Wordpress as a Content Management System

I’ve been working on putting together information about how to use Wordpress as a content management system. I first got interested in this topic while I was working on the blogging book. Partly because of libraries like Lamson Library at Plymouth State and Cook Memorial Library both who use Scriblio which is based on Wordpress.

Now I’m teaching a workshop on open source content management systems and also writing about them for another book. So I’ve gotten to know Wordpress REALLY, REALLY well.

The truth is that Wordpress with a few plugins and modifications of templates, makes a good CMS on its own. For small public libraries, Wordpress is a good way of managing a library website.

When I tell most people this they look at me like I’ve a little nuts and trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. To prove my point and learn the ins and outs of how to do this, I picked a small public library site and started to migrate their content into Wordpress. While I hit some snags with particular types of content, for the most part I was able to handle the content I wanted in Wordpress.

The key to doing this is using the Template function in Wordpress to give different pages or sets of pages different templates.

If your PHP skills are lacking, there is a set of plugins that can help you accomplish the same kind of thing. One important one is Widget Logic which basically allows you to apply conditional logic to your widgets without having to know PHP or Wordpress functions.

Another trick is to use the Links and Link Categories piece of Wordpress along with the Blogroll Links plugin to organize and display your links. This is how I handled links to library databases and it works surprisingly well.

Another really useful plugin is the OpenBook Book Data plugin. This plugin draws information from the Open Library project (title, author, book cover, etc) and adds it to a blog post. Great if your library creates book review or discussion posts.

Two areas where plugins are lacking or not what I’d like them to be are Events and Contact Information. While there are some event management plugins out there. I haven’t found one that I really like yet. The main problem is with how the plugin choose to display contact list information not how one enters it. If I had more time before my workshop, I could probably rewrite the plugin to do what I wanted. However, i just don’t have that time to commit right now.

Contact information is somewhat similar. The Address Book plugin provides somewhat similar functionality but I need it to have different fields, take parameters so I can only show a particular address or groups of addresses, and be widgetized. Yet again, some coding time could remedy this, but I just don’t have it right now.

Working to use Wordpress as a CMS has taught me so many new things. I’m still working on this project though so I expect to find even more stuff as I pull the reminder of my presentation together.