Using wordpress as a cms for a website?

Where I live most clients, if they want a CMS-type website, want wordpress - i think this is because of its ease of use in comparison to joomla etc… I have messed about and built my own blog theme etc for wordpress, but now im wondering about building actual “page” templates for it - where the client can come in and change images, content on the page etc from the dashboard? Does anyone know where i can find any good tutorials on building themes that use “pages” and using wordpress as a cms, rather than using posts and categories for a blog type theme?:slight_smile:

Keep in mind that if HTML is going to be input in the post it is going to be easy for the client to screw up.

For starters, you should read this:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page
http://www.grahamazon.com/wordpress-as-cms/ (This was linked to from a page on Wordpress.)

And I found this helpful, a bit dated from 2009 but still relevant.

http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/powerful-cms-using-wordpress.html
http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/wordpress-cms-plugins.html

Those are things I found useful enough to put in my Wordpress “cheat sheet”. I did not look at this one yet but it looks interesting at first glance:

http://www.amberweinberg.com/how-to-build-a-wordpress-cms-theme-part-1-theme-basics/

There is a lot to learn about Wordpress. You may want to create a “cheat sheet” of your own. You will find yourself referring back to things again and again.

The ability for those who do not know HTML to create and layout content on pages is something that Drupal 7 w/ the [url=http://drupal.org/project/panels]panels and [url=http://drupal.org/project/views]views modules surpasses just about all CMS systems out there. Those things in combination offer a very powerful toolset to create pages without any knowledge of HTML. Due to their flexibility views and panels even Drupal can be difficult to grasp but they are right up the alley of appropriate tools to allow the end-users the flexibility desired here.

+1 for what Cheesedude said. Those are valuable links and worth reading through.

To add to that, I wrote a blog post about how to skin WP for use as a very simple CMS: here
It’s not intended as a definitive guide, more of a starting point. Maybe you’ll find it useful.

OK well a friend of mine is a professional web designer/developer and said he is very busy at the moment, and that he has a couple of jobs coming in that he would like to give me for experience, converting the site into wordpress … i know how to build a blog template but im not talking about that… im talking about a website, content managed by wordpress… i understand how it works for blogging but what im curious about is- i understand that the content will be floated/positioned with CSS in divs/sections/articles whatever, just as a static html page, but what i dont get is how you say like “this post goes in this div” so that it works like a CMS… these projects are WordPress projects so there is no point in me reading about drupal because they want wordpress, but like i say, not for blogging, for a Website cms

You don’t use posts, you use pages.
You can define the page structure in page.php and the add content to it via the WP backend.

“The Loop” is how and where Wordpress outputs the post/page content it queries from the database. The content that is output by the loop is what the client will have control over updating through the post screen in the admin panel. All else like the header, footer, and other columns will be hard coded in the templates. You can put divs or whatever around the loop so the content will be output in that section.

I think if you give this a good read you can get a better understanding.

http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop
http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop_in_Action

A great way to learn something is to take an existing theme and examine the PHP code to see how it works. You can start by finding a CMS theme you like, preferably a simple one for starters, and go from there. Look at the HTML that surrounds The Loop and you can get an idea of how it is done.

hello! i’ve been using WP for my blog for over 3 months now, and wouldn’t trade it for the static website. Frankly, I have only basic html knowledge and php is totally mystic for me. However, as long as I don’t need any specific layout and design changes, I can manage the site myself. So, I think WP could be right for you…

I agree with you.
I think @Zany90 should explore all in-build features in Worpress. Then go for code and theme development so that some unnecessary works can be avoided.

Hi, I have an old site written in HTML and with a simple CSS style sheet. I want to convert to Wordpress, I dont want to have to redesign my site from the ground up so I am interested to know how I could take the existing site and convert it to wordpress so I can tweek it. How do I get the html files into wordpress, where do I start? I have been told by many developers that I am talking rubbish and this cannot be done… I am not an experienced html expert but I do understand the basics and am learning quickly. I have access to wordpress on my new web hosting platform so I have the tools ready to go. Any help appreciated.

cheers

Hi,

I wrote a blog post about this, which covers the very basics. Maybe you will find it helpful: http://hibbard.eu/making-a-very-simple-wordpress-theme-for-a-static-site/