So, recently I came across some subjects on this topic and it struck a chord. After all, a lot of the time what I want is just to knock up a simple site quickly that doesn’t have too many bells and whistles and only has me editing it.

I’m not going into the basics of what a blog is or my particular preference is Wordpress (OK, it’s because it’s PHP-based and a damned sight easier to implement and tweak than Movable Type), but rather why Wordpress can work well as a CMS.

Why?

• Quick and easy to setup
• Flexible template editor great for creating designs
• There should be more date-based documents on the web! (so you know what information is up to date)
• All content available in RSS format
• The ability to add comments – particularly for articles/FAQ
• No worries about how you implement a blog – it’s already there

Why not?

• No workflow
• No ability for content versioning with multiple authors
• Localization not easy to implement
• (There could be a few more of these but I’d probably need coffee to tease them out)

So if you’re not too precious about the ‘why nots’ then check these out:

PHPit.net

A two-part series that goes into the basics of setting this up. Great thing here is that you can see a living breathing example on the site itself. Also starts with a brief intro into how the Wordpress plugin system works in a slightly more digestable format than the Wordpress Codex.

Part 1 | Part 2

ONLamp

Nice and straightforward here: just make a few tweaks to the index.php file and create a Wordpress Page that acts as your site homepage.

From weblog to CMS

BloggingPro

Some more of those reasons why, although for me the best thing was the link to BlogHelper

5 reasons to use Wordpress as a CMS

BlogHelper

A full breakdown of all kinds of different sites you can make with Wordpress. I never knew these kind of people existed.

Using Wordpress as a CMS