Posted on August 28, 2008 - by Impress Lab

11 Ways to Use WordPress

In part due to its simplicity and ease of programming, WordPress has become more and more popular, but not just for running a blog. Since WordPress is open-source, it is easy to adapt to any needs. Furthermore, WordPress has become even more versatile with the most recent 2.x releases.

It is no doubt that the WordPress developers have taken into consideration these alternative uses of WordPress as each release is even easier to adapt to unique needs. Here are some unique uses of WordPress, many of which may be practical for you or at least help you admire the power of WordPress.

Blogging

Of course, WordPress was originally designed for as a blogging platform. No more needs to be said.

Tumblelog

While Chryp and Tumblr are the original and leading tumblelogs, WordPress can also be used to express your ideas, status, and share information informally thanks in part to several themes and plugins like Radical Behavior’s QuickPost. QuickPost allows you to bookmark your WordPress and rapidly at new posts.

Twitter Site

You can also use WordPress in place of Twitter, with less limitations and ultimate customization. The Prologue theme adapts WordPress to a Twitter-like site.

Content Management System

WordPress is becoming more and more common as a Content Management System (CMS). With its built in features of static pages, plus many CMS-type plugins and features like ecommerce and calendars make WordPress a simple CMS. While it is perhaps not the best option for more complex sites, WordPress works in most cases. Nevertheless, virtually any custom feature can be created to work within WordPress as it is open-source and well documented.

Photoblog

WordPress as a photoblog makes sense since it is essentially the same ideas as a regular blog platform. A photoblog is where the photos, not text, take the main attention. Photoblogs are useful for hobbyists and photographers.

By using custom fields and WordPress’s built in upload feature, you can easily setup a photoblog. To get started, there are many photoblog themes available including Monotone and Nishita. For more on photoblogs, visit WordPress Photoblog, an entire site dedicated to photoblogs.

Ecommerce

WordPress as an ecommerce solution is more limited, but nevertheless important. Though limited, WordPress as an ecommerce is much less bloated than other solutions. The best resource to setting up WordPress as an ecommerce gateway is Instinct’s free WordPress ecommerce plugin. This plugin adds all the necessary parts of an ecommerce site including images, shopping carts, and payment gateways.

However, it will still be some time before WordPress overtakes the leaders in ecommerce such as osCommerce.

News/Magazine

Probably one of our most favorite uses of WordPress is as a news or magazine site with hundreds or thousands of articles and images. All the content must be displayed cleverly. Fortunately, several free and premium themes are available, including Darren Hoyt’s Mimbo, Brian Gardner’s Revolution, or our very own, soon-to-be-released NewsPress theme.

Contacts Manager

Another creative way of using WordPress is to manage your contacts. The best option as a contact manager is Design Intelliction’s WP-Contact Manager, which makes use of custom fields and password protects the entire blog so only registered users can view the contacts.

But consider that by using some password protection and custom fields, Design Intelliction was able to create a contacts manager. Using similar thinking, WordPress could also be used to manage inventory or basically anything else that needs managing.

Job Board

Though not free, you can tailor WordPress to suit as a job board via the JobPress template. JobPress makes use of the fact that by default WordPress displays the most recent posts, or in this case jobs. But JobPress also allows regular users to post a job after paying via PayPal, just like a real job board. However, you can also use JobberBase, a completely different open-source solution that is just as user friendly.

Classifieds

From the JobPress team, you can also use WordPress as a classifieds site with ClassiPress, another premium theme. Again, this theme makes use of WordPress’s most basic functions with some added twists.

Review Site

Finally, WordPress can even be used as a review site, with product/service descriptions and subsequent user comments and rankings. The WP Review Site theme and plugin set customizes WordPress to serve as a powerful review site.

The possibilities with WordPress are endless. We expect to highlight even more uses of WordPress as  creative developers continue to tweak the basic codes for their needs.