Use WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System)

If you’re looking into WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) for your website you came to the right place. Though there are many CMS options available, I’ll explain why WordPress is one of the best.

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Price Range

WordPress is an open source project, which means it was created by and for the community. It also means you are free to use it for any type of website without paying anyone a license fee. But not everything is free; WordPress has many features including a plugin architecture and a template system where anyone can develop and charge for their plugin or theme. You’ll get everything you need in the WordPress install to build a basic free site. However, if you want to take advantage of the CMS (CMS’s are built as an easy way to add content, images, videos, audio, etc. to your site; they are not built as a tool for designing websites) and use plugins that will instantly give you social sharing, or a theme that will instantly give you a nice looking site, then while there are free options you may have to pay for a quality or custom solution. Though WordPress is free you will also still need to purchase a host.

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Hosting

WordPress won’t run by itself, so you’ll need a host to store and run it. A web hosting service is a type of internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease; an example of a host is GoDaddy or Hostgator. Hosting usually ranges from around $10 – $30 a month for sites that don’t plan on getting too large, or $150 – $300 a month for sites that want to run quickly with a large amount of visitors. The difference is shared servers and dedicated servers.
Shared servers are shared by a number of different websites. Picture it as if you rented (shared) a home with 20 other friends. Though the rent is cheap your daily process takes a lot longer than normal, meaning your site at times will load slower than normal and there is nothing you can do unless you upgrade to a larger server.
Unlimited storage means unlimited, but don’t get carried away with it. Picture yourself as a hoarder that owns a small furnished studio. Since you don’t have much storage over the years objects start to pile up. Closets become full; corners become closets; floor space becomes storage space. Next thing you know you have only a walkway from your kitchen to your front door and Hoarders, the TV series, is doing a show on you. What I’m trying to say is though you have unlimited storage the more stuff you put on your server the slower your site runs. A quick fix is to not have an archive of files older than 3 months, and delete large files like audio or video that are older than 3 months.
Don’t let me scare you away from purchasing a shared server, because it could be all that you need. One idea is to run your site on a shared server until you out grow it with visits and storage and then upgrade to a stronger server, so prepare yourself for expansion.
Now dedicated servers you pay twice as much for not as much. That is because you are the only one on the server, no sharing, so it runs quick and supports any website size. You’ll notice they don’t offer any type of unlimited storage. For some hosting in order to purchase a dedicated server you have to know how to run it, so be sure to check with your host if they provide this kind of support or server management.
A good host that specializes in WordPress hosting is WP Engine or Page.ly. They run a dedicated like server that is engineered to run specifically for WordPress.
As well, it is important to have file storage outside of your hosting plan, read more about this below in file hosting.

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Control

WordPress runs as a CMS smoothly, but what makes it great is how much control you have. You can code any part of WordPress to function the way you want. You have access to all files and folders. If you know PHP or are a quick learner you can make a masterpiece quickly. You can also make a plugin or theme to install into your WordPress. Turn plugins on and off with one click and redesign your site with a simple and quick theme install. With the vast amount of themes and plugins available for downloading, anything is possible.

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User Interface

The admin section of WordPress is easy to figure out; making posts, pages, installs and updates is a breeze. The WYSIWYG editor gives you everything you need to post a story to your site, from bold or left-align to an HTML tab. Publish a post or schedule it for another day; password protect a page or allow commenting on your site. It’s all displayed with a visually pleasing user interface.

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Upgrading WordPress

WordPress needs upgrading quite often to keep software up-to-date with the latest security fixes, user interface changes, new features and more. This can cause problems when you have to have certain plugins for your site. Because as WordPress upgrades, not all plugins upgrade; due to the developer’s dedication and time. This means they may not work with the newest WordPress version.
Also, if you make any changes to the files and folders included in the main WordPress installation, when you upgrade you will lose all changes. This is one of the reasons we recommend you never make changes to core WordPress files. But, WordPress doesn’t have to be upgraded to the newest version to work. Once you install WordPress (whichever version it may be) and add plugins, if you were not to upgrade WordPress or plugins your site would still function properly. But it is best practice to upgrade WordPress when a new version is available. Before upgrading always remember to backup everything; your theme, plugins, database and main WordPress installation.

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Customer Support

If you’re going to need a lot of help building your site you can use the WordPress forums to help answer your questions. It is an open source community, meaning those helping to answer problems are often volunteers, so sometimes you may need to work through and resolve your own problems. Since emailing support is not available (because it’s not a good way to help out a lot of people) consider a host with WordPress support like WP Engine or Page.ly. Not all hosting companies offer WordPress support, so choose your shared server host carefully.

Plugins

 

 

Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. With all the available plugins you can turn WordPress into a radio, news or photography content management system as easy as installing software.
Over 18,000 plugins are available; some are free, others ask for donation or have a monthly rate or one-time buy. With that many plugins it provides an opportunity to build a site the way you want it.
Let’s say you’re building a newspaper site. Download theme my login to handle membership subscription to your online paid version. WPeMatico for automatic publishing from an affiliate newspaper to your website. AdRotate for scheduling of online business advertising. Font-Resizer to display small, medium or large font size for reading articles. Simple Weather to display your local weather. Related Posts to promote other stories related to the current story the user is reading and Me Likey for Facebook share buttons.
Another plugin that is useful for any type of website is MobilePress, which provides a separate theme for your mobile devices.
Not all plugins work for all versions of WordPress. Some plugins die off after a certain amount of time, or stop updating to be compatible with newer versions of WordPress. Before downloading a plugin make sure they have some kind of support and plan on upgrading the plugin as WordPress upgrades. Remember not to get too carried away with how many plugins you download, and choose them carefully. Having lots of plugins installed will make your website load slower, so always make sure a plugin has a good rating and is regularly updated. Poorly developed plugins and of course the amount of files, code and/or script that is being requested, can all slow your site down.

 Themes

WordPress themes are files that work together to create the design and functionality of a WordPress site. Each theme may be different, offering many choices for site owners to instantly change the look of their website. There are free themes available through WordPress.org or premium themes for purchase all over the web. Think of it like you’re hiring a web designer, the difference is that the theme is already finished, as opposed to waiting a couple of weeks.
Some themes provide drop down navigation menu settings, which gives you control of what goes where by dragging and dropping. Themes of all varieties are offered on the web, from media sites to shopping sites, so if you don’t find something you like perhaps you’re not looking hard enough!

Widgets

 

Designed to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and control to a section in your WordPress theme like a sidebar or a footer. Some plugins you download will provide a widget with options to display certain functionality in a different or quicker way. A very useful widget is the built-in HTML widget, which you can put any type of code or third party embed code in, besides PHP, but there is a plugin for that.

File Hosting

Though you can store files in WordPress it is not always the right choice, it depends on the size of your website. If you are a newspaper business that produces 4-5 stories a day then a file hosting alternative is necessary. Posting 4-5 stories a day with photos, audio and video, means that in time you’ll have a lot of megabytes in your hosting storage and this will slow down your site. So you can either delete stories that are 3 months or older or give them a longer shelf life and use an alternative file hosting such as Amazon S3 or SoundCloud.
These storage services provide a fully redundant data storage infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere. They are not free, but might save you from having WordPress posting issues because of time outs or slower load times on your site.

WordPress Options

Every WordPress install comes with a variety of useful options.

1. Comments – with a click of a mouse you can allow commenting on your posts that includes a log in infrastructure. Simply moderate comments by having WordPress hold comments based off the words you choose, or commenters you’ve approved before.
2. Drop Down Navigation – they make it easy to drag and drop a link into your navigation menu.
3. Editor – use the built in file editor to change code on your website files for small, quick edits.
4. Post via E-Mail – post to WordPress by e-mail. You must set up a secret e-mail account with POP3 access. Any mail received at this address will be posted.
5. Front Page Display – turn your homepage into a splash, static, or under construction page within seconds.
6. Site Visibility – block search engines from seeing your site.

 

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Tips and Plugins to Make a Multi-Author Blog More Manageable

Running a multi-author blog is no mean feat. Managing content, ensuring timely publishing, maintaining schedules, ensuring proper communication with your authors, ensuring that the posts stick to some predefined guidelines and tracking changes to a post are just some of the tasks that you have to take care of while running a blog. In this post I will share some tips and useful plugins that you can use to make your job a tad bit easier.

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Managing Communication

In a multi-author blog setup, proper and timely communication is very important. Lack of proper communication can result in delayed posts, below quality content and frustration. You may choose any platform like email, IRC, Twitter, Facebook Groups, Google Groups or even a private blog.

 
 Tip: Choose one platform which suits everyone and stick to it. Using multiple channels at once will only cause confusion.

If you want to go via the blog route, you should check out the P2 Theme. It can be easily used as a private blog where discussions on any topic can be done on the same page and it provides a good visual platform for discussion. Many of WP’s core developer blogs are hosted using this setup. You can install plugins like Private Messages for WordPress and P2 Check In and you can have your own private social network hosted from your site. Whichever platform you choose, stick to it and be available for your authors at all times so that they feel that someone is there to address their issues and concerns.

Managing Posts

If not done in an organised manner, managing posts can become a big nightmare. A post goes through many processes from the time of submission to its final publishing that if you loose track of things midway it can impact its final output. Depending on your workflow, you need to decide how a post will move from the author to the frontpage. WordPress offers several plugins you can use to ease your job.
The best plugin for doing such a job has to be Edit Flow. This plugin alone handles lots of things which you would need several plugins for.

• It displays all posts in a drag / drop type calendar format so that you can schedule your posts just by dragging and dropping and can ensure your blog never runs dry.
• You can set custom statuses for your posts apart from ‘Pending Review’ and ‘Draft’ so that you and your authors can track which stage a post is at.
• Authors can get automatic notifications if the status of their post changes.
• Authors can leave notes on the post edit page so that they can discuss about the post with each other. Email notifications are available for the same.
• You can also set custom metadata for each post which your authors can fill out 

You may need to combine the Edit Flow plugin with something that will help you manage post assignments i.e. which posts will be taken up by whom. Unfortunately the plugins that used to offer such functionality are either broken or left abandoned by their developers. So the only choice here is to use a non-WordPress solution like Basecamp which can be of big help in managing post assignments.
Managing posts is not only about their workflow but how they are structured as well. A post should satisfy some basic requirements which you might have in mind. Make sure these are well communicated to your authors. For example their formatting, how to style them and ensuring correct spelling and grammar are just some of the basic requirements that every post should fulfill. You can use the Metadata feature of the Edit Flow Plugin so that an author fills in the details on how they have fulfilled all the requirements of the post.

Managing Authors

To begin with your blog must have a section dedicated to those who want to join your blog as an author. This page should highlight all the things you are looking for, the kind of content you want for your blog and all the terms and conditions which you want the authors to fulfill. You may also want your authors to sign an agreement in writing over terms and coniditons under which they will write/work for your blog. For smaller blogs this may sound like an overkill but in the long run such things can be helpful.
There are people who are not vell versed with WordPress but can write well. You can either help them in using WordPress or just take their posts via mail and publish them yourself under their name. Sometimes you can go that extra mile and create a self help tutorial for those who are not vell versed with WordPress and the publishing aspect. Normally WordPress offers enough help via its help menus. But if you want to add something extra for your authors you can use the WP Help plugin to add your own help sections for your authors.

WordPress by default provides some default usergroups (Roles) like ‘Editors’ and ‘Contributors’. But you may want to edit those groups or add your own to obtain finer control over what your authors see and what they do not. You can use the User Role Editor or Members plugins to achieve the same result. The Members plugin will help you do more than just role editing. It can help you in setting up a private blog accessible just to some people. You can use it in conjunction with the P2 Theme to setup a private blog just for your authors as I suggested before.
Not only can you limit access to various sections of the Dashboard, but with plugins like Adminimize or Advanced Access Manager you can trim down the menu items or meta boxes on various pages you think your authors won’t need. This can be really beneficial if most of your authors are not comfortable with WordPress. They will see only those things which are required for posting.

Promoting Your Authors

There is no bigger reward for your authors than getting due credit and exposure for their work. Giving them exposure can eventually motivate them to write better and more often. To start with, choose a theme which lists authors’ names under every post heading and on the single post pages. If your theme is missing these tags, you can add them by using the get_the_author() tag.
If your posts are written by more than one author then you must check out Co-Authors Plus. It allows you to add more than one author to a post and list them accordingly using proper template tags.
Also you should make sure your theme has an author box beneath each post which lists the author’s name, their bio, link to their recent posts and also link to their website. For this, ensure that all authors have filled the complete profile and have set a gravatar for themselves. Most themes now come with their own author box but if your theme doesn’t have one you can use the Author Box After Posts plugin. Check our author box by hovering your mouse over my name beneath this post. You should also make use of the Author Template feature of WordPress which allows each author to have their own dedicated page with all their posts on it. You can follow our tutorial on Author Templates to create your own if your theme doesn’t come with one.
You can also help get your authors featured in Google Search Results as well. If you are using the WordPress SEO Plugin, just ask your users to fill their Google+ field in the Profile menu. Then the following tag will appear in the head section of the single post page.

<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/105601606991796913303"/>

Google will then pull their name, photo and link to their Google+ profile page whenever a post appears in it. It’s a nice way to give your authors extra exposure. If you are not using WordPress SEO then you can add this functionality by using the following code snippet as a plugin. Save the following code into a file called googleplusheader.php and put it in your wp-content/plugins directory and activate it. Now all your authors have to do is fill the Google+ Profile field and then this link will be added to their post pages.

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Author Header Tag Plugin

Description: This plugin adds a link to your Google+ Profile

Author: Navjot Singh

Version: 1.0

*/

function wptuts_googleplus_contactmethod( $contactmethods ) {

    if ( ! isset( $contactmethods['googleplus'] ) )

        $contactmethods['googleplus'] = 'Google+';

    return $contactmethods;

}

add_filter( 'user_contactmethods', 'wptuts_googleplus_contactmethod' );

add_action( 'wp_head', 'wptuts_googleplus_header' );

function wptuts_googleplus_header() {

    if ( is_singular() ) {

        $gplus_link = get_the_author_meta( 'googleplus', get_current_user_id() );

        if ( $gplus_link )

            echo '<link rel="author" href="' . $gplus_link . '" />';

    }

}

?>

Conclusion

These are just some of the tips that one could use for a multi-author blog. In the end, every blog is different and it’s up to you how you handle things. So, how do you manage your blog? Share with me in the comments.

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Crucial Things You Must Do When Changing Your WordPress Theme

A WordPress theme is a way of ‘skinning’ or creating the outer design of your website. The theme can make a huge difference to the presentation and the overall look of your site.

The theme offers a graphical interface via template files. It modifies the way in which the site is displayed without modifying the basic software itself. The theme directory in WordPress offers several different styles and types of themes.

If you have used WordPress, you may have already switched themes once, twice, or even several times. If this is your first time, you need to take care of certain aspects of your site. It is very easy and simple to change themes in WordPress with just a few clicks, but you need to have a checklist of items to take care of before you change the theme. These steps are critical to ensure that everything works smoothly, or you may end up losing parts of your site that you did not intend to lose.

Before making changes to your WordPress theme, it’s wise to take things step-by-step and do it slowly and carefully.

First, change smaller elements to confirm that they are functioning properly. Once you are satisfied, you can start making the more drastic and dramatic changes.

You also need to familiarize yourself with the structure and semantics of the new WordPress theme before you start changing things, so that you can be aware of what you are doing and tackle problems effectively.

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Note Aspects of Your Current Theme

You might have made some previous changes using solutions and snippets that you found on the web and added them manually to your current theme. This is done in the form of the functions.php file and as you just made the changes once, you may have forgotten about them.
It is important to go through the current theme file and make note of all the additional code that you have added. It is also important to check out the load time of the current theme, to give you a good basis for comparison after installing the new theme.
Test the load time of the various pages, not just the homepage, by means of tools, such as YSlow.

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Backing Up Files

Create a full site backup before you change your WordPress theme – this way, you will never completely lose any file. This is a precautionary measure to be taken for all your theme files, plugins, and any other important database or element.
It is highly unlikely that you would lose them while changing the theme, but you need to be safe.

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Maintenance Mode Template

While you are making changes to your WordPress theme, you don’t want users and other visitors to see the site as you’re making changes. The best alternative would be to switch over to a maintenance mode for about half an hour or so, while you ensure that the new theme is well in place and functioning properly.
Remember to set up the maintenance mode and then start activating the new theme. If your site is not yet launched to the public, there really is no problem. If, however, you have a lot of visitors and high traffic, it’s not advisable to allow users to see a broken version of the site.
WordPress offers plugins for maintenance mode and this helps redirect visitors to a maintenance page for a certain period of time. The page can show visitors the approximate time it will take to come back live or you can just give a short message explaining that you’ll be back.
It is a very popular plug-in and it allows a splash page to be added to the blog. The normal message visitors will see is one of ‘Maintenance Mode – currently undergoing maintenance. Try after so many hours, days, and minutes and so on… Sorry for the Inconvenience.’
When you install the maintenance mode, other administrators who are logged in can still access the blog, but you can limit the user type who can.

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Testing Plugins

After activating the new theme, you will have to make sure that all the plugins are still in working condition.  Look at all the notes you made in the beginning and see whether there is any functionality from the original theme that you would want to bring back to the new theme.
Test all of the features, such as the search, the single post pages, the contact page and others. Check out whether all the widgets are still in working condition. Ensure that the formatting has not changed with respect to the plugins.
When you change the theme, the new plugins usually use the existing style for display, but these may not always look good or match your new theme.

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Check if Your RSS Is Working

FeedBurner is commonly used for WordPress RSS feeds. Default feeds can be connected to FeedBurner and this enables the user to view the analytics on their feed subscribers.
Several themes in WordPress, such as the Standard Theme, the Headway Theme and some others allow the user to integrate FeedBurner while changing the theme. It is important to take care of this aspect and check that the feed is properly directed to the FeedBurner. Failing this, you will not receive any RSS feed for your blog or site.
This might also result in losing track of several current subscribers to your blog or site, as they had subscribed making use of the /feed/ URL. If this is no longer properly pointing to FeedBurner, you will lose them. In fact, they will still be there, but are not visible to you as you cannot see them in the FeedBurner count.

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Updating Ads

You might want to update ads and other third party items on your site. For instance, if you are using Google AdSense, you are allowed to format the ads. The best thing would be to customize them to suit your new theme. You could change the color or the size.
For instance, if the previous theme was blue, or you had blue links in Google AdSense, and your new color is orange it makes sense to make changes to the AdSense links as well.
You can also make changes to other third party items, such as Facebook Like buttons, the Twitter widget, and so on. They can be adjusted with respect to size and color in accordance with your new WordPress theme.

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Compatibility With Multiple Browsers

After making changes to the theme, check out whether the site can be accessed with different browsers. Different browsers render themes differently, so you need to make sure that the new design looks good on all browsers, or at least the major ones.
It has also been noted that some themes break completely in different browsers, even though they work fine on some. If you think several of your visitors or users use Internet Explorer, ensure that they can access it.
Other things you need to take care of are to check the bounce rate. Some themes work better than others while navigating around the site. Some themes result in increasing your bounce rate and you may want to work on tweaking this aspect.

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Conclusion

WordPress has an impressive array of vibrant styles and themes, so there is no excuse for sticking to the default theme just because it does its basic job. Today, it is a lot more than just substance. Presentation and style do count. You need to overcome certain obstacles and maintain a checklist of things that you need to take care of before making the switch.
You need to take a backup of almost everything; database, files, and so on. You can use the Live Preview feature to see the changes before you publish the theme to your site. Also, check out whether the new theme is compatible with all commonly used browsers, such as Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome.
Once you make the switch, it would be a good idea to inform your users. You can just write a quick blog post and let them know, and you could even ask them for bug reports. You can ask the audience through Facebook or Twitter and get feedback on the site and whether it looks good on their browser and so on.
If there are any issues, you can ask them to send a screenshot so you can fix it. It is important to get the opinion of different users, as they will have different screen resolutions and browsers. Check out what your site looks like on mobile devices by manually testing the new theme with iOS and Android.
You can also ask the RSS readers to visit the site and see the changes. Try to prune and get rid of anything that you don’t need. While choosing a WordPress theme, choose wisely. Users usually have a lot of advice and suggestions. Communicate with them and start working on improvements. Have a checklist of your own while making any changes to your WordPress theme.
What other things would you add to this checklist for changing your theme? Let us know in the comments below!
Update: As @humpyD pointed out in the comments below, the “maintenance mode” plugin linked in the article hasn’t been updated in some time. He also recommended the alternative DP Maintenance Mode Lite plugin.

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