Is Wordpress Really the "Do Everything" CMS? 4 Ways to Use Wordpress that Isn't Blogging

Every day the functionality and flexibility of Wordpress gets better. Did you know that you can create pretty much any website using Wordpress? Using various themes and plugins, you can customize your website to be and do almost anything you need it to do. I'm going to show you 4 ways to use Wordpress as something other than a blog.

Long gone are the days of using blogs just for blogging. Wordpress is now considered more of a CMS (content management system) than just a blogging platform. Tons of new themes and plugins become available every day to extend the functionality and aesthetics. You really can build almost any site you need, whether it be a personal website, family picture gallery, marketing site, store, or whatever, just by getting the right theme and the right set of plugins.

One great way to use Wordpress is to use it as an e-commerce site. Yep, you can build that web store now by just installing Wordpress and adding an e-commerce plugin which will make your web store look and function much like the professional stores out there. This can be as easy as just a few clicks of the mouse. You can have your products, or affiliate products up for sale in your store in minutes.

Another cool way to use Wordpress is as a membership site. You can now create that membership site, or members area for your site you have been wanting with only 1 plugin for password protection to make the members area private. This is a great way to put your content online and get paid for it by drip feeding content daily, weekly, or monthly to your paying customers.

Wordpress can also create sales pages. Yep, with the use of certain themes that change the layout of the page as well as give additional functionality to the theme, you can create some of the most professional looking sales pages online. Some of these themes even include a swipe file to make writing sales copy much simpler. The cool thing about making sales pages with Wordpress is that your customers can leave you testimonials by using the commenting system making collecting testimonials for your products almost automatic.

Last but not least, Wordpress can also function as a squeeze page or optin page for your mailing list. Using a squeeze page theme you can quickly and easily create optin pages on the fly with pictures, video, bullet points, and all. You can have your new Wordpress squeeze page up and running in as little as just a few clicks. You don't need to labor over creating squeeze pages or sales pages anymore, Wordpress makes it as easy as it gets.

Creating pages and sites like this is very powerful because the search engines love Wordpress. It is search engine friendly right out of the box because of it's built in search engine pinging function and commenting systems, as well as the site structure it creates. Search engines also go crazy over Wordpress sites because they are dynamic sites, this means that the content is constantly being updated giving them fresh stuff to find all the time. Your visitors love it too because there is always something new for them to check out. So, when you combine that with the ease of use, and flexibility of Wordpress you really can build pretty much any site you need.

If you have any trouble getting it installed, just make sure you have hosting with Cpanel, then login and click on Fantastico. From there just select Wordpress and follow the prompts. Fantastico will install it for you automatically with just a few clicks and your new site will be up and ready for you to add themes, plugins, and content. Adding themes and plugins is as simple as searching for them and clicking install from the add plugin and add theme pages, the content is up to you.

I hope I have given you a few new ideas of how you can use Wordpress to run your business, bring your family closer, get your message out there, and more. Try using it to build your sites and pages from now on and you will enjoy professional looking websites with minimal hassle in getting them setup and running. Once you get used to using Wordpress and see the benefits working for you, you will never go back to static site building again.