Wordpress: Upgrading and using it as a CMS
Just a small note to say that I upgraded to 2.1, which is a hellava (crappy, terrible, NO GOOD PUN!) annoying job. Bah! Plugin incompatibility! Bah! Database backups! Uploading and downloading and deleting! Modifying files! Ok, so it’s not actually as bad as I make it out to be. If anything looks a little bit wonky or is not working properly, please tell me so I can kick wordpress around a few times fix it so it’s all nice and pretty again. That being said, I can’t really see anything new in 2.1, but I haven’t exactly looked around all that much. I hear that there’s a “draft” setting for pages though. If so, that would be fantastic, if they don’t show up when you use the wp_list_pages function, I could use use that for my sitemap without worrying about pages under construction.
I’m going back to school pretty soon, and that pretty much signals the end of the line for the following trains of thought: “You don’t have to go anywhere tomorrow, it’s alright to wake up at one in the afternoon!”, “You’re not going anywhere, feel free to stay in your pyjamas all day!”, and “Pfffft, who needs to do music theory? Who needs to do anything at all?!?!” Before I go back though, there are still a lot of things I would like to complete so maybe I should stop blogging and get on with it! But you know, no. I want to keep blogging about something that pisses me off. A rant? Really? Maybe. (No this isn’t about the e-drama going on, I’m not getting into that. Ok, well it tries to reply to some things that people have insinuated.)
Why, oh why on Earth do some people think that you should not use Wordpress as a CMS? And if you do, then obviously none of the mark-up on the site is yours. Obviously you are completely relying on a script to do everything for you. A quote from a review I once recieved:
The website used a script to be displayed. I know that you want a professional site, but do it on your own. These kind of scripts should be left for blogs only. Do not use it for an overall site.
Whyyyyy? Why can’t I use Wordpress? Don’t take all the fuss I kicked up about upgrading earlier seriously. I think that Wordpress is a highly functional, organised blogging platform AND CMS. With the insane amount of features it has, continual development for security (what do you think upgrading is for?), PLUGINS! and is almost completely customisable. With all these features (especially wordpress pages) I thought it it would be natural to use it for all my content, both static and dynamic (blogs).
Another quote from another review:
This seemed very easy to work through and I guess I’m also obligated to give full points since its Wordpress, haha. Very nicely placed together.
Again, people are under the impression that WP marked-up my entire theme and styled my CSS (well not mine as in “I own it”, but mine as in “I wrote it”). This is not true. Of course, the option is there for me to use themes created by other wordpress users but that is not always so. (I don’t have anything against people who do and there’s nothing wrong with it!) Yes, WP has given me an easy to use interface for simple blogging and creation of pages. In a way, it’s like opening up notepad and inserting my text without the need of p tags and PHP includes. I don’t have to worry about file extensions, I don’t have to worry about FTP. Of course I don’t deny that WP created those lovely template tags that output certain information, but I chose where to place it, I chose which tags should wrap what, I chose what classes and ids should be where and styled them accordingly. How much does my site look like the default wordpress theme? And how much does Kat’s, Chans’ or Jennii’s (ETA: Jennii now uses Textpattern for her website) (just to name a few)? Not at all.
Does using WP mean that I am unable to create websites without it? No. I could still maintain my site without Wordpress, though I know it’d probably be a lot harder. People can do it! Once again, just to name a few: Rhiannon, Ruth and Kycoo (ETA: Kycoo now uses Wordpress for her website). Using Wordpress does not impair your ability to create sites in any way.
To sum up, I would just like to quote Nikki from a comment she made:
And I don’t see any reason to sneer at Kat’s choice to use WordPress as a CMS. It takes a lot of effort and planning to customize WP and make it look and work exactly the way you want it. I used to hand-code my site, and it wasn’t anywhere near as functional as KLTW (and it still isn’t even if I’ve switched to WP as well, hehe).
Wordpress is a fantastic choice as a CMS for small sites, as are other scripts like Expression Engine and Textpattern. Remember that using Wordpress at it’s most basic and most intended function (blogging) is easy, creating pages is easy, but customising it? Not so easy. Don’t think that just because we use a script to aid us and make things easier that we aren’t knowledgeable enough in basic markup to customise it, because we are, we can and we already have! Don’t think that these scripts are here to do every little thing for us, especially me. I mean, I’m lazy but I’m not that lazy!
# Kat, 1 year, 9 months ago.
Too right! I hate when people sneer at WP as a CMS, for someone who has a small site it is perfect. And those that emphasize that they only use it for blogging just plain piss me off. They think they’re too good for open source, well developed, well documented scripts. Does everyone who has a site have to be a computer programmer? Have to be fluent in PHP and other languages? Didn’t think so. And using WP doesn’t make us lazy, is creating and customizing a complete theme lazy? Like you said, so we didn’t write the functions. But we chose where to put them, how to display them etc. Mine may not be fantastic but it is exactly how I want it. How many people can say they have their site exactly how they want it? Huh? Huh? Forget them Tracey, your site is fab!
Man I’m in such a “ranty” mood, lol!
Edited at request of commenter (to fix spelling mistakes etc.)
# Josh, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I completely agree with you. When I first started using WP, I thought, “Oh cool, I can use it to make pages to.” And I still think that. You basically said anything I would’ve said. WP does not just magically write your coding. You still have to write up the coding for the theme. And, as a matter of fact, sometimes the automated WP markup can be troublesome.
I’ve been using it to manage my content since I first got into it, and I’ll continue to do so. It makes things easier, but it doesn’t take away the fact that we put time and effort into the coding. People who rag on site-owners that use WP as a CMS really don’t know what they’re talking about.
# Amber, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I know it’s hard customizing it, because I’ve been working on my theme for two months now and it’s nowhere near finished. It would help if I stopped drawing pictures of it and actually did the mark-up, I suppose….
# Becky, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I’ve tried all of those CMS thingamabobs and the only one I’ve ever truly liked was Textpattern. More people should try Textpattern :P
I honestly don’t understand why people seem to believe that by using something like Wordpress or Textpattern you’re taking the whole idea of a website and spitting on it. I spew out validated, hand-coded layouts and yet people still go “neener neener ur uzin a CMS so u must b 2 dumb 2 do stuff fer urself”. Basically, using a CMS is like using a fancy version of PHP includes.
I still like the whole rustic “maintaining a site manually”, I still do it with a site or two that aren’t public public. But for a larger site like my main site I prefer to be able to update any and all information at the snap of a finger. It’s just more fun that way :)
# Chans, 1 year, 9 months ago.
WP is a great CMS, although it’s not as easy to use as most people think it is. Surely once you have installed it and you run a default theme you could stop there, or you could continue to work on it and create your own themes. So I can only agree with you on this post :).
However I do like to add that my site is not only powered by WP, most of it is still hand coded with Notepad ;)
# Corinne, 1 year, 9 months ago.
When I think about the amount of time I’ve taken to customize my site… I have to laugh at that notion.
I hate people who sneer at something like that because it’s so useless.
I still have plenty of hand-coded stuff–about half. And, it was not simple figuring out how to create my own titles for everything and all that, but I did it, and wordpress helped make it less difficult. If I had to do it all by hand, I’d have well over 100 pages of stuff to write out… who wants to do that?
# Corinne, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I forgot to say that your archives page doesn’t work.
# Nikki, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I read that review you quoted, and it literally made me roll my eyes x_x I agree with Josh that “people who rag on site-owners that use WP as a CMS really don’t know what they’re talking about.”
I created my own theme by adapting the same markup and CSS I’ve been using before I switched to WP, so for someone to even imply that WP designed or coded my site for me is irritating.
# Belinda, 1 year, 9 months ago.
Hm, when I updated my Wordpress all I did was overwrite all my files and then reupload my themes. I need to take better care and actually backup stuff next time. XD
I totally agree with you about using Wordpress as a CMS. Wordpress is a lot more powerful and better than anything I could hand-code, it works perfectly and I have no trouble using it….so I don’t understand why people have issues with it, really.
# Tracey, 1 year, 9 months ago.
Corinne - I know! And neither are my smilies, so I’m “e-running” around the site trying to fix them up!
# Melle, 1 year, 9 months ago.
Sometimes, I can’t help but laugh at their ignorance. But I have to remember, I was once like them. XD But even so, I as a TOTAL n00b when I first started out understood that WordPress could be used for anything. That’s just what’s so great about WP isn’t it? It can be used as a blog… a portfolio… a photo blog. Whatever. As Becky says, using a CMS such as WP is a fancier version of PHP includes, which makes our lives soooo much easier. Thank god for WP. People really need to start learning more about WP.
# Rafia, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I just updated to 2.0 a few days ago, I’m not upgrading again for a while. Wordpress moves way too fast for me. But I do agree with everything you said. It took me forever to be able customize wordpress, it was hard work. But after that, using Wordpress has made everything a breeze. I love Wordpress so much :)
# Jordie, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I agree. Wordpress is a handy way of streamlining my site and making it easier to use and customise, especially seeing as I haven’t really bothered to develop my own PHP skills. It just seems like too much trouble seeing as I only indulge in my website as a hobby and have no desire to pursue it in any sort of professional capacity.
# Shari, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I’ve downloaded the RC1 version of WP, so in a way I already knew what to expect. What caught me off-guard was the template tags that are now deprecated. Boo WordPress.
Hey, who needs to go to school anyway?
WordPress is first and foremost a blogging tool, then a content management system (but in whatever order some people want to utilize it). I see no reason why people would think that we should not to use it for what it’s made for.
And wow, coding our websites that are powered by WordPress isn’t an easy job. Coding takes too much of a time, and much details have to be considered. We’re not all some inconsiderate people who says s/he speaks HTML but doesn’t even know how to close her/his open tags.
# Jennii, 1 year, 9 months ago.
Making Wordpress themes is a mission itself, jeez. And yay, I’m linked! But yeah, as I was saying … I think using wordpress/textpattern/etc as a CMS is for those bloggers who just wants to blog and don’t want to worry much about the “technical stuff.”
# Vera, 1 year, 9 months ago.
100% agreed. I use it as a CMS because it’s useful. It’s easy, why would people choose not to? I mean, I can’t think of a reason. Who would want to spend so much time hand-coding anymore? We all have lives… okay, well.. most of us do anyway. Like you said, customizing is 100% your efforts because it’s what YOU want the site to look like, not others. Wordpress all the way~ people should use WP, it makes life easier ;)
# Kat, 1 year, 9 months ago.
Oh and I just want to add, if someone is serious about having a website and insists on hand coding everything even though they know that there is something out there that is free and perfectly suited for their needs, it makes you wonder how serious they really are. They would definitely not be resourceful in any case. Although having said that, my favourite blog ever is completely hand coded and doesn’t have any comment feature. I still love it! ^_^
# Aravis, 1 year, 9 months ago.
“The website used a script to be displayed. I know that you want a professional site, but do it on your own. These kind of scripts should be left for blogs only. Do not use it for an overall site.”
Is s/he impying that professional sites can only be blogs? That’s just silly. Though I’ve never bothered to import my static pages into WP (I don’t trust my servers :P), I know that it definitely makes life easier.
# Ruth, 1 year, 9 months ago.
I’m totally happy with people using WP as a CMS as long as they change the default permalink structure to something to do with the page name/title/content and don’t use the default page_id=1 structure! It drives me bonkers when I hover over a link and see page_id=53 - WTF is that supposed to mean?!
That rant aside, I love WP and I’d highly recommend it. I don’t use it myself because it’s too bulky for my sorry excuse of a website and it’s too hard to customise. I managed to tweak 1.2 ok but ever since 1.5, I’ve found it quite difficult and not worth the effort now that I don’t blog anymore. The benefit of hand coding my site is that I know exactly what’s what.
# Lils, 1 year, 9 months ago.
Well, first of all, thanks for this entry, I really enjoyed reading it.
I’m not sure if my blog qualifies to be called a blog which is run by Wordpress as a CMS, but I agree with the majority of the above who say that just because Wordpress does things for you, doesn’t mean the designers behind the websites are any less talented, it takes a lot of work to code Wordpress themes (well, in my experience, which is why in fact, I stick to free wp themes). I love Wordpress!