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Some time ago I started switching all of my company’s (Energion Publications) web sites to use WordPress as a content management system. As I began to do that I intended to make those sites look as little like a blog as possible. The basic idea was that a blog is a sort of personal site, less formal, and certainly not adequate for a business site. Businesses could have blogs, but their sites weren’t blogs.

But then I found that I wanted to have links to the latest news from the company blog on the main company site. Then I wanted some summaries of certain posts so people could see the latest company news on the company’s home page. I ended up with a site that is actually very much like a blog.

The front page of the blog lists the latest news articles (blog posts) in reverse calendar order. The sidebar provides an excellent place to feature items, and at the same time I can use WordPress custom page types to create an array of catalog pages, which currently include book lists, individual book detail pages, author lists, and individual author information pages.

Instead of having two sites, one traditional, and one a blog (which I had on a subdomain), I now have the entire site built into one blog site, and I have the normal page of posts that one finds on the front page of a blog.

One additional feature that helps me do this with WordPress is the menu feature, so that I can place the large number of links I need on the web site (various company sites, individual book promotion sites, and so forth) without making it too confusing. And yes, the theme is built quite closely on the TwentyTen theme that comes with WordPress 3.0+. I had started to work up a unique theme when I realized I was making something close enough to that in any case.

It’s time to get over the blog prejudice. People want rapidly updated content, and combining a good CMS with a regularly updated blog will help you meet that desire.

Related articles

• The Strength Of WordPress – Not Merely A Blog Software (webmanmarketing.com)
• Why Web Sites Need Blogs (brighthub.com)

The result apparently tries to get user privileges before the appropriate includes are loaded.  The solution, however, is simple–don’t Network Activate the plugin.  I doubt it’s a very useful option.  After digging my way out, (by adding require_once(‘pluggable.php’); as the first line of wp-includes/capabilities.php, and then removing it after I deactivated the plugin), I simply activated the plugin only on the individual site that needed it.

(Energion.com Blog, which are a http://eneblogs.com, are available free of charge and represent a quite capable WordPress install.  I’m always an e-mail away if you want a theme or plugin added, always provided the addition meets security requirements.)

I don’t have the minimum 30 days experience Michael suggests with Blogger, but I do with both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress, and I also have some experience due to dealing with questions from the Moderate Christian Blogroll community.  I found that my experience agrees with his.  It is much more difficult to do advertising and so forth on your WordPress.com account than on Blogger, and of course either gives you less flexibility than self-hosted.

I found out the limitations the hard way, because I started out with a standard web site before blogging really got going.  (My Energion.com domain was first registered in 1997).  I was essentially “blogging” by posting essays on a regular basis using standard HTML, uploading them, updating directories by hand, and so forth.  So being used to the self-hosted idea already, I simply installed WordPress the same way when I started blogging in 2005.

I learned about WordPress.com via the Moderate Christian Blogroll blog, which I established specifically so that I could learn to understand the difficulties of WordPress.com users.  I still do the very rare blogging that the blogroll requires there.

So I commend this article to those who are considering where to start blogging, or who are considering a change of platform.  It’s a good summary of the situation as it stands.

WordPress can be used for CMS by simply altering the settings to make a static page your default landing page.  You then need to choose a theme that is flexible enough for navigation and build the main site using the page system.  WordPress 2.8.x supports unlimited nesting of pages, so you can get quite complex.

To alter the settings for your default landing page, go to Settings -> Reading, and the first section deals with a static front page. If you want a page on which to display blog posts (which I normally do), then you need to create a page with an appropriate title, such as Announcements or Discussion, before to do these settings, and then enter that page as the blog page. Note that this page should be blank.

In general, I want some sort of announcement option with a book site where I can list book signings, links to relevant articles on the internet on the same topic, book quotes, and so forth.  On the same page that is used to set a static page for your default landing page, you can create a blank page and designate it as your blog.

Examples of sites using this method are:

1. speakforgod.info, supporting When People Speak for God
2. evidenceforthebible.com, supporting Evidence for the Bible
3. christianityandsecularism.com, supporting Christianity and Secularism
4. lukestudy.com, supporting The Gospel According to Saint Luke: A Participatory Study Guide
5. grieftolight.com, supporting Grief: Finding the Candle of Light

There is a good article available, though it does reference some plugins that will not be needed under WordPress 2.8, titled WordPress as a CMS – Content Management System.

I found the whole process remarkably simple, and though there are minor tweaks I’d like to make, WordPress provides an economical way to create a number of small sites as needed without breaking either the bank or the schedule.

OK, you want to use word press with a static page as the landing page for new visitors, but still have a normal looking posts page that can be reached through a link.  All of it is simple; none of it was obvious.

1.  Create a blank page and name it whatever you want to name the page with your posts

2.  Create your landing page.  (Both steps one and two are done with the Pages editor.)

3.  Go to Settings->Reading.

4.  Choose the “A static page” radio button

5.  Set the “Front Page” drop down box to the title of your landing page.

6.  Set the “Posts Page” drop down box to the title of the blank page your created in step 1.

7.  You are done.

This isn’t particularly complicated.  My initial problem was that I expected it to be more complicated than it was and spent some effort trying to make it so!

It’s a mite non-intuitive to me to set all this under Settings->Reading, but I’m not sure anything else would be that much more obvious.

Comments on this blog, for example, are few and far between, but on my Threads blog, there are frequent conversations. Thus far I’ve been using Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin there, and I haven’t tried upgrading, though from what I have been reading, it’s supposed to be seamless.

I did modify my theme for the Energion Publications blog to accommodate threads, and it worked fine. The instructions, are here on the WordPress codex, though I should repeat their link and thanks to OttoDestruct, which is where I found the instructions first.

I remain very pleased with the upgrades and the new user interface. There is a certain amount of adjustment, simply because it’s new, but I think it’s also better, and the extra effort is worth it.

So far I’m very impressed with the results. The open source community rocks!