A CMS is a Content Management System. It refers to any type of software with which you can manage files and documents, produced and maintained by one or more people. This includes content for the Web. The term is often taken to mean software for managing web site content exclusively.

But Isn’t WordPress a Blogging Platform?

WordPress is labelled as a blogging platform, but technically speaking, it’s capable of managing pretty much any type of web content. While WordPress is not a full-blown CMS out of the box, it has customization features that allow it to be more powerful than just a blog management tool. In particular, WordPress offers at least the following means of getting more out of the platform than just publishing blogs:

1. Custom PHP/ WordPress code. Tweak your code in WP theme template files. This way, you can apply special functionality in certain types of pages and not others.
2. Custom fields. Custom Fields are a very significant part of using WordPress as a CMS. They allow you to record additional information about users, interactions, content and more.
3. Embedded code. Within the body of a WP blog post, you can embed PHP code. If you’ve installed and activated a WP plugin such as Exec-PHP, then that embedded code will be run whenever the post’s web page is viewed.
4. Plug and play code. In addition to custom code, you can integrate WP interaction with other web applications, running outside of WordPress, either on the same web server or elsewhere. For example, you could set up a Yahoo Pipe and manage the resulting item feed from within WordPress, using custom code.
5. Custom plugins. If you produce custom tweaks using any of the above methods, you could encapsulate all the functionality into a WP plugin. That way, it’s relatively easy to port the functionality to other WordPress-driven blogs and sites.

So What Kind of Sites Can WordPress as a CMS Manage?

With a full-blown CMS, you can manage the content for pretty much any type of website. If you apply the above WP customization methods and factor in hardware support tweaks, WordPress can be nearly as powerful as many commercial CMSes that cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. What’s more, Automattic is moving WordPress into the social networking sphere. Now, you can get even more functionality by using WPMU (WordPress Multi-User) and the BuddyPress social network platform. This combo allows you to have a social network that provides blogs for each member.

For some inspiration on some of the ways that you can use WordPress, see Performancing’s 48 Unique Ways to Use WordPress.

1. Don’t use “admin”. Don’t use it as your admin user name. Doing this reduces the amount of effort a hacker has to put in (even if it’s via an automated script) to break into your site.
2. Use strong passwords. Strong passwords do not have your dog’s name or your birthday or your name. Use a mix of upper and lowercase letters, as well as digits. The longer the better, but use at least eight characters altogether.
3. Change passwords. Change your admin and all user passwords regularly. If you have other bloggers on your site, make sure they change passwords too. Most people can’t decide when to do this, so tell them. Ask them to change their password at the beginning of each month – or on the last day. It’s easy to build a habit about this.
4. View your site regularly. This is to ensure that it’s running fine. A friend of mine recently found out the hard way that his hosting company changed the default setting on the web server of one of his sites. So instead of the WordPress index.php being served automatically, the old static home page, index.html, was showing. This cost him a month of advertising revenue from one network, because the network plugin couldn’t update the ads.
• If you have multiple sites, one way to manage them all quickly is to set up a list of their URLs. If the list is clickable, that’s even better. For example, Google Spreadsheet cells are clickable if a cell contains a valid URL.
• Another option is to use mind mapping software. Make each node represent one of your sites, then link each node to the corresponding URL. Go check out FreeMind and XMind, both of which are free, and one of the more powerful paid desktop versions, MindManager, has a 30-day free trial. (XMind also has a paid pro version.) Note that mind mapping is also a great way to brainstorm for writing content, or even just solving problems.
5. Use anti-spam options. Install comment anti-spam software and regularly moderate your comments. A few of the options you have are:
• Manual moderation. You’ll want to do this anyway, though it’s not enough. Get a plugin to help you.
• Automated moderation. For this you’ll need a WordPress plugin. (See section below.)

Some WP Anti-Spam Plugins

Kyle Eslick at WPHacks talks a bit about a few of the anti-spam options you have for a WP blog, including a new one called AntiSpam Bee. As well, here’s our take on your options.

1. Akismet. Akismet, which is one of the more popular anti-spam options in WP, is only free for personal use. According to the site, if you’re making more than $500/month from your blog, you have to pay for a commercial API key. Otherwise, the API key is free.
2. Spam Karma 2. The Spam Karma 2 plugin is free (but not GPLed). However, as of late 2008, it is apparently no longer being supported – at least according to the plugin’s options area in the WordPress admin panel. It still traps spam comments, but if you try to purge them, you might see database errors displayed. It still works, but the messages are annoying.
3. AntiSpam Bee. Apparently AntiSpam Bee replaces your blog posts’ comments field so that the post cannot be auto-spammed.
4. Trollguard. Trollguard claims that their free WP spam filter plugin can be trained by learning from which comments you delete.
5. Bad Behavior. Bad Behavior is a plugin “for blocking link spam and the robots which deliver it.” So you use it conjunction with comment anti-spam plugins.

Make sure that you select a good web host that supports your anti-spam efforts.

Kevin Rose, aka Mr. Digg.com (which has been valued at anywhere between $0 and several hundred milion dollars), offers, in a guest post at TechCrunch, 10 tips for increasing your Twitter followers. Besides the fact that I’ve never seen Rose write a guest post, and that he left off the most important tip: be Kevin Rose, it’s a good read. But since only he can be Kevin Rose, you’ll have to make do with his 10 tips and hope you’ll get even a fraction of his nearly 90K Twitter followers. Oh by the way, he’s apparently an investor in Twitter. Did this happen before or after he sold his Twitter competitor, Pownce, to Six Apart?

If you’re just starting out with Twitter, it’s also worth checking out David Pogue’s article in the NY Times. He makes several interesting observations about the positive and negative behaviors on Twitter. He has also found that when he speaks at tech and edu conferences, he’s finding maybe 1 in 500 people are on Twitter.

It must depend on what circles you run in because, despite David Pogue’s experience, there are certainly enough Twitter users that there are plans for Twestivals (Twitter festivals) to raise money for charity. We’re not talking a few cities, we’re talking Twitter users from over 100 cities participating for 24 hours on Feb 12, 2009 in various fundraising events. If you want to hold an event, visit the Twestival website for details. All funds raised will go to Charity: water projects].

As a web worker, your web browser is one of your most important tools. It’s performance affects your entire day. If you’re using the Firefox browser and it’s acting sluggish, check out these speed-doubling tweaking tips from Boy Genius Report.

Another item in your web worker/ blogmaster toolkit is probably an HTML editor (especially if you’re blogging, too). When you get used to one editor for your blogging, it’s easy to think it’s your only option. Six Revisions lists nine source code/ WYSIWYG editors in their recent list of 30 useful open source apps for web designers. Of course, many of the apps in the list are great for bloggers and blogmasters too.

Not everyone agrees, but some types of websites need to be visually attractive to be impactful (though others get along just fine looking less so). Blog themes might be fine for, well, blogs, but if you have a newsy site with lots of content, you need something different. Everson News [via Blog Perfume] is a free magazine-y WP theme that is well-suited to sites with a high volume of fresh conent. The emphasis is on headlines, but there’s also a feature article image area, a video, and even a prominent banner ad area. It’s easy for readers to see what’s new, without having to scroll or scan through a lot of text to decide.

Whether you’re running a news site or not, if you want to have multiple authors each with their own blog(s) on your site, you need WPMU (WordPress Multi-User). It gives you the publishing framework you need, allowing for multiple blogs per author. Each blog within a single WPMU installation can have its own subdomain. E.g., blog01.mywpmu.com. Note that some web hosts have a restriction on how many subdomains your hosting account allows. Fortunately, subdomains in WPMU can be managed virtually, to circumvent any such restriction.

Now if you’re still in the beginning stages of building your first blog, check out this list of 29 tips, tutorials and resources from Problogger.

If you need a bit of guidance getting started with WordPress, ElitebyDesign has an absolute beginner guide. Then check out the newly-launched WordPress.tv, and Six Revisions list of 30 WordPress video tutorials.

Word is that there’ll be an online WordPress Handbook which will supplement the WordPress Codex and act as a basic guide to using WordPress.

If you’re still undecided about whether to use WP, take note that blog pinging service Royal Pingdom checked the top 100 blogs as listed on Technorati and found that the vast majority of them run on WordPress.

Convinced about using WordPress? If you’re looking for hosting for your WordPress blog (or any website for that matter), watch our hosting reviews section for upcoming reviews.

Looking for WordPress themes? Elite By Design and Six Revisions both have lists (of 10 and 50, respectively) of free WP themes. Or you might find some inspiration from Vandelay Design’s list of 25 outstanding magazine style website designs.

When you do choose your blog’s theme, ask yourself if you intend to post a lot of pictures. They’ll add visual texture to your site, especially if you publish a lot of long articles. Need some inspiration to convince you to consider lots of pics? Have a look at the collections of photos at Digital Photography School and Smashing Magazine.

Once your WP blog is set up, you’ll need protection from comment spam. Trollguard claims that their WP spam plugin actually learns as it goes, based on what you indicate is spam. The general idea is that it’s adaptive, and should reduce your spam-fighting efforts. Haven’t tried it myself but you can download it free for WP 2.7 and higher from Trollguard.

When you’re ready to start customizing your site, check out ProBlogDesign’s 30 best free icon sets for bloggers.

Ready to start writing articles for your blog? FreelanceSwitch gives you 50 ways to find article ideas. Some of them might not apply to the topics in your blog, but you could learn ways to open your mind to ideas.

Of course, you’ll need to have content on your blog if you want it to rank in Google Search. While I’m always wary of sites that tell you how to become number one on Google Search for various keywords, BoagWorld has some suggestions for ranking high.

The steps below are suggestions of what to do from the WP admin panel after you’ve installed WP. The order of steps is approximate.

1. Change admin password. Make it as strong as possible. Use a combination of digits and letters (upper and lowercase). Change the password regularly.
2. Create other author and/or admin accounts. This is an optional step. If you have more than one administrator, give each person their own username set to “admin” status. Make sure that all authors and admins use a strong password – especially admins.
3. Change permalinks configuration. Permalinks are the URLs for each blog post. WordPress gives you a variety of options, but the default (mydomain.com/?p=31) is not very user-friendly. It’s also a missed opportunity for better search engine rankings. Use something like the “/%postname%/” option. It’s easier on the eyes, and if you’re using keywords in your blog post titles, then they’ll show in your URLs – which for some search engines translates into higher potential search rankings and higher potential traffic.
4. Change settings such as time zone, comments enabled or disabled, trackbacks, whether people can subscribe as members, privacy (whether you want to search engines out), etc.Change other settings. For example,
5. Pick a theme. Before you start installing plugins, pick a theme you’ll be happy with for a while. (Some themes are just not compatible with some plugins.) Free WordPress themes are all over the Internet. However, if you extra bells and whistles (optimized, extra features, widget-ready), you might have to spend a little for a premium theme.
6. Install plugins. Which plugins you install depends on what you’ll be doing with your WordPress blog. At the very least, install some sort of comment spam fighter. E.g., Akismet (since Spam Karma is no longer being supported). Also consider installing some SEO plugins to improve your blog traffic and to help visitors find what they want.
7. Customize theme. Now you can start adjusting your theme, replacing banners, adding feed subscription buttons and so on.
8. Add any ad codes. Will you have advertising on your blog? Opinions differ, but displaying ads when you launch is one way to go. It makes customization easier, instead of having to readjust later.
9. Add categories. You don’t necessarily have to add all possible categories for your blog all at once. However, do add a few to start, and add more as necessary. Use mixed-case letters. For example, instead of “search engines” use “Search Engines”.
10. Add some fake content to your blog database to test the theme. It’ll show you if ads are displaying properly, whether your “more” links for posts are working, as well as page navigation, amongst other things. When you’re finished, don’t forget to delete all the fake content. You don’t want this content indexed by search engines, so make sure privacy is on first, then set to public after testing.Import some fake content. Most bloggers don’t bother, but if you have the time and patience, it’s worth
11. Add Google Analytics code. If this is just a hobby blog, you don’t need to bother. If it’s something more serious, you WANT to track your web traffic and the behavior of your visitors. Google Analytics is one of the best web metrics packages available and it’s free.
12. Add widgets. For example, you might want to integrate Twitter with your blog, to display your latest tweets or even tweet from your blog’s sidebar. Or you might simply want to display a calendar.
13. Start posting. Time to start publishing content to your new blog. You can set the frequency, though you might find it easier to start with several small posts or articles per day. Others prefer writing longer posts fewer times per week. Whatever you do, try to be consistent.
14. Monitor your stats. You have web metrics installed, so check your statistics, monitor traffic growth. Where are your visitors coming from? That is, from which websites? Are any of them returning? Are they finding what they want on your blog or are they leaving pretty soon after coming?
15. Start using social media. Try driving traffic with Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. Fact: there are a lot of blogs out there and unless you use multiple methods of building your traffic, it doesn’t matter how good your articles are.

This is not a comprehensive list of steps that follow your installation of WordPress. However, it covers the basics. Firewall blog will go into other steps in more detail. Keep visiting, and don’t forget to subscribe.