Remember the post I wrote about WordPress NOT being the next social network, just because it’s too complicated for the larger public? I still think about it the same way, yet I see more and more initiatives that show that WordPress is becoming an even larger player in the field of web publishing.
The most inspiring post on this subject is written by Raj Dash on the blog Performancing. He describes 48 unique ways to use WordPress:
As someone who has both written small, custom CMSes from scratch as well as evaluated million-dollar professional CMSes for large corporations, WordPress’ robustness never ceases to amaze me.
According to Dash, the key to the many ways WordPress can be used lies in five components: custom theme, custom code tweaks, custom or widely-available plugins, custom fields per post and custom code to use the custom fields. After making this clear he sums up some interesting WordPress-powered sites, like city guides, webcasting stations and web portfolios.
Yet the simplest idea strikes me the most. Developers like Charlene from Essential Keystrokes use WordPress as an easy content management system. Have a look at Furniture Warehouse, this simple website is build with WordPress, not that you can tell though. It’s perfect for small companies that want a good-looking site that is easy to customize. They used to hire a web master or pay a huge license fee for a complicated CMS, now they can just ask an experienced blogger to install WordPress with a good looking theme.
It might not be a bad idea if WordPress would start to exploit this new usage of their publishing platform. With some minor adjustments – like a function that disables the comments functions – WordPress could easily evolve to a popular content management system as well.
Some useful links
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