I have managed to setup a blog on localhost quickly using wordpress. But what is ivolved in setting up a commercial website that is not a blog?
Also, should learning to use wordpress be more diffcult than learning Asp.Net or php? I can use these languages to create a website more quickly than using wordpress it seems. I'm guessing it should be possible to create a basic php website and then somehow hook it up to the admin functionality of wordpress to publish content and update it?
Any comments and suggestions will be appreciated.
Thanks,
A few thoughts on this.
First, Wordpress is based on PHP. So if you know your way around in PHP you are able to change anything within wordpress, you can build customized plugins, templates, etc.
However, using Wordpress has nothing to do with the programming languages you know. The fact that you are struggling with it is probably more because you don't understand yet what the features of Wordpress are or what you can use them for.
You can easily use Wordpress to create a simple non-blog website by setting up pages instead of posts. So you would be using Wordpress not as a blog engine but more as what's usually called a content management system CMS (not that using it as a blog engine wouldn't make Wordpress a CMS, but I'm talking about the general usage of those wordings).
A simple Google search might help you find more information about how to accomplish it in your specific case.
Hope this helps!
You need experience with PHP, HTML and CSS to configure WordPress to run like a non-blog website. Is it easier? Maybe, you get what you want but you won't understand what is going on.
If you are creating a static web page, say like a company's web site with little to none dynamic content, use pages (not posts) and create a static front page.
If you wish to use WordPress like a generic CMS, you can either use the Pods plugin or the newly introduced custom post types and taxonomies (new in Wordpress 3.0). You still need knowledge of PHP/MySQL to configure the Wordpress Loop (which is used to display blog posts and other dynamic content) and Wordpress Theme tags (to display name of the current logged in user).
Some plugins help with customizing the site for a non-blog look. Theme My Login and Theme my Profile blends the log-in page and profile page with your theme. However, if you need to customize the appearance, or add new logic, you pretty much need programming.
In short, you would need knowledge of PHP and MySQL; CSS too, if possible. Get your hand dirty building some sites, then what Wordpress offer and does for you with its API will be more relevant.
Related
I have been asked to add a Wordpress blog to an existing website and wanted to ask the group a few tech questions.
The website is static, does not run with a database in the background, was created with plain html/css and is hosted on a generic server.
If I were to add a blog to this site, would I need to set up a database to hold the content?
If no database is needed, could content be uploaded/removed using ftp software one would normally use to manage a website like this?
Could the original Wordpress navigation and css be replaced with the css and navigation for the website?
Could the blog support widgets like as 'like' or 'add this' without the use of a database?
If anyone has insights they can share I would really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Peter
If you want to install WordPress, you will need a database. Check the codex for the full list of requirements for installing WP.
Other than this, yes, you can mimic the navigation and design of the main website by creating a custom theme.
Sorry for the trouble. I just want to ask is there a way to integrate wordpress subdirectory into joomla website? What i am trying to do is develop a blog site with wordpress subdirectory in joomla's corporate site and everytime that i post an article in wordpress it will display in root joomla website's template. Is there a way to do this?
Simply installing WordPress in a subdirectory of a Joomla site will not automatically display WordPress posts in the Joomla template.
You could develop a WordPress template that matches the Joomla one, or consider a Joomla integrated solution like https://www.corephp.com/joomla-products/wordpress-for-joomla
For what it's worth, it is fairly easy to blog within Joomla. You might consider looking at your specific needs and they to accomplish everything from within Jomla.
In the terms of usability & user friendliness having just one platform is the best solution.
There are plenty of joomla! Blog extensions available in JED directory and, I am sure you will find the most appropriate.
By the way, here is a FREE tool called WordPress to JoomBlog converter, that allows migration, saving all the users, categories and blog comments. Just to let you know
I tried to search everywhere for an answer to my question but I still doesn't understand how Wordpress fully work.
I would like to use Wordpress as my news system CMS only. This means, I do not wish to set up my page layout via the Wordpress theme interface. If you guys know another news CMS called CuteNews, I want my Wordpress to operate pretty much like CuteNews.
How can I put Wordpress post entries into my website that uses my own layout (and not using the theme interface in Wordpress).
Thanks!
For people looking at this from google. Check out this blog post
http://sidigital.co/blog/disconnect-your-frontend-from-wordpress
I have used this as a starting point for my detached wordpress site and it's working perfect.
You can actually! Without converting it to a theme. It works for me as I don't do wordpress themes but I use WP to power the back-end of my websites. I utilize WP's CMS feature.
here's a checklist of what you can possibly do to your website.
Your website design (html/css)
Install Wordpress on your server, or locally.
Download Blank WP Template, set this as your default template for your wordpress site.
Edit the Theme's CSS/Header/Footer according to your website design while keeping essential WP codes provided in the template.
Set your News Page as the Blog Entry in WP Dashboard.
If you want some news preview, such as titles to appear somewhere on your site like homepage, you can either call it thru PHP code available on the net or install a plugin in WP.
Items listed above maybe broad, but that's a starting point, as you can research on the net for detailed information on how to go about your website with wordpress CMS.
Best of Luck!
I have my own custom gallery CMS which is built using php & mysql. Now I want to make this as a wordpress plugin for my client, meaning my custom gallery admin panel will be shown in wordpress as a single plugin.
How can convert my script to be a wordpress plugin? I am new to wordpress so I really have no idea about making plugins, so I'm wondering if I can just add a few lines of code and just by making a few changes to my script I can make it all work as a plugin?
Before you go any further, you should really question integrating your own CMS into WordPress. I've done this before, and it ended up having a lot of disadvantages in the long-term, like not benefiting from functionality and security updates from the WordPress team. The newer versions of Wordpress provide a lot of useful functions to generate your own custom admin functionality within WordPress, including Custom Post Types, Custom Taxonomies, Custom Meta Boxes, etc.
As an experienced WordPress developer, if I had a client that demanded more than the built-in gallery functionality that WordPress already provides, I would go one of two routes, depending on the requested functionality:
1. Add functionality to the existing WordPress gallery via hooks and filters
This site is an excellent resource to see just how deeply you can modify WordPress with hooks and filters:
http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks
2. Create a custom post type, client uploads images to the post as normal
This method you would just create a new 'gallery' post type, and the client would upload images with all of the built-in WordPress interfaces. You can add any additional functionality you need with functions like 'add_meta_box'... here's all the relevant links, including taxonomies if you need categorization and a good sort-by-taxonomy tutorial:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Types
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_meta_box
http://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies
http://justintadlock.com/archives/2011/06/27/custom-columns-for-custom-post-types
If you're absolutely hellbent on using your existing CMS, you can always load your code into an iframe on a custom WordPress admin page, but I don't recommend it based on experience. Here's a link that will guide you in that direction:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Menus
Just as a post-script, you can do any or all of these things either via a WordPress plugin or a custom WordPress theme. I tend to prefer adding functionality to a theme if I don't plan on sharing it with the world and documenting it, or if the functionality is very client-specific and not reusable.
i have created a website for a non profit organization. People on the site want to post stuff . i want to figure out the best way to allow them to do this.
Can i host a wordpress site and somehow embed it into my website
Do i need to install some whole CMS solution?
Other solutions for supporting user driven posts.
to clarify, the functionality of wordpress is all i need (people posting content and pictures).
It's easy to integrate Wordpress into a static html site.
Integrating WordPress with Your Website « WordPress Codex. (You do need mysql, but almost every hosting company out there offers it.)
If you want to convert an existing html site to Wordpress, look at Theme Development « WordPress Codex. Developing Wordpress themes is no more complex than other CMS's, and here are lots of tutorials out there. You divide up your html into header.php, index.php, page.php, footer.php, etc., and css into style.css. If you do a standard Wordpress theme, then plugins will work fine.
Go ahead and do a full install of Wordpress; there's no option for a minimum install. WP is small, anyway.
If you need a finer degree of working with editors, subscribers and contributors than Wordpress offers out of the box, look at different plugins that offer role managing capability, giving administrators the power to give different levels of permissions to users to write, edit and publish. WordPress › Search for roles « WordPress Plugins
You can pull other content into Wordpress via RSS, too, and either have that content appear as an RSS feed, or have it integrated into published posts. FeedWordPress | simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication for WordPress
You can get a free account at wordpress.com and try out a limited version of Wordpress, limited in that it is hosted by wordpress.com and you have a small number of plugins and css modifications you can make. But once you selfhost Wordpress, then you can do much more with it in terms of plugins and adapting the css to an existing site.
You could use a Wiki.
There are a few popular free Wiki packages out there these days. By far the most popular would be the framework behind Wikipedia - MediaWiki. Wikis' are a proven way to let users create the content, with systems in place to prevent vandalism/spam. MediaWiki also has a whole bunch of great plug-ins for anything you would need.
Another Wiki option is to use the Wordpress-Wiki plug-in for Wordpress. It lets you use Wordpress, but with some features of a Wiki. Not as feature rich as MediaWiki, but a good option if you really like Wordpress.
You do not need to install a whole cms solution, though wordpress can host an entire site, not just blogs.
You could hack it by using a hosted weordpress and displaying it in an iframe (this one might get some flames - but it works and it's easy)
You could also install wordpress on your server. By the sounds of it this is not your expertise, and while setting up wordpress is getting easier every release, for smaller sites I would much rather recommend pivotx
wordpress has a lot of overhead and requires a mysql database. The templated, while there are more available than in pivotx are harder to create. So I'm suggesting the other solution because it does the bulk of what wordpress does, and though it has far far far fewer plugins, it is a lot easier to theme, as it uses smarty.
This problem/scenario is pretty common. And the most common solution is to install a CMS. Our compagny installs Drupal to let end user manage their website easily. They can edit menus, and change content as easily as you write a document in word processor software.
But there is a lot of CMS out there...
Have you tried blogEngine.net?
I have two sites http://www.dotnetscraps.com and http://www.abhyast.com/ that are hosted using blogEngine.net. It is free and has multi user support, and the best part for me is that it supports both XML and SQL hosting. Anything that you post automatically ends up in the App_Data folder which is what you need to backup.
http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/
There are a plenty of themes to choose from, and if you wish you can customize your own theme without much effort.