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As Mark had mentioned in the first post of this series, we’re now using WordPress to power our website.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with WordPress though, this might not mean all that much to you. If you fit into that category, then this post is for you.
WordPress is an example of a “Content Management System” (CMS). So, what exactly is a CMS? A content management system, is essentially a system that allows one to
- have multiple people posting content to it
- control access to the content on it
- simplify the process of pushing and pulling data from it
There can be much more than that to a CMS of course, but those are the fundamentals.
Not only does our new website look better, but since starting to use a CMS, the way we work with our new website has also been improved. Now our process of getting new content onto our site has been streamlined, and the content that does appear on our site will consistently (and easily) keep the look-and-feel that we have defined.
On a traditional website, each page that you view has its own dedicated HTML file which tells your web site browser what to display, and how to display it. Similar principles apply within a CMS as well, however each page that you find on our website does not necessarily have its own (HTML/PHP/…) file. Instead of having its own file, a single file gets reused for what appears as many different web pages. Each time you click on a link on our web site, WordPress is told what you clicked on, determines what kind of information you’re asking for, and depending on what type of information you’re asking for will give you the proper file. That file basically defines how the content is to be displayed, and also requests the proper content from a database behind-the-scenes. What this means, is that the content is actually stored in a database, instead of separate files.
One of the major benefits of a setup like this is the fact that if you need to change the appearance of something on your website, you can do so in one spot, and any time a post of the affected category gets retrieved, it will appear with your modifications. Much simpler to modify! WordPress has a ton of themes available to it too. These themes can drastically change how your website looks (and even works behind-the-scenes too). Chances are, there’s one that might work for you out-of-the-box. With a little bit of PHP know-how, themes can be custom-tailored to your specific needs of course, so we should be able to whip up a website that works for you!
Now, I’ve mentioned that WordPress is a CMS, well, it’s important to note that there are numerous such systems available. We typically turn to WordPress as our CMS of choice mainly because it’s fast, secure, easy to use/customize/update. It’s probably the most popular CMS right now, so there are a ton of developers working on it, making sure that bugs get ironed out quickly, and that security remains tight. There’s a plugin for pretty much everything you could want, and even if you can’t find one, its API is pretty simple to use. We’ve written our own plugins, and created our own custom themes etc.
