How to use wordpress to make a commerical/non blog website

Question

Hi,

I have managed to setup a blog on localhost quickly using wordpress. But what is ivolved in setting up a commercial website that is not a blog?

Also, should learning to use wordpress be more diffcult than learning Asp.Net or php? I can use these languages to create a website more quickly than using wordpress it seems. I'm guessing it should be possible to create a basic php website and then somehow hook it up to the admin functionality of wordpress to publish content and update it?

Any comments and suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Answer 1

You need experience with PHP, HTML and CSS to configure WordPress to run like a non-blog website. Is it easier? Maybe, you get what you want but you won't understand what is going on.

If you are creating a static web page, say like a company's web site with little to none dynamic content, use pages (not posts) and create a static front page.

If you wish to use WordPress like a generic CMS, you can either use the Pods plugin or the newly introduced custom post types and taxonomies (new in Wordpress 3.0). You still need knowledge of PHP/MySQL to configure the Wordpress Loop (which is used to display blog posts and other dynamic content) and Wordpress Theme tags (to display name of the current logged in user).

Some plugins help with customizing the site for a non-blog look. Theme My Login and Theme my Profile blends the log-in page and profile page with your theme. However, if you need to customize the appearance, or add new logic, you pretty much need programming.

In short, you would need knowledge of PHP and MySQL; CSS too, if possible. Get your hand dirty building some sites, then what Wordpress offer and does for you with its API will be more relevant.

Answer 2

Hi,

A few thoughts on this.

First, Wordpress is based on PHP. So if you know your way around in PHP you are able to change anything within wordpress, you can build customized plugins, templates, etc.

However, using Wordpress has nothing to do with the programming languages you know. The fact that you are struggling with it is probably more because you don't understand yet what the features of Wordpress are or what you can use them for.

You can easily use Wordpress to create a simple non-blog website by setting up pages instead of posts. So you would be using Wordpress not as a blog engine but more as what's usually called a content management system CMS (not that using it as a blog engine wouldn't make Wordpress a CMS, but I'm talking about the general usage of those wordings).

A simple Google search might help you find more information about how to accomplish it in your specific case.

Hope this helps!