Wordpress is a perfect blogging tool. With high customizability and easy-to-edit code, as well as incredibly useful PHP short-codes, making great sites with Wordpress is a snap. But why stop there? It can be a Content Management System too!

It’s not really something that shouldn’t be used to its full potential. Simple short-codes can drag up easy functions, themes are relatively easy to construct – not to mention the vast amount of resources floating around the internet for help on Wordpress. Wordpress doesn’t just do blogs – in fact, using Wordpress solely to blog is ‘like buying a Swiss Army Knife to use only one blade.’ Wordpress is perhaps beyond flexible, and can be used for an entirety of different sites.

With some simple editing and use of the loop, Wordpress can be turned into pretty much any kind of regularly updated site. Not only that, but it makes it far easier for developers to create rich websites in minimal effort.

Marina Marsh, president of ESI Web Services, states:

“When clients ask us if this can be done or that can be added to their site, we never have to say no… with WordPress it is possible to add, upgrade, expand without spending a fortune. A complex site with a lot of custom coding added, which would typically cost $25,000+ if an enterprise CMS were used, costs $10,000 – $12,000 with WordPress. We can create a fully functional online business solution with features like shopping cart, membership area, directory listing, newsletter subscription, forum, SEO and much more for under $6,000.”

It makes things so simple mainly through the use of incredibly easy and simple PHP short-codes that are really a boon for developers, as for example:

<?php the_permalink(); ?> (without spaces)

Generates the following result:

http://tekcube.com/blogging/why-wordpress-is-a-great-cms/ (the link to this post)

This is a simple function which displays the permalink (direct-link to the post). If I was to change the link to the post, this would update automatically without me having to edit more than one thing. But there’s tons of simple functions that require very little knowledge of PHP to work, just like this. B

But anyway, what I mean is that Wordpress can sufficiently reduce costs and improve efficiency as a CMS. Where’s the point in learning difficult code to sift through thousands of lines and, with great pain, develop a difficult-to-use interface when with Wordpress plugins and that can do it easily? (Not to mention how easy it is to install plugins, with a single click, and update them all with another click).

Wordpress isn’t a CMS. Well, it’s not advertised as a CMS. But it performs like a CMS. And because of that, you can build pretty much any kind of website with it.

Related Posts:

• Wordpress 2.9 Released
• How To Start a Blog 1: Setting Up

I sit writing this, staring at the snow loftily falling from the sky in graceful drifts, cascading down to earth in a bizarre yet beautiful fashion, and think about the timing of everything. It’s Christmas, and it’s an important time for sharing time with family. And the software releases slowly cease coming up until Christmas. And yet, one company is still very hard at working building its new release – that’ll be Wordpress.

Wordpress, for those of you who aren’t aware, is pretty much my favourite platform.

Anyway, it’s been updated to 2.9 – you have to get this, it’s probably the best update yet, especially for developers. Everything snaps together. I mean, one simple yet ultimately useful feature is the ability to add alternative text to an image without having to add a caption then remove the caption via HTML – simple, and yet so, so useful.

Tomorrow I’ll outline all the new capabilities with Wordpress 2.9.

Related Posts:

• Why Wordpress is a Great CMS
• How To Start a Blog 1: Setting Up

Starting a blog is now incredibly simple – back in the old days, you’d have to code it from scratch yourself! But, thanks to people like Google and the Wordpress community team, blogging is now even easier to do, as they supply the code to you.

So you may be interested in starting a blog? Some people fall into a trap very early on, in which they feel a blog will run itself and minimal effort has to be put into the blog. This is not the case. Countless hours of my life go into this blog, and if you wish to start a serious blog, take this warning: To have readers, you must have content.

All clear? Let’s get started.

So, what do I start with?

For blogs, you’ll start with a blogging platform. If you own your own hosting or plan to buy hosting, it’s a good idea to download Wordpress from Wordpress.org and install it on your server. If you don’t, and have no intention – or wish to have the site do it for you, you can make a free account over at Wordpress.com – which will do the installing for you, all you have to do is select a theme.

Wordpress.org – FTP Install

For this example, we’ll be doing Wordpress that you install on your server. If you are not installing on your server, skip to the ‘Setting Up’ section, below.

Wordpress is famous for it’s ‘5-minute-install’ – that is, it’s incredibly simple to install and should work easily – all you need is to add a few details to MySQL and add a few settings – here are the official instructions:

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven’t already.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
4. Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details as explained in Editing wp-config.php to generate and use your secret key password.
5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
   • If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.
   • If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you’d like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wordpress” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.
     
     Hint: If your FTP transfer is too slow read how to avoid FTPing at : Step 1: Download and Extract.
6. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser.

• If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php
• If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit:http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

This makes it pretty easy, but what if you don’t understand? Here’s a step-by-step:

• Download and extract the Wordpress package to your computer.
• Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php
• Edit your database details into wp-config.php
• Upload via FTP to your server.
• Run the installation at http://your-site-name-here.com/wp-admin/install.php

And you’ll have your site set up. Everything should be in order, and you can start to post by logging in and using the dashboard (there should be a link in the theme.)

Wordpress.com – Sign-up

Wordpress.com is pretty self explanatory. Head over to Wordpress.com, and sign up for an account. Enter in the correct details, and you are handed to a panel of controls. This is your dashboard. If you want a domain name and great stats and advertising, consider purchasing Wordpress.com Pro.

So you’ve learned how to set up a blog. Well done! Tune in this time next week for the second installment – theming.

Related Posts:

• Being Ill Sucks for Bloggers
• Why Wordpress is a Great CMS
• Wordpress 2.9 Released
• Can You Hear the Rain, Issue 1