Found an excellent article on WordPress as a Content Management System- and much of it agrees with what we’ve been preaching and teaching for the last couple of years. It is well worth jumping over and reading the whole thing.

The key for us is how easy it is to use WordPress- as compared to other CMS systems. The author of the following article also said the same thing:

I just know WordPress, and I know it is easy to use (as opposed to, say, Joomla) for not so familiar clients. Add a solid support for “static” content, being the WordPress Pages, and more newsy update flows controlled by the Posts, and you’ve got your needs pretty much covered for most websites online today.

If you can’t use it yourself, and keep your company on the forefront of Industry news and trends, you don’t really have a website. We also see the terrific value WordPress offers as an Search Engine Optimization tool. Use WordPress right- get to the front of Google.
Here is his very helpful checklist:

Checklist for Creating Web Sites with WordPress as the CMS

These are the things I tend to think about before choosing and designing a website where WordPress will be used as the CMS. There’s probably other things as well, things I just haven’t take into account since my clients haven’t had that kind of need yet. Feel free to add yours in the comments, sharing is caring after all.

* Is there even a need for a CMS for the client?

* Is WordPress the correct CMS? Will it fit the needs? Is the translations available for the WordPress backend good enough? How will it be upgraded?

* Will I need to extend WordPress using plugins? Are any hacks to the core necessary, because if they are, how will I make sure that these won’t break when the core is upgraded?

* What types of content will there be, and what should be deemed static (i.e. use Pages), and what is flowing updates (i.e. Posts)? How will I present this, and what is the main type of content?

* How will the permalink structure be? Should it really say “category”, why not “view” or “updates” or something else?

* Will the menu be static (i.e. coded into the theme) or controlled by WordPress (i.e. listing using WordPress tags for Pages and categories)? How could this go wrong in the future?

* What hierarchy will the Pages have? This is important for the URL, since it should be coherent with the menu hierarchy after all.

* How will I present sub-pages (i.e. Pages having a mother Page)? Should there be any at all?

* Do I need Page templates for various sections? How will these work with sub-pages?

* What categories will I use? Should the client be allowed to create new categories?

* How will I present Posts content?

* Do I need category templates for the various categories?

Things To Consider When Using WordPress as a CMS | Devlounge

Although he asks for comments on this post- they don’t seem to have them- but I would add that the issue of using Categories and Tags are still a little fuzzy for most people.

Think of Categories as the table of contents of a book and tags as the index- and you are track to better understanding how they should work. All of his points really don’t apply to people using off the shelf themes- which are the jack of all trades solutions for the most part. To really optimize WordPress as a Content Management System, you are really talking about custom theme development.

We’ve just completed an implementation of WordPress as a CMS on www.girlfriendology.com, head over and take a look.

People often ask- how big a site can I do with WordPress?

CNN big enough for you?

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time – Blogs from CNN.com

Flash designers all over are jumping for joy, thinking they’ll no longer have to build dual sites so that their clients don’t get ignored by Google, with this announcement from Adobe. But, read my comments after the blockquote to fully understand what this means for your business:

Adobe Advances Rich Media Search on the Web
“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”

Google has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine. With Adobe’s help, Google can now better read the content on sites that use Adobe Flash technology, helping users find more relevant information when conducting searches. As a result, millions of pre-existing RIAs and dynamic Web experiences that utilize Adobe Flash technology, including content that loads at runtime, are immediately searchable without the need for companies and developers to alter them.

“Google has been working hard to improve how we can read and discover SWF files,” said Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google. “Through our recent collaboration with Adobe, we now help Web site owners that choose to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing this content better. Improving how we crawl dynamic content will ultimately enhance the search experience for our users.”…

“Designers and Web developers have long been frustrated that search engines couldn’t better access the information within their content created with Flash technology. It’s great to see Adobe and the search engines working directly together to improve the situation,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief, SearchEngineLand.com. “The changes should help unlock information that’s previously been ‘invisible’ and will likely result in a better experience for searchers.”

But there are many reasons not to get that excited, especially for small businesses, and here is why:

Flash is generally dependent on screen size- ie- it’s built to run on a standard computer screen- of a certain size. If you want it to work on a cell phone (and right now- it still doesn’t work on the iPhone) you have to build your files for each screen size.

Updating and creating content in Flash requires the Flash software- and the smarts to use it. Unless your Flash designer builds a database driven site- with a browser access portal, you are going to continue to pay out the yang to update and change your site. I don’t know what the percentage is of DB driven flash sites, but from my travels on the web- it’s pretty small.

Even if the site is built using a database, and works on all screens, and manages to meet all ADA and W3C standards for accessibility, it’s ability to interact with Google and play with other sites through social tools is nascent. It’s like getting on the web 2.0 bandwagon 4 years too late.

If you have a huge budget for a website and you like to keep your web monkeys in bananas, Flash may be the tool for you in about a year or two. However if you want the fastest, easiest, most compliant solution that puts your company in charge of your website without a web monkey, look to the many Open Source Content Managers that can have you up and running and indexed by Google today.