I’ve been finding over time that there are a lot of Content Management Systems out there. Some are quite good, like ModX and Joomla, while others need a doctorate in jargon just to figure out how to edit an article. I’m finding that for smaller business sites the simplest one to use is Wordpress, especially now that themes can be widget enabled. Is it for every site? No, larger sites for larger businesses may need more. But it’s surprising how many sites can be accomodated by Wordpress, and the benefit is that the end user finds WordPress very simple to use.

It’s pretty easy to customize a WordPress Theme to work for a brochure type business website. The use of “Pages” for the more static content that doesn’t change allows for a different, possibly more stripped down template for that part of the site, since each “Page” can use its own template, if you wish. I’ve also used the “Pages” custom templating to include complex forms into business sites, calling the form processor and having the form’s html code in the template and using the admin interface to simply edit the text before or after the form, which allows for form processors that are a bit more secure and more complex than ones available through plugins.

I’ve also used a static and slightly more splashy homepage that calls in elements from WordPress. Using this technique you can call a list of your most recent articles into your static homepage the way I do here on Kickass Web Design, or you can call any other blog element, such as your list of “Pages” or the “Categories”.

With the tools available as plugins it’s easy to build a Business WordPress Website so that it’s full of googly goodness. You can add a Google Sitemap, add update services to the ping list in admin/options/writing, and you can add Technorati Tags to your post. There are also plugins so that visitors can add your articles to the bookmarking and social sites.

If you have a small business, Wordpress can get the word out about it. More and more people are consigning their Yellow Pages to the recycling bin in favor of the web, so if you’re not on it, a Wordpress site might be the way for you to put your business on the Web. Have a question? Ask it here.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress CMS, Small Business WordPress Site, Brochure Site, Google friendly Design

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 6:23 pm and is filed under WP Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.