The Flexibility of WordPress

WordPress is still regarded by many as just a blogging platform, even though it’s capable of much, much more! The flexibility offered by the WordPress engine is phenomenal – being able to publish anything from a basic blog to a forum, from a web showcase to a corporate CMS site! Here we take a look at some of the great ways WordPress has been used so far.

Content Management System

Using WordPress as a CMS has become pretty common recently since it makes a perfect platform for most small-to-medium corporate websites. It doesn’t quite offer the more advanced details of Joomla, ExpressionEngine or Drupal; but what it lacks in advanced features, it more-than makes up for in the usability arena!

The recently re-designed 10 Downing Street website – home of the British PM – is running WordPress and make a bloody good job of it!

iThemes have an excellent sub-site dedicated to providing tutorials on the best ways to use WordPress as a CMS; check it out!

Magazine

A magazine theme is an excellent way for blogs publishing lots of content daily to present visitors with their most important articles first; their a number of fantastic magazine/news themes avaliable at ThemeForest right now.

Job Listings

One of the most unique ways I’ve seen WordPress used is as a job listings site. In fact, I wouldn’t have even recognised it as WordPress if it weren’t for the tag at the bottom. This is a fantastic theme, complete with forms for visitors to list their own vacancies available at DailyWP for only $59.

Showcase

WordPress has been used numerous times to power a ‘Best of Web’ showcase, and is another excellent example of its flexibility.

Their is also a very popular showcase theme available on ThemeForest for $30!

Portfolio

The use of WordPress to power designer’s portfolios really comes as no surprise. There are hundreds of designers who decided it would be a great platform to show off their work, as well as host their own blog alongside it. “Nuff said.”

Real Estate

Another ‘outside the box’ use of WordPress – using it to power a listing site for an Estate Agent. By making good use of Custom Fields, it really begins to show just how flexible WP truely is! This is another theme where I wouldn’t have thought it were powered by WordPress if it wasn’t written in the header.

This theme is available on ThemeForest for $30.

Game/Film Review

Another great example of pushing WordPress through the use of custom fields. This is a theme by me, designed for a “News & Reviews” website – giving an excellent way to emphasise your featured content and make your reviews stand out. It’s sort of a ‘branch-off’ from the magazine layouts.

This theme is available for $40 on ThemeForest.

A Forum

Wait, what? Yep, a very aspirational user on the FreelanceSwitch Forums has use the WordPress system to develop a forum which doesn’t have the traditional “look and feel of a forum”. Complete with a custom Dashboard to allow all users to make new ‘topics’, this is definitely worth a look and a fantastic job!

Twitter?

By Automattic, the main guys behind WordPress, this is a fantastic idea – allowing members to post an update (or a “tweet”, if you like) directly from the homepage, which will then join the other updates in the feed.

I’m not sure if the theme is still supported, but it’s definitely worth a look!

Now It’s Your Turn

Know of any sites using WordPress in a unique way? Or perhaps your selling something truely special on ThemeForest yourself. Leave a comment below!