[CMS] How to Turn WordPress into a CMS in 4 Easy Steps

We already know that WordPress is a great blogging tool, but did you know that it’s also very easy to turn WordPress into a CMS (Content Management Tool)? In fact, a lot of websites are built on WordPress, because it’s so easy to use. In this post I’ll explain how you can turn your own WordPress blog into a CMS.

I assume you already installed WordPress. 

Till now, we have a perfectly running WordPress blog. One of the great advantages of WordPress is that you can turn this blog into a great CMS driven website in just a few steps:

1. Change the discussion settings
2. Create a new page and select this page as the homepage
3. Configure the permalinks (= page urls)
4. Installation and configuration of “White Label CMS” (optional)

1. Change the discussion settings

Because we are building a website, not every page will need the possibility to let our visitors leave comments. That’s why I advise to disable the discussion settings of the whole website. Afterwards, you can always enable comments for a particular page or post.

How to do his?

• Go to “Settings” > “Discussion”.
• Deselect “Allow people to post comments on new articles”??.
  
• Click the “Save changes” button on the bottom of this page.

If you want to change the discussion settings for each page or post, follow these steps:

• Click on “Posts” or “Pages” in the left menu. Now you’ll see the posts or pages overview
• Place your cursor on the title of the post or page, and under that title a couple of options will appear
• Click on “Quick edit”
• Select or deselect the option “Allow comments” and click the “Update”-button

2. Create a new page and select this page as the homepage

Let’s first create a new page:

• Click on “Pages” > “Add new” in the left menu:
• Enter the title of the page and write a little bit of content:
  
• Click the “Publish”-button on the right.

Next, we will configure our new created page as a home page:

• In the left menu, choose “Settings” > “Reading”.
• In the “Reading settings” screen, select “A static page” at “Front page displays” and select your newly created page as a “Front page”:
  
• Click the “Save Changes” button.

Visit your homepage to see the result!

3. Configure your permalinks (page urls)

Configuring your permalinks is a very important step. This option changes your unreadable page url in a readable page url:

• Before configuration of page url’s: www.myhomepage.com/?p=1
• After configuration of page url’s: www.myhomepage.com/home/

This is both very important for your visitors and for search engines.

How to do this?

• Go to “Settings” > “Permalinks”
• Under “Common settings”, you can choose how that your url should look like. Choose an option and click the “Save changes button”.

At the “Common settings” options, I prefer the “Month and name” option. For pages, only the name will be shown in the url. But for posts (news, blog), also year and month will be shown. In my opinion, this is important, so your visitors can see if your post is recent or not.

4. Installation and configuration of “White Label CMS”.

Actually, this step is an optional step because it doesn’t affect what your visitors will see. But it makes your back-end much more user friendly. I only install this plugin when I build websites for my clients.

Install and Activate “White Label CMS”

First of all, search for the “White Label CMS“. Once you found this plugin, install and activate it. If you don’t know how to do this, take a look at my post “How To Install a WordPress Plugin“.

White Label CMS Settings

After you installed and activated “White Label CMS”, there is an extra item under “Settings” in the left menu: “White Label CMS”. Click on this item to enter the White Label CMS Settings screen:

Here you can change some options, these are divided in 4 categories: Branding, Dashboard Panels, Admin settings and Modify Menus. Click on the blue “+”-symbol to see the options for a category.

In the Branding category, you can upload your own logos to brand WordPress (for example, to put your logo on the login-screen). When you do this, WordPress will look more professional (especially if you build websites for clients).

In the Dashboard Panels category you can choose which panels will be shown in the dashboard of WordPress. If you create websites for clients, it’s a good idea to remove as much panels as possible (to much panels make the dashboard to messy). An option I like is that you can add your own welcome panel. This will make WordPress much more user-friendly.

In the Admin Settings category you have the choice to show / hide certain parts of WordPress.

In the Modify Menus category you can select which parts of the menus will be visible to your users.

Conclusion

WordPress is a very powerful content delivery platform and it’s no problem to use it as a website in stead of a blog. As you can see, it takes only some little tweaks to turn WordPress into a CMS!