It’s Open Source
So in case you don’t know, the phrase "open source" means that the code that runs certain software is made publicly available. With publicly available code, it makes it possible for individual developers to write additional code that can get tacked on to the initial software release in the form of apps, plugins, et cetera. Without open source software, the world would be limited to only what companies manage to come up with and release. But because of the wisdom of the WordPress team, they’ve released their potentially proprietary code to the masses to promote the growth of the software via public participation, and documented all the details in the WordPress codex.

It’s User Friendly
With my background in user research, I like to think that I have a good grasp on user friendly interfaces. I have to say outside of a handful of small issues that I’ve encountered with WordPress, it is really amazingly intuitive. They’ve managed to create an interface that promotes easy usage by developers, designers, and content publishers. Normally this is a very difficult task given that all three of those groups work on such different levels and on different content. From my experience of working on back-end code for WordPress, front-end code for my design theme, and content as a blog author, it is just so easy to use.

It’s Constantly Improving
The team at WordPress manage to release updates on a very regular basis. In addition to that, because of its open source nature, there are new plugins and themes being released for WordPress at an incredibly fast pace. The best part is, if some new technology comes out, you can bet your bottom dollar that within a few weeks at the most there will be a WordPress plugin that incorporates it into the blogging software for public usage!

It’s Incredibly Functional
Going off of my last point, the plugins available for WordPress make it incredibly functional. You can obviously use the software for simple blogging. However, you can also adapt it to maintain your entire website complete with a static homepage that isn’t your blog homepage. Once that’s complete, you can introduce youtube videos, flickr photos, facebook and twitter feeds, contact forms, and pretty much anything else your heart desires. With all of this functionality, there is hardly a reason to ever go build a smaller sized website (<100 pages) without WordPress!

The first step is to understand what WordPress can do. WordPress, which started out as just a blogging software, has expanded to include both posts (on a blog) and pages (like an about us page, or contact us page). In addition to that, WordPress is open source (which means that the code that creates it is public) allowing for people to create additions to it called plugins. These plugins do pretty much everything you can imagine like create a contact form, display google calendar events, create flickr photo arrays, or show youtube videos. With this software, you can make incredibly complex sites, with lots of ease, and simple site management capabilities.

So here are the steps to setting up WordPress as a CMS for a website. First you’ve got to install wordpress in the root directory of your site. If you were using wordpress just for blogging, you might install it inside of a folder called “blog”, but you’ll be using it for everything, including your homepage, so root it is. Second, after your installation is complete including database setup and the like, visit http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/, login using the admin information you setup during installation, and visit the “pages” section on the left navigation. You’ll want to add TWO pages. Call one of them “Home” with a permalink of just your root address, and the other whatever you want (if you are including a blog on this site, then perhaps create that page, if not, just do an about us page or something). Third visit “Settings > Reading” on the left navigation. With two pages already created, you’ll be able to set the front page as “Home”, and if you are including a blog, that page as your posts page.

That was the initial and easy walkthrough. With those three steps, you’ve already successfully setup your site to have pages, with a homepage, and a blog as a subsection of your site. Outside of obviously editing your theme to work with your design, you may also want to install some plugins to make managing the site more convenient for non-tech people. There are prebuilt plugins for youtube, flickr, google maps, google calendar, facebook, twitter, and most other platforms that you or your client may already be using.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. The link in the beginning of this article discusses a lot of good plugins that you might find helpful, though the article is a little outdated and may be lacking on newer plugins. For example sites that use wordpress as a CMS and blog, check out this site or one of my clients. Good luck!

Okay, first a definition. Simply put, Search Engine Optimization is an attempt to get your website higher up on search results run by Google, Yahoo, et cetera. Why is this important? Don’t you want visitors!?! Search engines are the best marketing tool out there. You’ll never come close to getting more direct or referral traffic than search traffic to your website (unless you are as big as say facebook.com for example). Even the biggest of businesses such as Amazon.com still rely very heavily on search traffic. So how can you push yourself higher on those results?

Well, there are countless articles out there trying to tell you how to perform SEO. I’m not saying you should listen to me, in fact, I consider myself a novice when it comes to SEO, but I do have a few easy suggestions that just about anyone can do.

1. Make sure to set up a redirect between the www and non-www version of your website. Search engines see http://www.example.com as a different site than http://example.com. If you set up a permanent redirect, then search engines will bump you up higher, links to your site will be consistent. Here is a great tutorial on it.

2. Register with sites like dmoz and yahoo and zoominfo. These sites are essentially listings of websites and companies and people. Being listed on these helps show search engines that your website is essentially more reputable than websites not listed there. Yahoo costs money, but dmoz is free. Hurry up though, it can take months for them to get you on the list!

3. Write a BLOG!!! I know, ironic right? The reason that I started this blog in the first place was to drive more traffic to my site. Sites with blogs have tons more content, and because the content is constantly changing and updating, it is much more likely to pop up in search results. Even more than that, people might start bookmarking your blog posts on sites like del.icio.us and digg.com. Bookmarks on these sites can drive hundreds of visits in under an hour once they are posted. Also, when there are bookmarks to your site from these websites, search engines use that as another form of validation that your content is useful, just like being listed in those conglomerate sites mentioned above.

4. Get lots and lots of links to your site. The more links that exist on the web to your site, the better. Search engines see those links as even more validation for your content. Try establishing relationships with other businesses you work with on a regular basis and get them to link to your site in return for a link to theirs. Make a facebook page for the website with a link. Anything that will add more links to your site out there in the web is good!

5. Lots of content, that you update, with good header tags. Google is known to use the content of a website to determine what is on it. Go figure right? In the past, all search engines used the Meta Keyword and Description tags, but then people started stuffing their tags with thousands of unrelated words in hopes of landing on tons of search results. As a result Google, and many other search engines have followed suit, do not use them anymore. Stick to under a dozen keywords, and then just pay attention to your content. Having useful header tags (h1, h2, h3, etc), lots of good content, preferably that you update, and purposeful images will do wonders.

I’m going to use this blog as a way to help drive traffic to my online portfolio. Also, working as a full-time web designer, I’ve discovered that whenever I can’t figure something out, I google it. More often than not, I end up on a blog site, reading someone else’s CSS trick that saves my life. Well, by now, I seem to have quite a few tricks up my own sleeve, so why not unite them under one roof?

From recent issues I’ve dealt with, here are a few of my upcoming posts that you can look forward to:

• HTML: Getting Started
• Screen Resolution
• CSS Basics
• Common IE6 Bugs
• Sticky Footers

Other suggestions are always welcome. We’ll see how I do with moderating/reading comments. Please feel free to make requests.