How to Use WordPress To Build Your Websites

Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 6:05 pm

If you follow the TopAffiliateSystems.com’s article - “Website Creation Made Easy With Content Management System” – you will find that WordPress is one of CMS platforms mentioned in that article. The WordPress we will talk more in this article is WordPress.org with your own domain and hosting, not a free WordPress service.

Nowadays, WordPress has become the most popular CMS with millions of users around the globe for the following reasons :

Easy to install
Free or developed as open source
Ability for features enhancements with WordPress plugins
Many themes offered (free or paid) to make your site unique
Updated regularly for better
Easy to use even for a newbie with user-friendly interface in admin area

The function of WordPress has opened up endless possibilities recently, taking it to a new level no longer limited to a blog site. With a huge range of WordPress plugins already available, and many more being added constantly, website owners can put up custom designed pages in a few minutes with a little help.

People start using WordPress beyond the typical blog set-up, into the realms of a full-fledged content management system or CMS. Yet, most people have no idea how this is even possible.

I have to stress that the default WordPress software is intended to be a blogging tool, so if you’re trying to make it work like a different type of content management tool you’ll have to use the correct plugins (enhancements) and have the a clear idea of what you want to achieve.

In this article, we explore some of the ways you can use WordPress as follows.

1) WordPress as An Article Directory

To make WordPress work as an article directory, you’ll need a special plugin, and a source for the articles. Article Directory WordPress Plugin by Dimox is the right tool for creating your own article directory site by WordPress engine. You can download it for free here including the theme at http://articlesss.com/article-directory-wordpress-plugin/

2) WordPress as a Membership Site

You can set-up a free or paid membership site using WordPress. All it takes is a few simple plugins to get the job done. Once you’ve installed the plugins, members will need to login to your site in order to view the content. You can also place a login form in your WordPress theme files to make it easy for users to lo in and out of your membership site. The free plugins for membership site for example : Member Access plugin.

However, the free plugins only create a simple membership system, so if you’re looking to create different membership levels and more advanced features, you’d probably want to sign-up with a professional membership system such as AmemberPro.net, WP-membership.com, WP-member.com, Your Member and use their available plugins to integrate with WordPress.

3) WordPress as a Classified Ads System

WordPress can work like any other classifieds website too. Users can sign-up on your site and place classifieds in the form of new blog posts. They can even set expiry dates for their ads and specify listings or “wanted” ads.

However, you will need to create all the necessary categories and even create a sign-up information page to teach your users how to place ads. The upside of using WordPress as a classifieds site is that you can also use tagging tactics to get traffic from social bookmarking sites.

You can also create a simple free classified site where the advertiser can place ad without registration. The sample of simple classified site using a wordpress blog : http://classified-blog.com

4) WordPress as an Online Store Site

By using the right plugins, you can turn your WordPress site into the online store site or review site with product source from Amazon, eBay, Overstock, Clickbank, CJ or other affiliate programs.

Free plugins to create online store site :

Amazon Reloaded for WordPress plugin
WordPress e-commerce plugin
WP-robot (demo version for Clickbank product only)

You usually need to pay for more advanced plugins for your online store or review site as follows:

ReviewAzon – wp plugin to input Amazon product reviews to your wordpress blog
Phpzon and phpbay – wp plugin to add eBay or Amazon listing
WP-robot for Amazon products
Datafeedr – plugins for creating affiliate store with products from Clickbank, Netshop, ShareAsale, CJ, Linkshare,etc
Datafeed import plugin – using csv data feed

5) WordPress as an Audio / Video Training Site

Using the membership plugins mentioned above, you can create a membership site with WordPress. Then, all you need to do is to add the “Podpress” plugin which takes care of all audio and video elements on your website.

You will be able to display and stream MP3 audio or FLV video using their built-in players. The Podpress plugin is really robust and also allows you to specify setting on iTunes, so you can make this commercially and available to the entire iPod / iTunes community.

As you can see by now, there’s a whole lot of possibilities when it comes to using WordPress to the extreme. Every day brings new possibilities to using WordPress as a complex CMS instead of the modest blogging tool it was designed to be.