Presentation by Thord Daniel Hedengren (http://www.tdh.se), held at the Disruptive Code conference, Stockholm 2010.

1. Taking WordPress Beyond the Blog
Thord Daniel Hedengren
http://tdh.me

2. Hello.
• Author of Smashing WordPress: Beyond the
Blog
• Currently wrapping up the follow-up
Smashing WordPress Themes
• Crazy ringleder for WordCamp
Stockholm
• Catch me at tdh.me or tdh.se
@tdhedengren or @tdh.se

3. WordPress

4. Where did it come from?
• Forked from the b2 blogging system by Matt Mullenweg
• Got decent at version 1.5
• Got good at version 2.0
• Got great at version 3.0

5. WordPress today
Not just blogs anymore - WordPress is a CMS
Powers social networks and membership sites
Used for editorial group planning and management

6. Can WordPress take the heat
of a major website?

7. Yes.

8. Yes.

9. Yes.

10. Yes.

11. WordPress can take it
- if your setup can
• Can your webhost take the heat?
• Is your server powerful enough?
• Are you utilizing caching, and are you using caching plugins?

12. What about security?
• WordPress has a lot of users, that means bugs will be found
- that’s a good thing!
• Security updates are fairly frequent, fixing everything from issues with
the code, to PHP security breaches
• Can you say the same of your closed source CMS?

13. A few words about blogs

14. • Anyone can blog, they are straight forward and easy
• With WordPress, blogging is no harder than writing in a word
processor
• The content flow of blogs have changed how text is treated online
• Anyone can expand their WordPress blog with plugins and themes at
the click of a button

15. Blogs are great
because they are so easy to use

16. Your CMS can be that simple

17. WordPress as a CMS
• Still easy to update and manage
• Still easy to expand feature-wise thanks to plugins
• Widget areas makes most sites a breeze to manage

18. Anyone can blog with WordPress,
so anyone can use it as a CMS

19. The WordPress CMS setup
• Using static Pages for static content (about page, contact us)
• Using categories for often updated sections (news section, blog)
• Using Page Templates to gain more design control when needed

20. CMS with benefits
• WordPress is SEO friendly from the start
• Tagging is hot, and WordPress got it out of the box
• The huge amount of plugins means that someone probably already
solved your problem - no more waiting for deployment of a simple
Tweet button
• Huge choice of developers

21. Version 3.0 cranks it up a notch
• Custom post types: You’re not limited to posts and pages anymore
• Custom taxonomies: Create your own tag or category hierarchies
• More control in themes - still short deploy times

22. Custom post types
Separate content from Customize what fields
the content flow are available per post
type
Make parts of the
website editable through Tailor posts to your
custom posts needs

23. Limitations
• WordPress needs more fine-grained control of what goes where
outside of the widget areas
• Better media management
• Still very template driven

24. Be afraid

25. The CMS focus
• Just another WordPress site
• Development shifting towards CMS
• 3.1 gets internal linking feature despite being clean-up release
• Short development cycles

26. What’s next?
• Social with BuddyPress for Facebook-like functionality
• More social with the bbPress plugin rewrite
• More control with the CMS focus

27. And finally, some free advice

28. Don’t invest in
closed source CMS solutions

29. Thank you.
Thord Daniel Hedengren
You can find me at
tdh.me or tdh.se
@tdhedengren and @tdhse