Smashing WordPress: Beyond The Blog

Chapter 9. WORDPRESS AS A CMS

Using WordPress for things other than blogging is something that comes naturally to a lot of developers today, but not so much for the general public. That being said, larger publishing companies are already putting WordPress to good use for their editorial group blogs and others are powering opinion sections using the system.

This chapter tackles the various problems and decisions you need to make when you want to use WordPress as a more traditional CMS, powering non-blog sites with the system. It is not only possible, it is also a perfectly sane solution that saves time and money.

What Is a CMS?

CMS is short for content management system, which basically tells you that it is a way to manage content. It is what you use to write, edit, and publish your work online, assuming you're not hacking the files or database yourself. WordPress is a CMS, even though it originates from blog publishing only. By now you've gathered that WordPress is about way more than just blogs. Basically, you can do just about anything that involves managing written content, but also images, sound, and video. When I'm talking about WordPress with traditional publishers, I usually say that there is no newspaper or magazine site that I couldn't rebuild in WordPress. These are sites usually powered by expensive licensed systems, and while it was unlikely that anyone would make that claim a couple of years ago, today it is taken seriously.

So WordPress is a CMS and you should treat it ...