20th June 2007

5 Steps to Making WordPress a Content Management System (CMS)

  1. Login to WordPress as Admin
  2. Make a new Page called Home and assign it Page Order 0.
  3. Make another new Page called Blog and assign it Page Order 60. This will be the last Page item in your menu.
  4. Select the Admin section and then the Options, Reading. Select the Home page as Front page and Blog page as posts page.
  5. View the site.

Optional – Menu Themes

If you theme has a menu at the top make sure both of the pages show up. If not check the Header.php file and add wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’) to add a menu.

 

Also, some themes have the “home” page listing hard coded in the Header.php. If you view your site and have two Home listings in the menu, then edit Header.php and delete the default home item.

 

Optional – Searching Pages and Posts

If you want to be able to search your pages and posts then
you should install the Search Pages 2.0 Plugin.
With this plugin installed you will be able to search for information stored in the pages as well as the posts.

 

Trade Secret: I number the pages (Page Order) in increments of 10. That way I can “insert” a new page if I need to between two other pages.

 

Key: The Page Order is key in this setup. This will determine what order the pages are displayed in the menu. You can go into Manage, Pages and change the Page Order at anytime.

 

Here is an example of the basic pages I setup for each site:

 

 

Page Name

Page Order

Menu Order

Home

0

1

Blog

10

2

Products

20

3

Free

30

4

Press Info

40

5

Contact Us

50

6

About

60

7

 

In this example, Home will be the 1st page because
it has the lowest Page Order value of 0 and About will be the last with a Page
Order value of 60.

 

Popularity: 10% [?]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 10:47 pm and is filed under wordpress, Infopreneur Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 5 responses to “5 Steps to Making WordPress a Content Management System (CMS)”

Why not let us know what you think by adding your own comment! Your opinion is as valid as anyone elses, so come on... let us know what you think.

  1. 1 On June 29th, 2007, Milo's SEO Blog said:

    Thanks! This is very helpful.

    I often rely to Wordpress Themes that would help me create a CMS website. I have found one such theme, but there are too many restrictions. You can’t just edit the sidebars and it doesn’t work well with most plugins.

    Thanks again!

  2. 2 On June 29th, 2007, steve said:

    Thanks Milo, I appreciate it. Did you get a chance to setup a CMS system yet?

  3. 3 On July 15th, 2007, Setting Up a WordPress E-commerce Site in 30 Minutes » Chimp-Simple Publishing said:

    […] Try using these plug-ins with our steps for setting up WordPress as a CMS. […]

  4. 4 On January 13th, 2008, My First Encounter with Wordpress… « Weird Knowledge Weblog said:

    […] the likes of community type). chimp-simple have a nice site that uses Wordpress and he also have a step-by-step guide on how he did it. One comment said that yahoo will always treat wordpress posts as blogs unlike […]

  5. 5 On August 27th, 2008, Wordpress Shopping Cart « Beauty of Wrapping said:

    […] How to configure WP as a CMS […]

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