Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, 4th Edition

CHAPTER 14: UNCOMMON WORDPRESS USAGE

YOU ALREADY KNOW that WordPress can power blogs as well as other editorial sites. You can use it for static websites, newspaper or magazine-like sites, and just about anything for which you are publishing text, images, or any kind of multimedia.

But why stop there? WordPress can be used for projects even further from its bloggish roots, as this chapter will show. You can build sites on top of WordPress that the developers definitely didn't have in mind from the start. Hopefully, the adaptations of the platform discussed here will help you see the full potential of the system. You'll see how WordPress can be used to create a job board or as a FAQ and/or knowledge base, how you can add a product directory, how to use WordPress for eCommerce, and a lot more. There are so many things you can do with WordPress, and I hope that this chapter will be an inspiration to you and get your brain started on what you can do with this wonderful publishing platform.

WORKING WITH USER-SUBMITTED CONTENT

Just because WordPress is great as a CMS for sites, big or small, you're not limited to using it for just that. You can have your users submit content beyond comments and then do things with that alongside your regular content. Either you separate the user-submitted content from the rest, or you mix and match with whatever type of content you're producing yourself.

Technically, you need to have your users register to submit content using WordPress's standard ...