Ok, so in addition to the Moosecamp session “Wordpress Anonymous” on Friday (depending on interest) and the “Don’t Call it a Blog, call it an Educational Publishing Platform” on Saturday, Lloyd Budd recently facebooked me asking if I would “lead” a small group for issues and questions about using WordPress as a CMS (I’m trying to rope D’Arcy in as well). I’m pretty excited about the opportunity —mainly because it’s what I do anyway. And even though metamedia makes a strong case that WordPress is not yet a CMS, the fact that the WordPress community members keep on pushing the boundaries with various plugins and themes keeps the dream alive and well.
I think the relationship between the core WP application and the user community is often a symbiotic one: the folks at WordPress make a product that is simple, powerful, and eminently hackable, on the other hand the community hacks it, creates plugins, designs themes, and documents their work to death. It becomes quickly apparent that one cannot thrive without the other, and the fact that I’m even thinking about making WordPress do something it “shouldn’t” speaks volumes about the community that pushes the boundaries and the core application developers who keep it relatively spartan to allow for such communal imaginings.
All this to say that I have been on a scavenger hunt to collect all the best plugins and themes for creating a WordPress powered CMS for a while now, and I have the perfect opportunity to start documenting and demonstrating these tools on a blog within my WPMuEd domain shortly.
But until then, below is a list of some of my del.icio.us bookmarks that link to numerous posts and tutorials for using WordPress as a CMS. The del.icio.us tags I am pulling in to compile the list below are the following, in case you are interested: wpcms (general), wpcms_plugins, wpcms_themes.
Also, I would appreciate any and all resources you may collected during your own search as I try and make a somewhat useful resource for folks at NV and beyond.
del.icio.us/jgroom/wpcms
- WordPressing Dissected: NMC Pachyderm Services » CogDogBlog
CogDog gives a play-by=play for how he converted a regular old WP Blog into a dynamic website. Some great stuff here, I particularly like the FAQ-tastic hack - Blogs, Wikis, and New Media
Blogs, Wikis, and New Media An Experiment in Republishing OpenCourseWare by David Wiley - Revive | Extending WordPress Beyond the Blog
The name says it all, how do we think beyond the blog? - Why I Choose WordPress as My CMS « Lorelle on WordPress
Lorelle Von Hossen on why she uses WordPress as a CMS - Bos89.nl » WordPress as CMS in five steps
A WordPress CMS theme. Five easy steps to get up and running with WordPress as a CMS - Creating a student journalism website on a tight budget « Reportr.net
UBC’s journalism school uses WordPress as the core of their multiplatform journalism course. Some good recommendations for approaching this system, with some nice recommendations for plugins. - Graphic Design Blog » WordPress as a CMS – Content Management System
Great post on WordPress as a CMS featuring some excellent example of Gallery sites, e-commerce sites, portfolios, etc. An excellent overview of the possibilities with some excellent recommendations. - ONLamp.com — From Weblog to CMS with WordPress
An overview of why and how to use WordPress as a CMS by John McCreesh. - Turn WordPress Into a CMS – OpenSourceCMS
Tutorial for turning WordPress into a CMS. - Completing the CMS With WordPress : Pressing Pixels | A WordPress Magazine
A magazine powered by WordPress - WP Not a CMS
While metamedia concludes WP is not a fullblown CMS, there are some excellent suggestions for plugins to help it through these dark times. - WordPress Candy – The Best of WordPress » The WordPress Help Sheet
Great helpsheet for WordPress (and a great site more generally). - WordPress ” Support ” College newspaper site powered by WP
Awesome example of a college newspaper site using WP -thanks dsforeman - northernvoice / WordPress: A blog, sure! But what else
Wiki notes for More than a blog session at Northern Voice 2007 - Using WordPress as CMS | blogHelper
Using WordPress as a CMS – some nice tutorials for hacking WodPress to operate like a CMS. I particularly like the how-to posts this article links to for explaining how to use WordPress to create a portfolio. - Feature: 5 Reasons to Use WordPress as CMS by Blogging Pro
5 good reasons why you should use WordPress as a CMS, I agree with them all.
del.icio.us/jgroom/wpcms_plugins
- Blaze New Media » » Five WordPress “CMS Enabling” Plugins
A few key plugins for making your WordPress blog more CMSy. Like Filosofo’s Homepage control, the search everything plugin, and more. - Completing the CMS with WordPress : Josh Byers | My Digital Playground of Fun and Frivolity
This is a list and descriptions of the plugins and techniques I have used to make WordPress a very effective and useful content management system for clients. - In Series WordPress Plugin @ REM State
In Series is a plugin that lets you write series of posts in WordPress, without having to deal with the hassle of manually writing up tables of contents or “next” and “previous” links in each post. It adds a new set of controls to the post editing - Building alexking.org 2.0, part 7: Plugins | alexking.org
AlexKing takes you through the Plugins he is using in his latest iteration of alexking.org
del.icio.us/jgroom/wpcms_themes
- K2 Theme for WordPress
Despite my many flirtations, still my favorite theme to work with as a CMS. It has limitations, but it also has an unbelievable amount of options. - Using WordPress as a CMS | Adsense Ready To Go Sites
A step-by-step approach for creating a simple site using WordPress. Focusing on the theme you use, this article Includes some good hacks for making pages and categories more compliant with CMS standards. - Bos89.nl » WordPress as CMS in five steps
A WordPress CMS theme. Five easy steps to get up and running with WordPress as a CMS - Squible » Squible
This is the home for the Squible WordPress theme. The purpose of theme (besides putting out something that’s different from the herd) is to promote the use of social networking within WordPress. How? By including the tag system I built that sits on top - WordPress Theme Hacks
“In this article, I’m going to share some of my WordPress tricks with you on how to make a better WordPress theme. I’m not a programmer nor developer, so I will focus more on the frontend development.” - Theme Playground | The Best WordPress Magazine Themes Available
Now that blogs are being used by groups of people (be it businesses, organizations, even schools) just as much as they are individuals, WordPress theme designers have felt that need and have created a number of quality magazine–style themes in response. - Kubrick and K2 WordPress Themes: Collection of Theme Tips « Lorelle on WordPress
A wonderul lists of links to guide one through hacking K2. - Semiologic theme for WordPres
Semiologic is a pretty comprehensive CMS theme with many, many options built-in.
Update: Looks like the delicious feeds are breaking for some reason, so until I can figure it out here are the three links to the respective delicious tags:
WordPress CMS-inspired Plugins
WordPress CMS Themes and Theme Hacks
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