Adapting WordPress to be a simple CMS

  • Hey all,

    First of all i am not sure if this is in the correct section, but heres hoping. I did try searching but didnt find any other posts that explained things in detail.

    Anyway, to cut a long story short, i have been asked to redesign a small portal site for a non-profit organization. The basic idea seems to be having a few different categories, and updating articles, announcements etc. semi-regularly. I assumed a blog type format would be best for that, and wordpress in particular because of its category settings.

    Now, this is the fun part.

    Is there any way to adequately change wordpress in to a small CMS? That handles files to be downloaded, membership in order to post comments (as well as for using to contact the members etc.) Plus the more normal procedures we all know.

    I am assuming that the Theme can easily be changed and getting wordpress to display the latest posts (or excerpts of them anyway) from various categories alone in different areas of the homepage would be possible with some slight tweeking? I dont know if it is just the way i set things up, but it doesnt seem to like posting images as part of the excerpt (?) Thats would be a disadvantage in this case… anyone know if its just an error on my part or a limitation of the software itself?

    Sorry for rambling – but i have looked online as well as the forums and never seen an adequate article or thread discussing exactly how to use wordpress to create a full-blown site instead of a blog. Does anyone know of any such resources?

    thanks!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Have you looked at Denis de Bernardy’s Semilogic Theme and CMS ?

    Curse’d double-posting errors.

    aye, there are indeed ways to adequately change wordpress in to a small CMS. And it mostly depends on what you actually call a CMS.

    To me, a CMS is a tool that lets you easily add and arrange tiles the way you want. To the extent you’re only looking for a solution easily add tiles in your side bar, you might want to take a look at my Semiologic theme. I’d say its main benefit at the moment is its ease of use: over a dozen plugins that usually complex to install can be added in one simple click.

    Thread Starter dezhen

    (@dezhen)

    Yeah thanks, i found it after i had posted this. I am basically looking for something that can display (recent) posts from different categories at different places on the page (to create a kind-of Portal effect).

    I am also thinking of making the site-wide navigation based on the categories settings, but am not sure how easy it is to do that exactly, as i am just beginning PHP and all (though am up to speed on XHTML and CSS).

    Thanks for your advice and help on the definition.

    for the recent posts, my fuzzy recent posts can do that:

    https://www.semiologic.com/projects/recent-posts/

    cat_id lets you restrict the recent posts to a category or more. Separate the category ids by comas, e.g. cat_id=3,5. It defaults to all categories.

    site wide navigation based on the categories is built-in too. edit the config.php file to select those categories who should appear in the header/footer nav, and activate the category tile plugin for the entire tree.

    Thread Starter dezhen

    (@dezhen)

    Thanks a lot – will give it a try tomorrow… its 1.10am here in Sydney ??

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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