Using Wordpress as a CMS
Filed Under Design General
Step 1. After installing Wordpress (WP), there are some plugins I would install before I go any further. I always use the following;
- XML Sitemaps : Automatically updates your XML sitemap when you add a post or page, and notifies search engines.
- Top Level Categories : Removed the “category” slug from your blog. I go into the importance of this later on.
- Headspace 2 : An amazing plugin. Lets me create my own Meta keywords, title, and description. Also lets you easily install code into the header site-wide, and provides an easy way to add google analytics, yahoo site explorer meta, MSN webmaster metas, and much more.
- Page Menu Editor : How does anyone live without this? When you want a long title for your page (ie, “Contact the Philadelphia lawyers at Dewey Cheatem & Howe”), but a short title for the navigation (ie, “Contact”), you need this plugin.
- Contact Form 7 : If your using your WP as a CMS, you might want a contact page. I’ve used this one in the past as its easy to install and use in multiple places; however, if you like to track goals with Google Analytics, this won’t work for you.
Step 2: Configure permalinks. Don’t operate a blog without permalinks configured! In case you don’t know, permalinks converts your url from http://www.example.com/?p=3 to http://www.example.com/cat/my-page-or-post/. Use custom option and enter /”%category%/%postname%/. Its important to use the plugin “Top Level Categories” because when you post any blog entries, WP will add a ‘base category’ (default = “category”) to your url, so blog posts will look like “www.example.com/category/cars/VW-jetta”/. For SEO, I would remove the base cateogry (”category”) or change it to “blog”, depending on the structure of your website.
Step 3. If your plugin has an enhanced homepage (look for a file called home.php), you can skip this step. By default WP will display your blog on the index page. Under normal circumstances, when using WP as a CMS, we will want to have different content on our home page. First, create a page in WP with the content you want on your homepage. Give it a title relevant to your content. We don’t need to call it ‘home’ if you have the “Page Menu Editor” plugin installed; you can set that separately. In the admin, go to Settings > Reading and change “Front page display” settings to display a page of your choice as your homepage.
Step 4. If you will be having a blog as a feature on your website, create a page named “blog”, go back to Settings > Reading and change “Front page display” settings to display your blog on the blog page we just made. If you are using a blog, you might want to just rename the base category (under the ‘permalinks’ setting) to “blog” instead of removing it with the plugin above.
Step 5. Customize your themes widets as desired. i like to hard code my pages into the header with a horizontal navigation, and drop a quick contact form into the sidebar. If you have a blog feature, you might list the blog categorys in the sidebar instead.
Done. Yeay! Now it’s easy for anyone to make changes or add content to your website.
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