WordPress: The Ultimate Content Management System (CMS)
For years WordPress has been touted as the number one blogging platform. And without mistake – it is. But as we creep closer to WordPress 3.1 it’s nice to take a step back and see just how far its’ come. From winning the CMS Hall of Fame Award to the multiple thousands of plugins that extend its functionality, the WordPress core has made the leap from blog to Content Management System (CMS). Just take a look at all of the cool things WordPress can do:
Custom Post Types
In English, this means that you can have all sorts of content on your site. Want audio files for your church’s sermon listing? Done. Want to segment your audio, photos, and text into different areas? Piece of cake.
Custom Taxonomies
Yes, another big word, but basically this means that all of that custom content (and your regular blog content) can be sorted, stacked, and filed however you want. And, you get to choose between category-like and tag-like – so there’s lots of room to play.
Menus
No more fighting with which page navigation goes where – just drag and drop things where you want them to go. Want two navigation menus? Four? It’s super easy to drop in the code wherever you want it.
Widgets
Widgets (especially with a plugin like “Widget Logic”) will let you put content that’s not your blog posts or articles anywhere you drop a sidebar in. Lots of plugins are out there that will even extend that functionality to allow twitter, facebook, and any other social network data to come in too.
And Much More!
These are just a few of the awesome things WordPress has going for it. If you’ve never given it a shot, now’s the best time. Find a host you like, look for the “install WordPress” button, and just have fun!