Things to Consider When Using WordPress as a CMS

So you’re considering using WordPress as a CMS for a project huh? Great, and probably a good choice too! However, there are several things to consider when planning, designing, and setting up the WordPress install. That’s when this checklist comes in handy. You need to think of these things first to avoid running into unwanted surprises along the way. The first questions:

Do you need a CMS for this project? Sometimes hacking HTML is the way to go, after all.
Is WordPress the correct CMS? It may be great, but sometimes other things would work better.

The WordPress admin interface:

What additional functionality do you need for the admin interface?
Should you use plugins to cut down on functionality? The admin interface can be pretty overwhelming to non-savvy users.
If you’re going to employ user archives, consider what usernames to give everyone involved.
Should the menu(s) be editable from within admin? If yes, how will they be updated?
Does it matter that the admin interface is branded WordPress? If yes, you need to give it some new style, and don’t forget the login form.

Categories and tagging:

What is your strategy with categories and tags?
Which categories should there be, and do you need to do custom category coding and/or templates?
How should tags be used, and how will you educate the users in the praxis you’ve chosen?

Pages and posts:

Do you need custom fields?
Do you need to create Page templates to achieve things on your site? If so, make sure you’ve got those Pages created from the start.
How should Pages relate to each other? What should be a top-level Page, and what should be a sub-Page? Make sure you know the hierarchy, and how you will present the various sections.
How will you present the posts? Do they need any specific treatment to fit in?
What will be on the front page? A static page, latest news updates, or something else?

Other things:

Figure out your permalink structure right away, and stick to it. You may need plugins to tune it the way you want.
Do you need specific shortcode to speed up the publishing and avoid unnecessary HTML code in the posts?
What features does WordPress not cover itself, and what plugins can you use to achieve those features? Also, how likely is it that this will cause you trouble with regard to upgrades in the future?
Is there a good translation available, should you be working for a non-English speaker? There are plenty of language files for WordPress, but what about themes and plugins? Is there additional work there?

Don’t Forget the Manual

To you and me WordPress may seem a breeze to use, and truly it is, today more than ever with WYSIWYG writing and the like. The problem is, not everyone sees it that way. In fact, people not as used to Web-based systems at all may find WordPress daunting, despite being perfectly at home in regular word processors and more or less well-designed software.

While the wordpress.org Web site and the wordpress.tv screencast-fest may be a good tool to point your users to, in the end you’re probably better offcreating a small how-to guide to describe how WordPress works. This is especially important if you’re using WordPress as a CMS for a static Web site, hence not doing any of the blogging stuffreally. If you point your users to the Codex then, they’ll just be confused. Besides, the Codex is great, but it is not the most user-friendly creation online.

If you’re a WordPress developer and/or designer, and you do a lot of WordPress sites, I advise you to put together a starter kit that describes the most common tasks of the day-to-day usage. This kit, which can be anything from a simple document to a printed booklet, should be easily updated as new versions of WordPress come along. It should also be constructed in such a manner that you can add to it whatever custom functionality is used for the client sites. Maybe you have a category for video that acts differently from the other ones, or perhaps there’s the ever-present issue with custom fields and their usability. Add plugin usage, widgets, and possible settings that you’ve devised for your client, and you can save yourself a lot of questions if you deliver a simple getting started manual with your design.

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