Using WordPress As a CMS for Non-Blog Sites
When WordPress first premiered several years ago, it was mainly for blog based sites with simple template changes. Now the WordPress platform is used from everything be it a blog, a normal site or even a eCommerce site.
Many clients are still in the mindset that WordPress has to be used for blog sites, and don’t understand that it’s a great platform to use for non-blog sites. Six months ago, I was of the same opinion; that WordPress as a CMS can’t hold a candle to a custom CMS.
Since then, I’ve been asked to add WordPress to almost every single site I’ve coded. It has definitely given me a lot of insight, plus a huge learning experience in both WordPress and PHP. I’ve come to find that WordPress is just as, if not more, powerful than a custom CMS in several ways. Let’s take a look at some pros and cons of using WordPress as a CMS.
The Pros of Using WordPress Instead of Going Custom
- It’s already coded, which makes your development time faster, which makes the client’s bill cheaper.
- No need to hire a back-end programmer.
- Thousands of plugins – If you don’t want to code it or can’t, somebody probably has for you, just download and install with one button.
- Most of the stuff you need is already built in with installation.
- The backend interface is appealing in design and easy to use and navigate.
- Almost anything that you can’t do in basic WordPress and doesn’t have a plugin can be easily coded into.
- Millions of themes can be installed quickly for free or small sums and already coded, these can be customized as much as you want as well.
- Ability of everything being dynamic and updating entire portions of the site is awesome.
The Cons of Using WordPress
- There are some advanced features that simply can’t be programmed into WordPress because of its loop feature. For example, pagination on a static page showing posts.
- All the eCommerce plugins stink and aren’t very extensive in features (and expensive).
- You’re stuck with WordPress’s backend, unless you really want to get into styling it by hand – you might as well go with a custom CMS.
- WordPress can get difficult to manage if the site is huge.
- You have to hire a programmer if you want super custom functions.
Using Multiple Platforms
I once did a site with 3 different platforms: WordPress for their blog, a custom CMS for their site, and an eCommerce platform for their cart, all on one site. Now that I think on it, I probably could’ve combined 2 of the sections into 1.
While this site is so completely custom, that 3 platforms seemed a better way to go, it’s a PIA if I ever need to update the template files, since I have to update all 3.
Not only is it a pain to update, but it’s a pain for the client to have to login to 3 different sections of the site to update their content. Perhaps someone should work on an all in one blog-CMS-shopping cart solution?
Pre-Built CMSes
Non-blog pre-built CMS, like Joomla and Drupal, have similar pros and cons to WordPress, but are more powerful and great for larger and more programming-heavy sites. Of course these have their own set of cons, especially Joomla, which is neither user-intuitive or easy to customize.
Why Use WordPress For A Non-Blog Site Instead of a Pre-Built CMS?
There are several reasons I choose WordPress over Joomla or Drupal.
- There is more support and tutorials for doing almost everything in WordPress.
- WordPress’s code is easier to navigate and find functions in.
- The plugins are fantastic for WordPress, crappy for Joomla.
- The ability to have the blog section in case clients change their mind, which they often do.
Which Do You Prefer?
Do you prefer to use WordPress, a pre-built CMS or a completely custom CMS for your clients? Why?
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
Agreed. It also makes it easy for you as the developer to add functionality should a client ask for it in the future.
I can’t comment on Joomla, but I found Drupal was painfully slow on my local development environment. The one thing Drupal has going for it though, and the Drupal devs will tell you this, is that it’s more of a framework than a CMS.
WordPress is an option however if you want a CMS look at CMS’s and with eCommerce in particular, look at products built specifically for that.
@Colin. Really? What exactly is the difference or purpose of frameworks? I have my own “framework” for developing new sites but it’s not very large and is catered specifically to what I do.
@Ben Like what?
WordPress is my default go to for all sites now. I now have to look for a reason “not” to do a site in WordPress. I do agree that WordPress is awful for eCommerce.
WP is great for a blog, or very basic site. However, when you get into how it works with permalinks, a complex WP site can be a nightmare.
I’m actually starting to move away from WP (simply because most projects that I do demand something more), and migrate over to Radiant CMS. (http://radiantcms.org)
@Ben @Amber Magento or (my favorite) Spree (http://spreecommer ce.com). The latter, I know, rocks.
I never really used WP as a CMS, I want to check out expression engine heard their system is amazing!
Ya right now I am using custom.
Wired uses wordpress as their cms system of their site looks it no?
I agree with Bens statement on ecommerce, data structure can be quite complex.
I’ve been using WordPress to run a flash arcade for almost a year now ( http://physics-games.net , if anyone wants to take a look) and I’m very happy with the results. I’m by no means a professional web developer or anything, but I guess that only shows how easy WP is to implement in a variety of situations. Also, I have found the WordPress community to be just plain awesome.
@Art I agree. I now don’t even offer custom CMSes to my clients unless they specifically ask for one.
@Nicholas What problems have you had with permalinks? I’ve found as long as you keep everything dynamic, it’s pretty easy to change over. It does become a pain though if you have a lot of hard links.
@Jeremy That’s what I love about WP…no matter what I’ve tried to do that I didn’t know how to do, there was an answer somewhere on the web for it.
I used WP a little bit, but Drupal works better for me. I say that from both a development and management perspective. I just have never seen much of a reason to deploy a WP site over deploying a Drupal site unless specifically requested.
@Brian what are some of things you like about Drupal over WordPress? I’ve never used it before so I wouldn’t know
I find the theme functions easier to understand, but I know some WP’ers who say the opposite. It also seemed that it would be easier to hit a wall trying to get WP to do something it wasn’t necessarily designed for. With Drupal, it’s nothing more than adding or creating a new module.
I see Drupal as more of a framework than a CMS. With the default install, there really isn’t very much that you can do other than use it as a basic CMS. But with a few modules, you can create a full-blown social network.
It’s forum system used to be the image that you’d find in Webster’s to describe the word “suckage” but has since gotten much better. It is still not up to par with the likes of phpBB and vBulletin, but it’s getting there.
To me, the blogging system really isn’t that bad. I haven’t used WP enough, though, to give you a great comparison.
I kinda dig WordPress for CMS sites, depending on what they need, but the vast majority of the time I stick to Drupal. If it doesn’t exist yet, you can just make it. The possibilities are almost endless. Making feeds, panels, views, e-commerce, blogs, galleries, etc, it’s all pretty darn easy with Drupal. You can do so much right out of the box, and half the time I try to achieve a site with Joomla or WordPress, I could have done the same or more in Drupal in half the time. I went from only having heard about it to making a site that combined blog, video gallery, photo gallery, shopping cart, user accounts, event calendar and loads of other functionality in like a month or two.