A couple years ago I wrote about using WordPress as a CMS, and how, for most small business and non-profit websites it serves as an ideal tool, allowing the site owner to easily update the website without having to call the webgeek. It’s still one of my most visited blogposts.

Truth is that though I do skin a lot of other Content Management Systems and Frameworks, Wordpress is still my first recommendation for most Small Business and Non-Profit websites. Why? It’s very easy for most people to use, even those who are not very computer savvy. And for most websites which are going to be receiving average or less traffic, WordPress will not only do the job, but it will do it in a very Search Engine Friendly way. WordPress, if set up properly, makes link building and site indexing by SE spiders almost effortless.

Compared to most other Content Management applications, what few terms WordPress uses (for instance, WordPress Pages) are pretty easily explained, most of the terminology makes sense out of the box, and the few “new” things to learn (such as pings and trackbacks) can be learned along the way. Most people can create a Page or Post in WordPress in five minutes after being introduced to the admin area.

With custom homepage templating, and the ease with which that’s implemented in the newest WordPress version, there is very little a small business will need in a website that can’t be accomplished with WordPress. I often design the homepage template to include the static “Page” content above, then call a mini-loop into either a lower section in the content column, or a sidebar, to show “Post” content, useful for small businesses or non-profits to use for announcements, events, press clippings and releases, and the like. I used this treatment on the Laura Bowers site.

There are a wealth of plugins to extend WordPress these days, so adding things like podcasting, an events calendar, a photo gallery, a Poll, or a Weatherbox is usually a simple upload, activate, and configure through admin, though occasionally one needs a small template addition for a plugin to work. And setting your site up for serious SEO and business tracking becomes easy with the addition of plugins that add a google sitemap or the necessary javascript to run google analytics. And these plugin links are just the tip of the iceberg.

Do you have a small business website design in mind? Or maybe a non-profit organization’s website that could use an easy care treatment? Talk to me.

Technorati Tags: WordPress as a CMS, Brochure Website Design, Small Business Website Design, Non-Profit website Design, Content Management

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 4th, 2007 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Web Design, WP Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.