CHAPTER 9 • Using WordPress As a CMS 231
And don’t get me started on the front page! Because you can set WordPress to display a static
Page as a front page (under Settings in admin) and pick any other Page (keep it empty, mind
you) for your post listings should you need that, you can really do anything. You can even put
in one of those nasty Flash preloader thingies with autoplaying sound (but you really
shouldn’t). The point is that a Page template, along with the front page setting, is just as much
a clean slate as a blank PHP or HTML file would be outside WordPress, but with all the
benefits of the system!On the other side of things, you’ve got traditional blog posts. These need to belong to a
category, and each of them will be more or less the same, visually. Sure, if you want to,
you can play around a lot with these too, but on a semistatic site, Pages are a much
better idea.Naturally, it is a whole different ball game if you’re going to handle tons of content,
but that’s not really what you’re going for here.Pages for static content, posts for newsy stuff. This is a great model for most corporate
websites using WordPress as a CMS, with Pages for all those product descriptions, and posts
for news, announcements, and press clippings. If you’ve already worked out the design, here is
the process you should follow:- Decide what will be a Page and what will not. Usually, everything except news and
announcements are Pages. Create these Pages and make sure that they get the right slug.
This includes making sure that the basic permalink structure is there, which means
checking that the post and category URLs look good. Chances are that you’ll use a plugin
to further control this, but it all depends on the needs of the site. - Start creating the Page templates. The company profile Page will probably have other
design needs than the product Pages, so you’ll want to put emphasis on different things
and construct any possible submenus and information boxes in ways that fit the style. - Create the categories needed, one for each newsy section. This is usually just one cat-
egory, called News or Announcements, but sometimes you’ll need both, or even more. In
some cases, you may really want just one category — Announcements, for example — so
opt for sorting within it using tags, one for News, one for Press Releases, one for Prod-
ucts, one for Announcements, and so on. Naturally, you need to make sure that the
category listings as well as the single post view look good. - Tie it all together by creating a menu (using the menu feature for flexibility for the client,
but go ahead and populate it yourself to get him or her started) that links to both the
various Pages and the categories involved.
That’s it — the elements of a simple static website using WordPress as a CMS. You can take
this concept as far as you like really because it is WordPress, and you can build on it as much
as you like.