Beyond Blogging: WordPress as CMS

By Staff Writer | Published Jan 23, 2007

Recently in WebProNews, Gobala Krishnan explains how Wordpress (an open-source blogging tool) can be expanded to function as a more complete Web or Intranet CMS. It's all a matter of having clear goals and the right plugins, and partnering with the right services, he says.

This might be a viable option for smaller organizations with specific web/intranet content management needs — or an intermediate option for companies already using WordPress on their web sites or intranet, but which are still searching for a broader WCM solution.

One of the most intriguing angles explored is expanding WordPress to serve as a multimedia training site.

First, if you wish to limit the availability of this content to specific users, you must install a WordPress membership management plugin — there are several of these which offer basic free or paid membership management. If you require more sophisticated membership management, AmemberPro.net is a hosted service that offers a WordPress plugin.

Then, install the Podpress plugin, which manages libraries of audio and video elements. According to Krishnan, with Podpress “You will be able to display and stream MP3 audio or FLV video using their built-in players. The Podpress plugin is really robust and also allows you to specify setting on iTunes, so you can make this commercially and available to the entire iPod / iTunes community.”

In April 2006, John McCreesh published a detailed account of how his team used WordPress to replace a more traditional Web CMS (phpWebSite) to run a community site. Although this project was small relative to many corporate projects, the techniques could be applied more broadly.

Similarly, the medical blogger Graham used WordPress to create the Standford University medical school's Community Health Resource Center — a very non-bloggy, information-rich site.

Note that light-weight Web and Intranet publishing is not always a strength of large-scale Content Management solutions. When evaluating Web CMS solutions, ask about plugins or modules for your preferred publishing tools. Ideally, these systems should “play nice” together.