Word Press
WordPress is a free, open-source website creation platform. On more technical aspects, WordPress is a content management system (CMS) written in PHP language that uses a MySQL database. WordPress is that the best, simplest, and most powerful blogging, web applications, and website builder in presence nowadays.
WordPress’ Content Management Tools
- I’ll detail the content management side of WordPress below, providing minimal curation tips along the way because advising you on curation would require consultation, since there’s no one correct way.
- The main thing to remember is that clicking the Publish button isn’t just changing words from private to public. It’s also putting it into one or more boxes of organizational structure, whether simple or advanced. Your own creativity and preferences get to determine the best way to organize and present your information.
- Let’s get started… Be thinking about content curation ideas as you read about content management tools.
- A post is a post is a post, right? Not quite. Technically, pretty much everything in the WordPress database is a post. Then posts are categorized as types of posts. For example, a WordPress Page is really a WordPress post assigned the post type of “page”. Additional built-in post types include menus, media attachments, and, yes, posts. So posts assigned the type of post are “blog posts” as we know them.
- Additionally, custom post types (CPTs) can be created. So there’s essentially an unlimited number of types of posts. Sometimes a slider plugin will create its own post type. A directory or classifieds plugin will most likely create its own post type. Some themes include their own custom post types.
- WordPress Pages (posts of the “page” post type) are best for static content, like About Us, Contact, and Pricing pages. “Static” doesn’t mean it can never change. Instead, static content is content that is “less time-dependent than Posts” (per the Codex). Pages are organized in a hierarchical fashion. That is, they can have child pages. Pages can also be used to present a “best of” collection of posts (i.e. blog posts), which go nicely when used with another benefit of Pages over Posts: Page Templates.
- WordPress Posts (posts of the “post” post type) are what WordPress was originally created for — blogging.
- A site’s posts make up its blog. What you’re reading right now is a WordPress post, not a page. It’s written as of the date published and may decrease in value over time, since it’s typically time-dependent. Said better, it’s time-relevant or time-sensitive. For example, WordPress may add an additional default post type a year from now and then this post would be slightly inaccurate/outdated for not mentioning it. Well, since this post is published in early 2013, its content is (supposed to be) understood that it was accurate as of that time period and possibly less accurate as time goes on.
- If you’re like me and wish your content never went out of style and magically stayed updated, you’ll just have to keep wishing. However, maybe if you think of things this way, you won’t feel so bad for posting and not updating:
- Think of posts as newspaper articles. Do you go back in time and think, “Last February’s newspaper doesn’t tell me about this March’s weather forecast. Grrr.” No, because you, the reader, are made aware of the item’s expected usefulness, typically just a single day. Likely, your posts have value lasting more than 24 hours, but time-dependence is one of the reasons I advocate for displaying each post’s date (and sometimes even dates updated) within the theme and/or in the permalink. If I find a post that Google thinks is relevant but it’s dated 2010, it might not be what I’m really looking for.
- Another way to think about posts is as your publicly-accessible journal. Share your thoughts, wishes, activities, and news — yes, for both personal and commercial blogs. Just understand that most of your posts won’t be long-lived. For example, your post about next week’s fundraiser is mostly pointless after the event ends. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have posted the announcement on your blog, and it doesn’t mean you should delete or unpublish it after the event. You can also post photos and accomplishments in a post the week after. And a few months later, your site visitors can see your announcement post, the “day of” post, the summary post (with photos, please), and even a post looking forward to the next fundraising event.
- All in all, posts are typically time-dependent chunks of content that typically relate to other posts (like the 4 possible posts above), which can be categorized and formatted, as we’ll discuss in the Taxonomies section below.
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