Building A Static Site Using WordPress
Sarah is a Web Developer specialising in PHP coding and WordPress. She runs several blogs all accumulated at Blogging by Sarah.
I often have the same conversation with people when they find out that I make my additional income from websites. It usually starts with them saying that they have a great idea but wouldn’t know where to start, how to set up the site and so on. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who surf the web, maybe looked at a bit of HTML and gave up dreaming of getting their idea online.
Forget all of that as it is possible with the right tool, and that’s WordPress. At this point I’ll also point out that WordPress isn’t just a blogging platform. Yes, it’s one of the most powerful blogging platforms out there, but get the idea of blogging out of your mind for a second and replace it with Content Management System (CMS). This is all you need to power your new site. WordPress is so simple to use, once you’ve got it up and running, and it allows you to concentrate on getting the content and information into the site and not having to worry about the foundations of the site.
Since WordPress version 2.1, you can easily change what the front page of your site is. This usually displays X posts - blogging style, however you can also create a static page and select this as the front page instead. By doing this you’ve turned your blog into a more standard website with a potential news section, powered by the blogging part of WordPress.
Why WordPress?
- It’s free
- Easy to use
- There are plenty of free templates out there for you to choose from
- It’s constantly kept up-to-date (don’t take this to mean they’re always fixing security exploits, improvements on the code to improve the efficiency and speed are done too!)
- There’s a large user base so if you need a question answering then someone will usually know the answer
- Plenty of plugins to extend and improve WordPress further
- It is lightweight and can work as a CMS
There are plenty of other CMSs out there such as Joomla, however most are not as tiny as WordPress, and definitely not as easy to install or upgrade. The default WordPress installation takes up just 2.76MB which is nothing really!
With WordPress you get an easy to use admin area, allowing you to create new pages with a WYSIWYG toolbar, similar to that of Microsoft Word. This allows you to easily write and format your page text as you like, without touching any HTML. Adding a page is just like adding a post except a page is not put in a category. Pages can be set up as top level, or as ‘children’ pages of a Top Level or Parent page. You can also control the order in which your pages are output on the front end in the menu simply by setting the ordering when you add the page. However, just because you’ve scrapped the blog posts from the front page doesn’t mean you have to scrap the entire idea of blogging on the site. We all know that search engines like fresh content so once you’ve set your site up you could still have a news section, powered by the blog, which would allow you to perhaps update the site once a week, create that little fresh content to keep both the search engines and maybe your repeat visitors interested.
When you’re ready to take things further then a few WordPress plugins can easily help to allow you to create paid for content that’s only shown to logged in users and not random visitors. A great way to sell subscriptions to people.
My business maintains 10+ WordPress powered websites for clients. Some had WordPress so that they could make use of the blogging feature for their news or events section, others just wanted a budget site and considering the time and ease for installing it, WordPress was the suitable choice. All the sites are maintained easily, some by the clients and some by my business. It makes it so easy to keep the site updated, regardless of where you are and which computer you’re using.
In my next post I’ll explain how to configure your WordPress installation to run as a static site along with additional plugins to enhance and improve the site. If you’ve never used it before and would like to have a preview then get yourself a free account at WordPress.com. It’s a little limited compared to the standalone version but it will give you an idea of the main core of WordPress.
Great start Sarah. I’ve been tinkering with using Wordpress as a CMS (static page) with a new site at http://www.theglutenfreelife.com and find that with some tweaks here and there, it can really be quite good. I look forward to the rest of this series so I can see how a pro does it.
This couldn’t have come at a better time! I just got off the phone with a web development company who was going to charge me almost $1000 to do little more than a WP static site could accomplish.
I’ve just formed a Manufacturer’s Rep Agency with my father, Vision Market Development. This is a great money-saver!
Thanks Ed, your new site looks interesting, may link to it from my foodie site
Graham, I’m glad to have saved you a stack of money! The next post tomorrow will give you a run through on configuring it for a static site, along with a few handy plugins to improve it. So hopefully that should give you everything you need
Great post Sarah. I’ve used WP as a static CMS before, and I can’t wait to see your approach of doing it!
“There are plenty of other CMSs out there such as Joomla, however none are as tiny as WordPress, and definitely not as easy to install or upgrade.”
I disagree with this statement, Sarah. While Wordpress is a fine CMS, there is one that I know of that is tinier and much easier to customize. Give it a look, it’s called sNews. http://www.snewscms.com
Great post, Sarah. The problem with the continual debate of “it’s a website”,no “it’s a blog” is that for some things, “it” is both. Some of us are arguing over semantics while other people make money.
Graham posted a perfect example use. Something along the lines of a “website” for each manufacturer represented and a “blog” entry announcing new products, sale events, etc.
The advantage, for those who haven’t seen it, is that it’s perfectly possible to post a blog entry and have it show up in Google in 15 minutes’ time … try getting Google to index a static page of product listings in 15 _days_ even.
Hurry up with the next post *smile*
Nice post Sarah. Wordpress is a great blogging utility and maintaining static posts couldn’t be easier.
I’m glad to see you informing others of this feature.
Out of curiosity, I must ask how well do your static websites do in terms of traffic, SEO ranking, and of course revenue?
Thanks, thats a really good post. Wordpress is definitely a good blog solution to use, with the abundant amount of free plugins and themes that are available and compatible with it.
Thanks for the comments guys.
Michael, of course I hope that if there’s anything extra you do you’ll share it with us
Dave, I totally agree. About 50% of the static WP sites I maintain use the blogging system for their news section. One has a news category and a racing category (motorbike site). It’s a great all-rounder, and your comment on blog posts in Google, I use those in my sales patter all the time! However to be fair, once your site is established in Google, a new page can be indexed from an hour up, depending on whether you catch it in time (see Matt Cutt’s blog for a recent post on this).
Matt, in March/April we overhauled 5 sites at a place I contract for, and used WordPress for the new sites so that staff there (in theory) could maintain their own department sites, plus we already used WP for the news section. Since then the visitors have increased, which, over the summer, is a good achievement! Visits from Google and rankings have improved too. Before the overhaul, most of these sites weren’t showing in Google, now they’re in the top 100 and some are on the front page for certain phrases.
@Entrepreneur Web Design - Sorry had to pull your comment out the mod queue.
I’ll admit, the sNews CMS is smaller, I’ve edited the post to say most are not as small, not all
However, my post is targetted at those who use WP and don’t know about static pages and/or those who are new to development completely. I just took a quick glance at sNews and whilst it’s small, it looks like all of the settings you have to change in the snews.php file. For a non-developer that can be a scary task, being faced with PHP. Especially if one of their settings contains a single quote and then the errors start. No non-PHP developer will escape the quote. Why would they?
I agree it’s small (less than 200kb as default), but having to go into phpMyAdmin and set up your own tables (which really isn’t hard to put into an install file), and having to edit a long php file for your settings doesn’t make it easier to customise.
Making a package exceptionally small often loses the ease of use. Afterall, you could lose any ability to add pages via a webpage and just use phpMyAdmin, but I wouldn’t let a client lose in there!
Oh, and yes, with WP you’re meant to edit the wp-config file. But that’s 4 changes which are highly unlikely to create errors such as unescaped quotes, and I believe you can actually get away with not creating your wp-config file and on installing it, it will do it for you. But I’ve never tried that so don’t take my word for it.
Sarah, thanks again for jumping in the information queue … I’ve learned a lot today.
@Entrepreneur Web Design, thanks for the pointer to sNews. I took a look and it is indeed light. It also has about 0.001% of the themes and plugins available as does WP.
In the issue of simplicity, though, WP is very hard to beat. There are who knows how many thousands of CMS’s out there,
visit
http://www.opensourcecms.com/
(and be prepared to spend hours)
some very feature rich, some “me too” dumb. Some even install in one click with garden variety cPanel/Fantastico … a widely available LCD for beginner software.
However nothing else installs and works “out of the box” for Joe the Plumber setting up a site after work, or Sally the estate agent updating her blog in between house showings.
As a “sort of” programmer and a guy who bought millions of dollars of software, boxed and custom in my former life I can see a number of features of WP that might be better implemented … but it holds the prominence that it does because there are few, if any, equivalents that put up a blog with less computer/server/php knowledge. It’s the Chevrolet that people who want a Ferrari can actually drive.
Hey Dave, no worries. Hope you like the next post on the subject too.
just the article i’ve been looking for!
i’ve just added you to my technorati faves and am now heading off to read static wordpress site: part 2…..
good work!
–steve
Steve, glad to hear it
Hope you enjoy part 2 just as much (even better I hope as that has the juicy bits in 
)
It’s definitely take more effort to customize wordpress to make it a CMS. I don’t really recommend using wordpress if you are looking for CMS solution, there are better and advance solution out there.
But if you coming from blogger background, and need a quick and simple way to do a website, then wordpress is your number one choice.
Anyway, I’m use wordpress for CMS in my hoobin.com and we have solve couple of challenge along the way for really pushing the limit. I think it can more easily solve in other CMS and combine with wordpress for blog. That’s just my 2 cents.
Whilst there may be more advanced CMSs out there, for a beginner WordPress is ideal. It’s not confusing, overwhelming or contains too much that wouldn’t be needed. Plus it really doesn’t take much effort to make WP a CMS! All you literally have to do is go to Options -> Reading and select a page as the front page. That is the bare basics of turning it from a blog to a static site. How is that more effort?!
On my second post I explained that along with plenty of handy hints, but none are truely necessary for a bare bones CMS. Just change the front page and that’s it. I’m not sure how you customise WP to run as a CMS…
Sarah, good works for a very well written, clear and informative piece of article. Good job and keep it up.
Thanks, glad you liked it
Nice article, Sarah.
You mention Joomla as a blog platform. I have created a few Joomla sites in the past but not for the purpose of blogging. I am creating a non profit CMS site at the moment where the blog is important. I would like to integrate Wordpress into it but that is not possible at present. I wondered if you had any knowledge of the effectiveness of CMS blogs - Joomla Drupal etc.
Hi Sue, I’ve used Joomla for a client site before and honestly hated it simply due to how heavyweight it is (it once took me all afternoon just to get all the files uploaded!).
I’ve not looked at Drupal before but I’d personally steer clear of Joomla. The URLs if nothing else says it all and for any site that wants to do well in the search engines then they need easy to read urls. Why is it not possible to integrate WP into it? You could just set WP up as the blog part and use another CMS to power the rest.
Sue,
It is possible to integrate WP into Joomla. There is a module/plugin created for just such a use.
http://www.alledia.com/blog/joomla-blogs/-joomla-blogging-options-part-3-%11–openwp/
I can’t say as I would suggest Joomla either as it is very heavy, but it also comes as a complete CMS system as opposed to having to tweak WP around a little.
I still prefer WP though. I find it easier to add the functionality that I want rather than having to cut the tons of excess that I don’t.
Thanks thatedeguy. Unfortunately that plugin has not yet been updated for the latest version of Joomla and I have not been able to find others that work with it either.
Joomla is heavyweight, and it takes a while to learn the admin interface, but it has been ideal for some of the CMS sites I have created but blogs have not been the focus of the site. They have been membership sites and Joomla has allowed me to incorporate forums and chat, different admin permission levels etc as well as a site viewable by the public.
Shows how long it’s been since I installed Joomla I guess.
Sue, everything you mentioned you used Joomla for you can do with WordPress, with the right plugins
We’ve just set up a site for a client and they wanted to have certain pages only available to signed up / logged in users. This is where I discovered the Page Restriction plugin mentioned on my second post of this subject, that can prevent a page being accessed when not logged in. Forums, permission control are all available.
Of course I realise Joomla comes with most of this as standard, however I’ve not been impressed with forum integration with Joomla. Maybe the newer version works better with it but Joomla board was terrible and the SMF bridge wasn’t too great either!
Still, I wish you luck in sorting your site out.
Thanks for the information Sarah, I appreciate it.
I agree some of the standard Joomla defaults are not the best and you have to look around for the best plugins to compensate.
oh man I need to book mark this
Thanks so much Sarah!! Glad I came across this. I’ve decided to build a website to kind of market myself as a writer. WP was recently suggested to me and I’m going to begin tinkering with it soon.
A most EXCELLENT post Sarah! I’m looking to create a website/blog for a client here in East Africa to showcase her beautiful Afro-Italian beaded jewelry and art decor. What do you suggest (plug-ins?) as a simple way to showcase her goods in a gallery style view on the home page? I also signed up with a popular image hosting site to host the images (statically or in blog posts) just in case I change web hosting providers.
Please let me know how WP fares in this sort of setup. When the user clicks SHOP, I want it to go to the CubeCart install to handle eCommerce. I’m hoping WP will allow this lady to manage her own content without calling me every day to update this or that. We shall see.
BTW, I’m also fascinated with ExpressionEngine (EE-Core is free) due to its close ties with CodeIgniter, which is an amazing free PHP framework. But it’s now time to take the WP plunge.
I guess what has always SCARED me away from WP was the alleged security breaches and spaghetti code base that would turn off a fussy coder like myself. Has this changed at all with the 2.6 release?? I hope so! I’m not type to use any type of software (free or otherwise) just because everyone’s using it.
Again, great stuff, Sarah!! This is what the Internet is all about.
- Max (aka MaxTheITpro)
blogs: http://MaxTheITpro.BlogSpot.com
http://GoAfricaGo.BlogSpot.com
Hi Sarah
Thanks for the great idea. I always thought that Wordpress was just a blog, but this article has inspired me. Thanks.
wordpress stands different then blogger … m a WP user as it provides us with so much.
I agree with you on Wordpress. The interface and setup are so easy. I have just become a Wordpress convert. I love it.
Rick
I would love to use WP to create a website, not just a blog. Do you have any examples of sites that have used this? I would especially like to see a business or corporate site. Keep up the good work!
Great post. I would love to see some examples of well designed static Wordpress sites. I’m trying to sell a client on the idea, but haven’t seen any implementations that look good enough.