At Cube3 we’re starting to use Wordpress more and more as a low cost content management sytem (CMS) for small-to-medium sized sites. Initially my concerns (having last used at Wordpress in the 1.x era) were that Wordpress was too heavily geared towards blogging and not so much towards content management, however after upgrading to 2.5 I have to say that Wordpress is a very viable option one that I would heartily recommend you consider for low-budget, low specification jobs - or jobs where the client won’t really use many of the features found in a high powered CMS.

There are a few things that we’re starting to implement before rolling these sites live and giving access to the client, and most of these revolve around customising the administration area so that it’s not as confusing for non-techy clients.

Here are a few of the plugins we’re using and how they help:

• WPCandy’s Login Logo Plugin
  This helps customise the logo of the login screen so that it can be replaced with your company’s own logo or a logo of the client’s company.
  More information on WPCandy’s Login Logo Plugin.
• Wordpress Custom Admin Branding Plugin
  This is another logo that helps brand up the administration areas of Wordpress. It lets you change the header image, include header and footer images and change the login screen. It’s WP2.5 compatible and is relatively easy to implement.
  More information on the Wordpress Custom Admin Branding plugin.
• Branded Login Screen
  This plugin helps brand the login screen whilst also providing additional functionality such as removing the link back to Wordpress.org.
  More informaiton on the Branded Login Screen plugin.
• Wordpress Dashboard Editor
  This little beauty helps remove the more client unfriendly parts of Wordpress’ dashboard.
  More information on the Wordpress Dashboard Editor Plugin.
• Easy Admin Colour Schemes
  The title says it all, this plugin lets you easily add customised colour schemes to the administration area of Wordpress.
  More information on the Easy Admin Colour Schemes Plugin.

I’ll cover off some other tweaks and plugins that will further enhance Wordpress’ use as a CMS in later posts.

Photo by Nikolay Bachiyski

Tags: Blogging, Wordpress

Posted on July 6th, 2008 at 6:51 am and filed under Blogging.

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