Wordpress as a Content Management System
Sep 4th, 2008 by Karen
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.
Just last year we started using WordPress as a CMS for departments, divisions and niches within our library. We aren’t using it as an OPAC interface like Scriblio, just as a tool to allow librarians to control the content of their site. It has been very successful. Several have reported success in reaching their target audience with never before seen rates of success.
My student developed a way of managing events using an event page template and the custom variables available for each post. Through it, the librarians can set the date of the event and then the events are organized chronologically. Usage can be seen here: http://lib.byu.edu/sites/sc/events-exhibits-news/motion-picture-archives-film-series/current-and-upcoming-films/.
Thanks for the tip about the Widget Logic plugin. That may prove useful in the future.
The new version of Movable Type works well for this, too. I know how you feel…everyone kept looking at me like I was nuts when I said we could run a web site off of a blog platform. (We tried Joomla, and hated it.) But a blog is just a little content managements system, and some of the new features make it even easier to do this.
good information here, thanks. do you know of other libraries using wordpress as a cms that don’t look like blogs? we’re comparing worpress with drupal and other cms, and would like to see as many implementations as we can.
I am really intrigued by your description of using link categories and link blogroll widget to display library databases — is that site live? I’d like to see that, and also the use of templates to develop an array of page types. really good post, thanks again.
Thanks so much for sharing these tips. I’m doing on a class on this next month, the plugins you mentioned sound like they’ll be very helpful.
In Kansas, we have the My Kansas Library on the Web program that helps public libraries build some truly awesome sites using WordPress. To date, we have about 140 libraries signed up. I’ve compiled a list of libraries in the Northeast Kansas Library System (actively) using WordPress to help with upcoming training (keep that in mind when visiting the site).
Wordpress is right up there with Drupal and Joomla as very popular open source content management systems. Wordpress has a very low learning curve which provides significant advantages over the rest of the open source systems.
I have already used wordpress as a CMS and it works great. It’s very useful, light and fast.
Wow! very cool to find other people who are doing the same thing. I’m using Wordpress as CMS for the Troy Public Library Drupal is overkill for most libraries, and Joomla has a high learning curve.
It only takes a short time to convert Wordpress from blog to a CMS style. I believe I have some interest and funding from a major organization to put together tutorial resources for doing this (removing the PHP tags and tweaking the CSS). If anyone is interested, drop me an email.
http://www.lukecharde.com