roll your own.
WordPress is certainly leaner than any full-out CMS system, and so if you don't really need everything a CMS does, it will probably work for you.
I would use WordPress as a starting point for just about any site, but then I'm a programmer. If it doesn't do something I want it to do, I whip out the editor and code up some PHP for it. Not everybody is willing or able to spend the time to do that.
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Posted 5 years ago #I'm not a PHP programmer - and only once have I ever had to take on an outside PHP guru to work with me on a project for a client's WordPress driven business site.
I know enough PHP to squeak by (tightly squeak by) with ONLY wordpress (don't ask me to code a whole site in it from scratch - I'll laugh at you) and quite often don't mess much with it, yet have no issues with creating non-bloggy sites with wordpress...
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I have been researching CMS systems for well over 3 years and have installed and played with Joomla the most. I was aiming to find a solid platform to build websites on. My main criteria was easy to update, redesign and secure, light and fast on the server and easy for clients to understand. WordPress ticks every box for me, and I have 2 sites in full development, along with tinkering with my own blog/website at http://www.photoshopninja.com
Believe me, our beloved WP is ALOT more than just a blog! With just a few plugins and some slight modification it is easy to change WordPress into a CMS that suits almost all clients. I think the developers are realising this, and I hear on the grapevine that the next version will have static or 'sticky' front page content support built in... interesting!
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Posted 5 years ago #Sounds great everyone, I think I'll give it a shot. To learn, do you recommend the WordPress online manuals or should I invest in a book (WordPress 2 Quick Start?). Thanks again!
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Posted 5 years ago #The way to learn WP -- The online Codex documentation, plus digging-into-code/templates and seeing what you can figure out on your own (keeping a backup copy before you change something), and then asking on here if you get stuck. 8)
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Jharis
Posted 5 years ago #jtsymbo,
You will find WP hard to beat in the looks department, and functionality. As for CMS I heavily favor Xoops.
don (el paso)
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