The rise of Wordpress for ‘Non-Blogs’
Posted by Andrew Faulkner on October 31st, 2007.
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And by non-blogs I mean portfolios, magazines, communities - essentially anything that doesn’t tend to come under the banner of a blog. You get the idea. I aim to showcase some of my favourite Wordpress powered sites that don’t follow the traditional layout. And following that, I’ll explore why these sites have deviated from the mean.
Straight to the juice…
I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting for some examples, would I?
Jen Gordon’s portfolio oozes character and flair. Her Wordpress install powers the portfolio, page hierarchy and her blog.
ComplementaryDuo mixes portfolio and blog effortlessly.
Darren Hoyt shows off his brilliant design talent. Definitely not ‘just another Wordpress blog.’
(Possibly NSFW - partial nudity) Who would have guessed this was Wordpress at work? Surely the most non-bloggy WP install yet.
Directory/Downloads with a touch of class.
Why not power an online shop?
So is a Wordpress site just another blog?
A lot of people assume that installing Wordpress on their site will churn out ‘just another blog.’ Even worse, I often hear that ‘all Wordpress blogs look the same’ and ‘I can tell if a blog uses Wordpress.’ Far from it, as shown above. People do have a point, and I guess Wordpress theming is to blame to some extent. But the flip-side of the coin is that Wordpress provides the possibility of simple publishing to the masses. It’s as simple to write to a blog as it is to write a document on your computer. The fact that some themes have become ultra-popular is not the fault of Wordpress, theme authors or bloggers. Anyway, with a lot of sites looking the same, the crème de la crème stand out even more. Wordpress is simply the technology, the front-end is dictated by the designer.
A few words on Wordpress as a CMS (Content Management System)
Before you rant, I’m not touting Wordpress as the best publishing tool - it is simply the one of which I’m most familiar with. The following can most probably be associated with all the popular publishing engines.
Wordpress was launched as a tool for blogging. So why is it now used for so many more applications? I think that the answer may lie in its community and its codex.
The community have themed for several years now alongside creating plugin after plugin. It was inevitable that some features have made advances into the realm of CMS and publishing in general, as opposed to simply blogging. Some features (including using any page for the homepage and hierarchical pages) found their way into the out-of-the-box version and suddenly Wordpress is available to the masses as a basic (but not perfect) CMS.
Secondly, the codex provides a minimal-jargon documentation of the system, with examples on nearly every page. Detailed instructions are given on template tags, with examples for how to use each one. This level of information with regards to theming was bound to give rise to more intricate layouts.
I want!
This wasn’t intended as a tutorial for making a non-bloggy theme. There are plenty of theme’s out there for you to dissect, including my recommendations:
- The Morning After
- Revolution
- Mimbo (Darren Hoyt, Mimbo’s creator also has a handy walk-through.)
- May I suggest our theme as a halfway house?
On your soapbox. Would you like to comment?
Seen a clever or innovative use of Wordpress? Perhaps you’d like to comment on the sites above? Or chime in on why people choose Wordpress over other tools to publish different types of content? Let me know where your head’s at.
Make A Comment
( 33 so far )
33 Responses to The rise of Wordpress for ‘Non-Blogs’
[…] knows WordPress is great. But it’s not only blogging software, it’s great for non blogs too. This entry was written by ben, posted on at 10:06 pm, filed under uri. Bookmark the permalink. […]
I think wordpress will overpower any other CMS, its just too easy to learn and much harder to become advanced in. But those types of systems usually work best. cough *adobe*thanks, hellyeahdude.com
I’m quite new to wordpress. I’ve tried a thing or two, but still in process of creating my own blog. It will come soon. Are there any special plugins that should be used to help creating a CMS with Wordpress?Thanks ;)
Yep - I think wordpress is a much more solid platform to start buidling CMS systems from than many other open source solutions out there. Had a good look recently but none seemed as simple and as felxible as our old friend WP.
Nice post. Loving the content in here lately…
I tried using Wordpress as a CMS, and it really bogged down when I got over 2,000 pages. Hopefully the new versions will handle a bunch of pages better than version 2.0, when I tried to do that!
Andrew, you’ve created a great resource focused on these magazine style layout. An explanation, examples, and resources for download. I’ll be coming back to this post again and again.
In the book I reviewed for fadtastic, http://fadtastic.net/2007/01/24/wordpress-complete/. There is a whole chapter dedicated to WP as a CMS.I think a CMS as Wordpress has its limitations. It is PHP though other CMs’s build on php can be more fast and reliable, and allow for more customization and so on.
every one of my public sites are powered by wordpress. i love it!
Good post. I love Wordpress, and have used it in many instances other than just a blogging platform. I think it’s great as a light CMS, and you can customize it so much that it’s almost unfair if you only get to use it as a publishing tool.
Wordpress is very useful as a non-blogging tool. The range of plugins and themes makes it easy to setup and extend. I developed several non-blog sites using Wordpress and created custom plugins to do anything from document management to user registration management. I also created a registration site that allows a user to set a number limit for an event and view who is registered for what. Wordpress is a good tool for web development overall.
You might consider the second version of NYer too as a non_bloggy WordPress site.
Another great Fadtastic article on something near and dear to my heart — the bastardization of Wordpress. Thanks for the mention, guys ;)
Good points and even better examples.I also have used WP for non-blog websites and I am very happy with it. One area I would like more felxability in is the admin section, so then we can stylise the whole area for the clients, so they can just deal with what they need. Ie: not worry about posts and just pages and the other bloggy stuff… I will write/ rant a post about it :D
[…] Also thanks to various blogs who’ve featured Mimbo: Weblog Tools Collection, Theme Playground, CSS Juice, Clazh, WP Theme Gallery and Fadtastic. […]
[…] knows WordPress is great. But it’s not only blogging software, it’s great for non blogs too. For my portfolio i used WordPress to, and it kicks ass. me love´s you […]
Check it out this magazine. Pure WordPress.
[…] your still a septic about a WordPress website always being blogy read this article on rise of WordPress for non-blogs and look at the book WordPress Complete as […]
I’ve made my dual-blog in Wordpress, but it is not just two-bloggers blog. I have a few pages about myself on my side of a page (using Wordpress Pages), the second author has the same. We both publish articles, but his articles appear on the left (inner) column, my articles appear on the right (inner) article. When you are on a single-article page, the header shown corresponds with the author of the article.All made with only few adjustments, and - as you pointed out - with great help of WP codex. (Unfortunately, everything on the site is in my native language - Czech)
[…] Fadtastic hace una recopilación de varios sitios que estan potenciados por Wordpress pero que no son blogs. […]
I just love wordpress! I’m even using it as a cms for a community (see website, still under construction). I’m more then a designer then a tech, but I can almost handle it to scramble the code around a bit to get something I like. I’m thinking to use it more often now for paying clients. Love it, Love it, Love it!
Some good examples. We just worked with some people on a holiday and hotel review website. The site runs fine on Wordpress: http://www.holidaygem.com Take a peek!
Some good examples. We just worked with some people on a holiday and hotel review website. The site runs fine on Wordpress: http://www.holidaygem.com
This WP comment form is a bit messed up :S Some good examples. We just worked with some people on a holiday and hotel review website. The site runs fine on Wordpress: http://www.holidaygem.com
I am using "The Morning After" on my site and am hoping that it doesnt reflect as a blog but rather more as a cms for a magazine style site.www.utahluxury.com Go to the site and tell me what you think.
Valid observations - Wordpress has grown beyond its intended use. Luckily, it works quite well as a straightforward CMS for both beginners and seasoned web pros. I’ve used WP for a few sites - including my own www.flowerofcables.com. If you don’t need a CMS that can handle serious amounts of traffic or provides unlimited expandability, and you’re willing to do some experimentation on your own, then WP is a good choice.Peace / P.
Wordpress is indeed an excellent, easy to customize and very flexible platform for many websites. As others have echoed in the comments already, though, I don’t think Wordpress is quite ready for primetime in regards to anything more than basic CMS functions. This site is my first professional Wordpress CMS site, and it is indeed hard to tell that the whole thing runs on WP (well, except for the blog, maybe). But we came upon a few problems that during implementation that required a lot of work-arounds, and even one or two serious bugs that haven’t really been adressed yet. Anyone thinking of putting together a bigger site should look into Drupal and other open source CMS systems as well.
I recently complied a list of plugins and techniques that allow you to really use Wordpress as a CMS.Read the article here:<a href="http://www.joshbyers.com/completing-the-cms-with-wordpress">Completing the CMS with Wordpress</a>
Some great stuff here, definitely inspiration for my search engine site.
hi.Great article.I also use wordpress for a non-blog sites for myself and for my clients.It’s so convenient to design, maintain and exapnd it’s functionality.http://www.orizens.com
Great info, thanks. Can anyone give me some samples of sites that will show me how WP might be used as a site for my university’s department (foreign languages)? Nothing fancy. Would appreciate any help. Thanks. Jeff
Wordpress does really rock. I’ve used it for professional projects that require special functions, and it all comes down to how well you can use Wordpress’ already in-built functions and plugins. In my newest portfolio (www.piraja.no) I’ve used Wordpress in a new way, with mootools for navigation.
Yep - I think wordpress is a much :D
Hi everyoneI spent ages building my website www.nzwinelinks.co.nz - writing everypage in an HTML editor, trying to get all the internal links right and sending by FTP up to the server etc…. BUT once I discovered Wordpress found that it’s a hell of a lot easier to use the Blog platform to host my site - It didn’t take very long to set up and "cut/past/format" the content from one into the other. http://nzwinelinks.wordpress.com I’m now well on the way to having this completed (are they ever completed) and setting up one for our wine tasting group as well.Cheers, JB
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