Advanced Uses of WordPress

This is the third of WPShout’s themed weeks, this time with the foucs being on advanced uses of WordPress. Whilst WordPress is traditionally a blogging platform, that is certainly not the only use for it. Throughout this week we’re going to be looking at [ad], with the table of contents as follows:

1. Day 1: WordPress as a Tumblelog
2. Day 2: WordPress as a Review Site and Podcasting Site
3. Day 3: WordPress as a Social Network and Twitter clone

(if the links don’t work, that means coming soon!)

The introductory bit

WordPress is a great blogging platform. A simple, easy to use backend and scope for development with plugins and themes. WordPress is also a brilliant CMS. More and more, WordPress is being used for all kinds of different sites; the power of WordPress themes and frameworks, such as Biblioteca, make WordPress a really powerful CMS. You’ve just got the think outside the box. You want to make a site with a large featured post, explaining about a product, with links to buy the product and recent blog posts on the sidebar? Easy. In WordPress you could use widgets, create a category for the featured product and display the post with the info on it. You could use custom fields, harcode it with a custom page template… the options are endless. That’s the point I’m going to attempt to convey this week; you want to do literally anything? WordPress can do it for you.

Advanced Uses of WordPress’ Reading List

There are a couple of posts here on WPShout that you should read before delving into the series to give you a solid understanding of all the jargon I’m using and all the options available to you:

• "A Beginner Guide To WordPress Theme Development"
• 10 Awesome Things to do with WordPress’ Custom Fields
• Creating the perfect widget ready WordPress theme
• WordPress’ Template File Hierarchy Explained

With those posts read and understood, you’ll be in pretty good shape for the rest of the week’s post. Make sure you subscribe by RSS to catch the full week’s postings.

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