Static pages, plus blog – how best to achieve?

nickknowledge
(@nickknowledge)

20 years, 2 months ago

I’ve spent the last few weeks overhauling a church website, which, apart from “what’s on this week” is largely static – content updates between 1 and 3 months. The site is based off one templated .php file, styled with CSS, and brings content in using PHP strings. There are 6 tabs (home, events, people, about, resources, contact), with up to 4 levels of content depth under each.
I’ve been asked to add a 7th tab – effectively a community blog for registered users in the run-up to Easter.
I can get my head around a mod_rewrite rule to direct requests for http://www.churchsite.org to /htdocs/churchtemplate.php, and requests for http://www.churchsite.org/blog/ to /htdocs/wordpress/index.php
However, an ongoing project is for the various groups in the church to be responsible for their own web content, but, other than Word’s “Save as HTML” option, most are unfamiliar with even basic HTML, but would find posting and editing “their” page within WordPress a much gentler learning curve. So, effectively, I’d like to be able to serve some static content (with comments etc. turned off / not-displayed), plus a dynamic blog, all through the WordPress engine. Is there some other tool I should be using instead? I’ve spent a couple of weeks looking at various CMS’s, many of which are very powerful (plone, drupal etc.), but seem rather large for what I’m trying to achieve. In the last two weeks, I’ve been most impressed with WordPress, particularly as it’s standards-based.
How would I best go about setting up these 20 or so infrequently-changing pages under WordPress? Set up 6 categories, and set each post as a single entry per page? Have a modified index.php for the 6 “static” categories, and the default index.php for the blog?
I’d be really grateful for any ideas.
Many thanks,
Nick

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

KarenD
(@karend)

20 years, 2 months ago

I’m just getting started with WordPress. I was hoping someone who knows more about it would answer this question, because I want to do something similar with my journal. The solution I’ve settled on for now is two installations of WP: one for my entries and one for my semi-static pages. This seemed like the easiest way to get archives for just the entries as well as simpler permalinks for the semi-static pages. I haven’t loaded much content yet but it seems like it will work nicely.

Lester Chan
(@gamerz)

20 years, 2 months ago

I have one page that will create static pages through a URL. If that interest you, give me a note =)

sammyrae
(@sammyrae)

20 years, 2 months ago

Sorry to not give an answer–just another person who’d really like to know how to do this. I’ve read a few articles on how to do it with Movable Type, but would really like to know how to do it in WordPress. The valid XHTML and CSS is appealing, and I’ve gotta say this site looks darn good.
I want to be able to edit the static content from within WordPress—not just get content from a static file.
Any help would be appreciated.

kashirow
(@kashirow)

20 years, 2 months ago

Here’s how I did essentially the same:
In wp-blog-header.php:
$wpvarstoreset = array(….blah…); is the array of variables the blog reads in. Add one of yours in this list, I named it ‘mode’.
In index.php, right after <div id=content>
switch ($mode) {
case “about”: include (‘aboutme.php’); break;
case “locate”: include (‘locate.php’); break;
default:
This makes the blog populate the main content area with whatever you include instead of the actual blog entries. To make it actually arrive at these with nice urls, I added this to .htaccess:
RewriteRule ^about/$ /index.php?mode=about
RewriteRule ^locate/$ /index.php?mode=locate
This causes http://www.myblog.blah/about to call index.php with $mode=about and return the about page, which is the way I like my static content. There are probably other ways, however, this one seems most obvious to me.

Mary Linville
(@sunshine)

20 years, 2 months ago

Hey, that just gave me an idea. True static pages can’t be generated, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t make it look like they were.
What IF we did something like this:
we create a category called “static pages” or whatever.
Create our pages, then use modrewrite like KAShirow mentioned for each page? Of course, that would require seeing what the actual url to each” static” page was, but I think that’s a nice solution for those of us with small sites, that don’t want a complicated CMS just so we don’t have to FTP all the time.
Think that’d work/be a good idea?

sindas
(@sindas)

20 years, 2 months ago

I need help!
<div id=”content”>
<?php switch ($static) {
case “biography”: include (‘biography.php’); break;
case “contact”: include (‘contact.php’); break;
case “shows”: include (‘shows.php’); break;
case “photos”: include (‘photos.php’); break;
default:
}
?>
dosnt work for me, gives me 404 errors, what am I doing wrong?

TechGnome
(@techgnome)

20 years, 2 months ago

HAve any of you checked out this thread? http://wordpress.org/support/10/2523 I’ll be posting the shell I use and step-by-step instructions later today.
TG

TechGnome
(@techgnome)

20 years, 2 months ago

Hmmm…. OK, a quick look at your site revealed what I need to know.
Your .htaccess file should look like this.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^photos/$ /index.php?mode=photos
See if that helps. Those first two lines are probably missing.
I think the assumption had been that you had the userfriendly urls already going.
Since you are using the modrewrite for this anyways, you might want to think about turning it on for your permalinks too.
TG

Moderator Matt Mullenweg
(@matt)

20 years, 2 months ago

Why not include wp-config.php, keep the dynamic menu, and use Links for running your site menu system? That’s what I’m doing.

TechGnome
(@techgnome)

20 years, 2 months ago

Eh? wp-config.php should be included…. doesn’t it get included as part of wp-blog-header.php? And not all of my menu is dynamic. I have hard links in there too, as well as informational items. And using the Links to link back to pages on your own site seems hoaky. But that might be me.
TG