Web site maintenance, website management and web consulting services

I came across a promotional video for the Beta release of WordPress 2.7 on Webmonkey today. Looking at the promo it looks like the WordPress development team are really starting to put more emphasis on the Content Management aspect of the platform.

No longer is WordPress just a blogging tool. It’s becoming the only tool you’re ever going to need to run your website. Take a look at this

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WARNING: Geeky Web designer content ahead.

I’ve read a dozen or so articles proclaiming that WordPress, the world’s best blogging platform, can be used as a Content Management System (CMS) for business websites. So when Craig from Presslink asked me to develop a new 100+ page site for Air Products South Africa, we decided that we wanted to give WordPress the opportunity to prove itself as a CMS, a decision which made me more than just a little nervous.

WordPress was obviously not designed to be a CMS, and unlike open source CMS solutions like Joomla, it lacks certain functionality out of the box. That said, it’s a bunch of fun once you add in some plugins (of which there are literally hundreds available) and do a little bit of custom PHP coding.

Not being the world’s best PHP programmer (in fact, I may be among the worst) it took me a little longer than it could have to pull RSS feeds from Air Products’ US site, and I’m still not completely happy with the way I showcase blog posts on the home page. But the final product turned out fantastically. The client loves the design (that was Craig’s doing), I love the way developing with WordPress is faster than with Joomla (and it almost validates too!), and Presslink’s staff are impressed with the ease of populating the site with content.

If you’re a designer looking for a new CMS platform to make designing corporate websites easier and more user friendly, give WordPress a bash. It’s my new CMS of choice.

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