WordPress WOW: Eight Top Sites using WordPress as a CMS…
Where’s the Blog? Answer: maybe nowhere on your WordPress website. As a WordPress developer and consultant, it never fails to amaze me how creative and wide ranging the websites developed on the WordPress platform have become. And, how companies are sometimes using it to power their websites without even using the blogging function.
We’re going to look at some companies doing just that, but first what is a “CMS”? Well, it stands for Content Management System, and if you’ve used a shopping cart online where a lot of the pages in the cart are automated, then you’ve seen one at work. The same kind of automated system to build dynamic pages can be set up and built on the WordPress platform. We’ll leave the administration details for another post, but here’s one key concept in using WordPress as a CMS:
Above, using the Settings>Reading (in WordPress 2.5) options to set up a static front page, with another page designated for blog posts is the key to using WordPress as a CMS. We’re take a closer look in future posts — be sure to post any good examples here in the comment section.
Now Let’s take a look at WordPress CMS Website Solutions (click to view example sites larger):
1) Comacho Cigars - WordPress has grown beyond a Blog Baby
Yes… it really is WordPress running the entire site… but where’s the blog?
It’s there (above – click to enlarge), they’ve just chosen to rename it Camacho “Press Room”.
2) Furniture Warehouse - Blog Completely Gone?
Here’s one that works simply, and directly for the Furniture Warehouse to showcase professional photos of their merchandise. There is no blog showing. I like it because it’s straight forward, but I think they are missing the added SEO, social awareness, and customer engagement factors that a blog section (call it “Furniture Talk”) would bring.
3) AstroDaija.com - CMS Website & Blog
An online service professional’s website that functions as a CMS website with a blog section.
4) WordPress Goes Postal – Deliver Magazine
Yep… it’s official, the Post Office digs WordPress, and their site delivers it all up in a very professional magazine style layout. Things are so calm at the Post Office lately.
5) Ford Autoshow Site - Voted “Most Likely To Not Be Recognized as WordPress”
Voted? Yep — by one person… me. This one seems least likely to be recognized by anyone as a WordPress installation, but it is. It’s been totally re-concepted for corporate use, with the blog taken out and replaced by the “Most Recent Topics” section that begins halfway down the front page (below):
6) Tribulant Software - WordPress as an eCommerce Site
Why not use WordPress as the CMS for your web store? Tribulant does, and sells WordPress software, among other things.
7) sfumevlana.org - An online society using WordPress as a bookstore, blog and website
Here’s an example of a combination CMS website with a blog section, and an ecommerce store built with a plugin for WordPress, so it’s all administrated in one convenient location. They’re one of our clients at WebFadds.com.
8) Voted Most Creative – The Fully Featured Web 2.0 Site for Colour Lovers
It’s an application, it’s a laboratory, it’s a social community, it’s a trend setter, it’s WordPress CMS with a blog. That’s right… it’s Colourlovers.com.
There you have it… WordPress is a CMS solution, and a good one at that — there are currently over 1,800 plugins to add functionality to it. Time to convert your old school site into a dynamic CMS website solution on the WordPress platform.
About the Author: Scott Frangos is Managing Editor for WebHelperMagazine, and as Managing Partner for WebFadds.com he installs and develops Blogs and CMS website solutions based on the WordPress platform, for a variety of clients. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, Pepper, and their three dogs: Wisdom, Spirit, and Steggman.
Written by: Scott Frangos
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 8:15 am and is filed under WordPress CMS Help, WordPress CMS Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
[...] Powering Your Web Store With Shopping Cart Software | E-Business | Tanpola Articles Directory Eight Top Sites using WordPress as a CMS Tags small business ecommerce shopping cart making money business ecommerce shopping cart [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 3:55 am
What a great blogg this is. I could not agree more with what I have read here today. I too have made similar experiences to what I learned here and now run a successful online business. But I am forever reading bloggs to learn more about what is “out” there.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Is no surprising why wordpress is used in many sites like those listed here, is not only a very handy CMS but its SEO facilities and super friendly search engine capabilities (even without making a thing, just by default) make it leader in this field.
July 7th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Hi – thanks for the comment… I visited your site and enjoyed your work — strong, attractive graphics. – Scott
July 10th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
[...] User:Matt/WordPress as CMS WebHelperMagazine – WordPress WOW: Eight Top Sites using WordPress as a CMS… Graphic Design Blog – Wordpress as a CMS – Content Management System [...]
July 14th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I also like the Ford Autoshow Site :)
I have looked at all these sites in turn and as i have not been active as such when it comes to wordpress this has started the ball rolling for me the potential is amazing this will certainly keep my idle hands busy.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:53 am
Thanks for sharing.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Yeh, we have build a lot of websites using WordPress, including our own at http://www.velvetbluse.com
One thing that we like about WP is that the backend area is very intuitive and is even easy for the least savvy of internet users.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
I used Akismet and Karma! Like them both! Thanx for the site!, I opted to wait until the full version is ??? http://www.jnhwkj.com/dabiaoji.htm
September 30th, 2008 at 12:56 am
thanks nice post
October 21st, 2008 at 4:27 am
I like the stuff here and good information that you have provided.
I will probably recommend this to my friends and I shall add your reference to my collected works.
November 13th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I really like using wordpress as a CMS on smaller sites. You should check out http://www.aflavor.com this is an ecommerce site built on wordpress and yahoo stores. All the content are posts in wordpress and you would know the site is on WP accept for the rss feed on the home page.
November 20th, 2008 at 5:51 am
Insightful. I like this. Will try to see whether the information provided herein is useful or not by the specific outcome after putting into use in real world practice. Thanks.
December 31st, 2008 at 4:46 am
Hey…
I ran into a post on digitalpoint saying you where looking for examples of sites using wordpress as a cms.
Check out zero mowers and let me know what you think. It’s running wordpress and a bunch of re-coded/hacked/stitched together code, but I think it came out alright. And it almost validates! Strangly, it did validate when it was running on my computer, then I transfer it to my host, and now it won’t validate (go figure).
February 16th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
This is very useful information, so thanks!
I’ll be sure to put a post on my site to give my visitors more ideas for their Wordpress blogs.
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I don’t think wordpress the best CMS because most huge site mostly use Drupal like : NASA, Ubuntu, Yahoo, Nokia, Disney etc, even the Obama administration choose Drupal as their CMS
March 9th, 2009 at 5:38 am
thank you very good
March 18th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Hi Johni – Thanks for your comment. Ford Motors, CNN, New York Times, Comacho Cigars, the US Postal Service, and Moo.com, to name a few are large companies using WordPress as their Content Management Solution. And, way back in 2007, WordPress won “Best Open Source Social Networking CMS” from Packt Publishing.
April 28th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
This post is great. I like it so much.
Thanks for sharing. I will keep folowwing you blog.
May 3rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Great information! Thanks for sharing.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:27 am
This is indeed very interesting.
Ford, CNN NYT.. I actually think it’s pretty cool.
Nice post Scott.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Great Post Thanks.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:01 am
I wanted to build what would be my very first website almost 1 year ago today and I heard that I could use Wordpress to build a website(CMS) even though I wasn’t looking to build a blog. WP together with Thesis, a WP theme, I felt very fortunate to have the best of the best when just starting out. In case you take a peek, don’t laugh, please know that I’m still learning and just recently trying new things with Thesis hooks. Anyway, just wanted to say I Love Wordpress!
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:30 am
This is very nice site you have. I enjoyed browsing through it. Your site has a lot of useful information. thank you for sharing your info.
June 29th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Why wasn’t sites like yahoo blogs, reuters and zdnet mentioned? People are much more likely to recognize yahoo then some cigar website. If your going to discuss the power of wordpress, then lets see some big time examples.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Great article! I am very interested in using WP strictly as a CMS, so this was very relevant for me. Thanks!
July 29th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Wow.. Thanks for the list :)
August 22nd, 2009 at 10:16 am
Our firm recently developed and designed http://www.srsnodgrass.com on WordPress. We developed a custom CMS navigation plugin that extends the wordpress wp_page_menu function to allow for custom styled navigation on any page/section.
We’re very happy with the results from all angles. The site is doing very well with natural search. And the most beneficial part is that the client is updating pages/sections painlessly.
Personally, I think WordPress is potentially one of the most powerful CMS tools on the market (for developers/designers). It needs some code tweaking & plugins to run effectively as a full blown CMS, but the end result (for both developer and client) is really quite impressive.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:16 am
[...] 8 Top SitesUsing Worpdress as a CMS [...]
October 15th, 2009 at 11:28 am
I know a lot of developers who use wordpress as the driving force behind their client websites. It’s a powerful tool which is… FREE! Great stuff.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Wow wordpress looks totally different
December 13th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Hi – thanks for the comments. Hey… by all means please give links to other WordPress sites you like. The point was not to suggest sites that people just "recognize" — but sites that were designed and developed well using WordPress as a CMS.
December 13th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Hi – Took a look at your site at luxurypatioaccents.com — nicely done! Continued success to you, Mirza.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
this just awesome,even i have started using wordpress as CMS in my website and you have gotta give it the credits for all that its offering and its simply the best in what its supposed to do.
December 19th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Hi those sites are an excellent example of how WordPress blogs and gone beyond blogs. We've got a list of sites running WordPress and how popular WordPress is becoming, check it -http://trends.builtwith.com/blog/WordPress
December 19th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Hi Gary — great article on WordPress trends – thanks.
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Thanks for the articel
December 28th, 2009 at 7:11 am
good site sir,, do you agree to exchange link with me?
if you agree,, reply yaa :)
December 29th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Colourlovers.com is awesome…! I loved their layout.!
January 21st, 2010 at 3:35 am
I use WP for my site, blog, and the whole gambit…. the static page option makes it work right… there is a little glitch to get over though if you want the static page to be the home page and do it as it comes natural, you end up with two home tabs up top… the trick is in assigning your desired static page as a child of another parent page , and leaving this child blank for the page name, then setting it as the designated static page, and thus it rolls over to the static as the home page…. pretty weird, but it's the only way to keep the home tab as the static page. ttyl….
January 24th, 2010 at 3:26 am
These are great inspiration for designing my next site.
I'm always amazed by how effectively people use wordpress as a CMS these days.
thank you so much for sharing!
January 24th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Un info pratique qui pourra certainement etre utile, merci.
January 24th, 2010 at 11:41 am
un tres bon article, merci pour cet info .
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Thanks for this good informative article.
February 25th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Hello, this is really great post, I will bookmark this! it will help lots of people. Keep posting!
March 5th, 2010 at 1:52 am
Not only is Word Press a killer CMS, it is amazing for enriching the end user experience by allowing posts to be invisibly tagged relational — eg. in the manner e-commerce sites quietly do the "if you are reading this post or project overview, than you'll like to read this too" in their content feeding. Have a look at this design firm's portfolio and news site: http://www.dmdltd.com — it utilizes the relationships between jobs and other content to fill pages in a very nontraditional manner more akin to non-linear story telling than linear blogging.
March 10th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
I enjoyed reading your interesting yet very informative insights. I am looking forward to reading more of your most recent articles and blogs. :D -10top