Wordpress beyond the blog

Taking WordPress Beyond the Blog Thord Daniel Hedengren http://tdh.me

Hello. • Author of Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog • Currently wrapping up the follow-up Smashing WordPress Themes • Crazy ringleder for WordCamp Stockholm • Catch me at tdh.me or tdh.se @tdhedengren or @tdh.se

WordPress

Where did it come from? • Forked from the b2 blogging system by Matt Mullenweg • Got decent at version 1.5 • Got good at version 2.0 • Got great at version 3.0

WordPress today Not just blogs anymore - WordPress is a CMS Powers social networks and membership sites Used for editorial group planning and management

Can WordPress take the heat of a major website?

WordPress can take it - if your setup can • Can your webhost take the heat? • Is your server powerful enough? • Are you utilizing caching, and are you using caching plugins?

What about security? • WordPress has a lot of users, that means bugs will be found - that’s a good thing! • Security updates are fairly frequent, ﬁxing everything from issues with the code, to PHP security breaches • Can you say the same of your closed source CMS?

A few words about blogs

• Anyone can blog, they are straight forward and easy • With WordPress, blogging is no harder than writing in a word processor • The content ﬂow of blogs have changed how text is treated online • Anyone can expand their WordPress blog with plugins and themes at the click of a button

Blogs are great because they are so easy to use

Your CMS can be that simple

WordPress as a CMS • Still easy to update and manage • Still easy to expand feature-wise thanks to plugins • Widget areas makes most sites a breeze to manage

Anyone can blog with WordPress, so anyone can use it as a CMS

The WordPress CMS setup • Using static Pages for static content (about page, contact us) • Using categories for often updated sections (news section, blog) • Using Page Templates to gain more design control when needed

CMS with beneﬁts • WordPress is SEO friendly from the start • Tagging is hot, and WordPress got it out of the box • The huge amount of plugins means that someone probably already solved your problem - no more waiting for deployment of a simple Tweet button • Huge choice of developers

Version 3.0 cranks it up a notch • Custom post types: You’re not limited to posts and pages anymore • Custom taxonomies: Create your own tag or category hierarchies • More control in themes - still short deploy times

Custom post types Separate content from Customize what ﬁelds the content ﬂow are available per post type Make parts of the website editable through Tailor posts to your custom posts needs

Limitations • WordPress needs more ﬁne-grained control of what goes where outside of the widget areas • Better media management • Still very template driven

Be afraid

The CMS focus • Just another WordPress site • Development shifting towards CMS • 3.1 gets internal linking feature despite being clean-up release • Short development cycles

What’s next? • Social with BuddyPress for Facebook-like functionality • More social with the bbPress plugin rewrite • More control with the CMS focus

And ﬁnally, some free advice

Don’t invest in closed source CMS solutions

Thank you. Thord Daniel Hedengren You can ﬁnd me at tdh.me or tdh.se @tdhedengren and @tdhse

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