WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that currently (as at 2023) powers more than 40% of all websites on the internet. While its primary use is for creating and managing websites, WordPress is capable of much more than just content management. In fact, WordPress has become an extremely versatile platform that can be used for a wide range of purposes, from creating online stores and forums to developing mobile apps and managing projects. Many of these uses can be easily added through a range of free and commercial plugins.

So what else can WordPress be used for?

1. E-commerce

With the ever increasing use of online shopping, especially during and since COVID, more and more businesses are turning to e-commerce to sell their products and services. WordPress offers several e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, which is the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress by far. WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic the company behind wordpress.com and the popular JetPack plugin. WooCommerce allows users to create an online store, manage inventory, and process payments, among other features. Other e-commerce plugins for WordPress include Easy Digital Downloads and WP eCommerce.

2. Learning Management Systems (LMS)

WordPress can also be used to create online courses and educational content. This is a great way for anyone to share and potentially monetise experience and knowledge online. Learning management system (LMS) plugins like LearnDash and LifterLMS provide users with the ability to create and sell online courses, track student progress, and issue certificates of completion. With these plugins, users can create their own e-learning platforms, which can be used for corporate training, online education, or any other type of learning experience.

3. Recruitment Sites & Job Boards

Job boards and Recruitment websites are possible with WordPress. The WP Job Manager plugin offers an extensive range of features for creating and managing job listings, including job submission forms, job alerts, and resume management. Other plugins like Simple Job Board and Job Board Manager offer similar features but with different customisation options. Some plugins allow for integration to third party job management systems like JobAdder or Seek which many companies are already using, streamlining the process of publishing job data to their website.

4. Property & Real Estate Websites

WordPress is flexible enough to provide a framework for creating full featured property websites with property listings featuring all of the required information as well as shortlisting and application. Properties can be shown and searched using an interactive map. Easy Property Listings is a well known plugin which is beginner friendly and allows you to easily build a real estate website without writing code or using a specific theme.

5. Project Management System

WordPress can also be used as a project management tool. The WP Project Manager plugin allows users to create and manage projects, assign tasks, set deadlines, and collaborate with team members. Another plugin, WP Project Manager Pro, offers more advanced features, such as Gantt charts, time tracking, and project budgeting. With these tools, users can manage their projects directly from their WordPress dashboard.

6. Social Networking

It is possible to create Social Networking style websites using WordPress. BuddyPress is a popular plugin that adds social networking features to WordPress, such as user profiles, activity streams, and private messaging. Another plugin, PeepSo, offers similar features but with more customization options. By using these plugins, users can create their own social networking sites for specific interest groups or communities.

7. Mobile Apps

Create mobile apps for iOS and Android devices direct from the WordPress! AppPresser is a plugin that allows users to create custom mobile apps using WordPress as the backend. Users can add features like push notifications, geolocation, and social media integration to their apps. By using AppPresser, users can turn their WordPress site into a mobile app without needing to know how to code.

8. Forums

WordPress can also be used to create online forums. bbPress is a plugin that allows users to add forum functionality to their WordPress site. Users can create discussion forums, assign moderators, and manage user accounts. By using bbPress, users can create their own online communities, which can be used for customer support, feedback, or any other type of community engagement.

9. Online Membership Sites

Creating simple or complex membership style sites is easy with WordPress. The Paid Memberships Pro plugin allows users to create subscription-based membership sites, where users pay a fee to access exclusive content or features. With this plugin, users can create different membership levels, set up recurring payments, and offer discounts to members. There are many membership plugins that range from simple content protection via logins to complex structures with content drip feeding, multiple membership levels, upgrading and downgrading and integration to other systems like an LMS to monetise course content.

10. Intranets

While still technically content management WordPress can be used to create fully fledged Intranets which integrates content management with user access control to provide restricted content to different users.

These are just a few examples of the many ways in which WordPress can be used beyond just content management. As a versatile platform, WordPress is ideal for anyone who wants to create a website or online platform, regardless of their level of technical skill.

Here at WordPress Development Sydney we have extensive experience in creating all of these types of systems on the WordPress platform so if you are looking for help, advice or just want to get started let's have a chat.

There is a lot of talk and discussion about "Headless" WordPress at the moment and how it can be a better way to use WordPress, but what actually is it and why might you want to get involved?

WordPress has been traditionally used as a full content management system (CMS) with an integrated frontend and backend, in recent years, the trend has been shifting towards a more flexible, headless approach. This new approach is known as headless WordPress, and in this article, we will explore what it is, how it works, and what the benefits of it are.

Headless WordPress is a decoupled approach to WordPress where the frontend and backend are separated from each other. In a traditional WordPress setup, the frontend and backend are tightly integrated, with the frontend being generated by WordPress itself. In contrast, with headless WordPress, the frontend is completely separate from the backend. Instead of generating the frontend, WordPress acts as a backend-only system, providing a content management interface for the creation and management of content. The frontend is built separately, using whatever technology the developer chooses.

So, how does headless WordPress work?

In a headless setup, the WordPress backend functions as a content repository, and the frontend is built using a separate technology stack. This frontend could be built using any programming language, framework, or CMS. Typically, the frontend will utilise the WordPress API, which exposes all the content in the WordPress backend in a structured way. This API can be accessed using RESTful calls or GraphQL queries, depending on the developer's preference.

What are the benefits of Headless WordPress?

One of the main benefits of headless WordPress is its flexibility. Since the frontend is completely decoupled from the backend, developers have the freedom to choose the technology that best fits their needs or experience. For instance, they could build a static site using a framework like Gatsby, which can be incredibly fast and optimized for performance. Alternatively, they could build a server-rendered site using a modern framework like Next.js, which can provide a great user experience and also be very SEO and performance friendly.

Another benefit of headless WordPress is its scalability. Since the frontend is completely separate from the backend, the server load is distributed across multiple servers. This can help prevent performance issues during times of high traffic. Additionally, since the frontend is built using separate technology, it can be deployed to a content delivery network (CDN) for even faster performance.

Headless WordPress also provides better security. Since the frontend is separate from the backend, it eliminates the attack vectors that would otherwise exist in a standard CMS system. For example, in a traditional WordPress setup, an attacker could exploit a vulnerability in a plugin to gain access to the entire system. With headless WordPress, the attack surface is significantly reduced since the frontend is completely separate from the backend (and often is not even public facing).

Furthermore, headless WordPress allows for more efficient development. With a traditional WordPress setup, developers have to work within the confines of the WordPress framework. This can lead to limitations in terms of customisation and flexibility. With headless WordPress, developers have the freedom to choose the best technology stack for the job, allowing them to create highly customised and flexible sites. Additionally, since the frontend is separate from the backend, developers can work on both parts independently, making it easier to develop and deploy changes quickly.

Finally, headless WordPress enables easier content distribution. Since the content is exposed through the API different front ends can be developed which serve different purposes but use the same data. For example, you could have a dedicated mobile app and a standard website using the same information.

So why would I use a standard WordPress setup?

WordPress is a very competent and amazingly flexible CMS. For most standard websites it is a perfect fit for easy setup and deployment of a website.

Headless WordPress is a much more complicated framework to setup and requires much more technical knowledge and experience to setup and utilise correctly.

Some reasons you would want to use Headless WordPress over standard are:

Headless WordPress is an interesting evolution in the way WordPress can be used to power the content of a website and is useful in specific circumstances but in our opinion is generally not needed for most small to medium sized business websites.

Can we just start off by saying how awesome WordPress is?

A completely free, open source system that currently powers more than one in three of ALL websites online. That's pretty amazing.

As WordPress has grown and matured the range of plugins, themes and extensions available for it has grown massively allowing people to create pretty much any kind of website or application you can think of.

There is a problem though. Speed.

As things grow and make it easier for users to add features and functions this tends to come at the cost of performance. Google has recognised this issue and is now pushing for websites to perform better, especially on mobile devices where many users are still on metered connections.

They even use page speed as a ranking factor in their search results for both desktop (since 2010) and now mobile (since 2018).

Research also shows that the average user will only wait around 3 seconds for a site to load before starting to think about going elsewhere.

WordPress itself is pretty good from a performance perspective, but for every plugin, theme and feature you add there is a performance hit. Some themes and plugins are better written than others so careful selection is key but once you have your swanky new website what can you do to improve performance?

Caching

Caching (pronounced like "cashing") is the process of storing data in what is known as a cache. Think of a cache like a filing cabinet or a hard drive. Somewhere the server can save a static version of the data once, which can then be accessed multiple times without having to be generated again.

Normally, when you access a page on a WordPress site the server has to read and process the code, request and receive the data from the database then combine all this together to form the web page response. This all takes time and puts load on the server.

When you have caching enabled the server is simply serving a pre-processed static page stored on the server.

There can be various different types of caching:

We will not go into these in more detail here but they all server the same purpose of storing data in a more static format so it can be quickly accessed. All of these can be deployed on a WordPress site to make a big difference in the speed and performance of  the website.

Asset Optimisation

Assets on a website can include:

A standard WordPress website will have numerous stylesheet, script and obviously image files as part of any single page. In fact the more plugins and features you have the more of these files you will have.

Asset optimisation focuses on two things:

  1. Size reduction
  2. Request reduction

For each asset linked to a web page the browser has to request that asset as part of the page loading routine. Obviously if the page has 100 assets over 10 then it will take longer to request and load those assets.

Likewise the size of the assets has a direct impact on the time it takes for a page to load.

By reducing the size of individual assets and (where possible) combining assets together (E.g. adding all the individual style sheets to one file) the page load time can be greatly improved.

For images, ensuring they are optimised in terms of physical size and file size is vital to optimising performance. It is also vital to ensure images are using the optimal format for their needs. With advances in technology new image formats are emerging such as the WebP format which offer greater image compression without noticeable loss in quality.

With modern commercial WordPress themes there is also an issue with the loading of assets not actually required by the website. Commercial themes need to offer a huge range of functionality in order to be as flexible as possible so out of the box tend to load all of the assets required to support that functionality. We find a fair amount of work is required to identify only those assets actually needed for the specific website, removing the rest to increase performance.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A content delivery network compromises a network of servers that are distributed around the world.

The website content is stored across this network of servers.

When a user requests a web page the content for that page (normally the page assets) are served from the server that is geographically closest to that user.

This provides a performance improvement, especially for sites that are accessed by users in different geographical locations.

How do you know how well your site is performing?

There are a number of online tools and websites that can be used to analyse and report on your website performance.

Google provide a few different tools to help you with performance and more importantly how to improve it:

Google PageSpeed Insights - simply enter your website address to get a speed score and comprehensive report.

Google Lighthouse -a new Chrome browser extension designed to provide deep insight into overall performance and ways to improve it.

Google Mobile Friendly - whilst not strictly a performance tool this is also important to ensure your website is as mobile friendly as possible.

A few other useful tools to evaluate performance include:

GTMetrix - provides a speed score for Google and YSlow along with details breakdown of issues and fixes.

Pingdom - similar to GTMetrix but also covers other aspects of the site performance including server performance and SSL / DNS.

Summing it all up

We hope this article has highlighted the issues and options to resolve the common performance issues faced on WordPress websites.

It is well worth spending the time on optimising your website to ensure the user gets the best possible experience and does not decide to hop off to your competitor as your site is too slow to load.

Need help with optimising the performance of your WordPress website? We can help! Contact us today for a no obligation chat on 02 8097 7957 or contact us online.

 

New this month WPDS has worked with luxury travel brand Luxury Travel Magazine to create a brand new custom designed and developed online magazine website to complement their quarterly magazine.

The client had an existing website which was slow and very difficult to update for the editorial team, requiring huge amounts of time to update. As a result they were not updating the site regularly. The client wanted to move towards a regularly updated online magazine to provide timely news and reviews more frequently to supplement the magazine content.

We worked with the client to establish a suitable information architecture for the site and a functional structure that would allow for easy content creation and content linking.

The site runs of a collection of custom post types designed to allow for each content entry and classification with a site wide taxonomy set used to amalgamate and display content from across the custom post types.

The site was integrated with a visual page builder tool to provide content layout flexibility within articles and features a full banner ad system to allow for complex advertising placements.

The result is a visually rich and engaging website that the client can now manage completely internally to better suit the business needs.

You can check out the new website at http://www.luxurytravelmag.com.au

There has been a lot of talk recently in the WordPress world about the new Gutenberg editor which will potentially be released with WordPress version 5.

When WordPress was first created it was a simple blogging platform allowing users to easily create and posts blog articles to the web. Over time it has evolved to a full fledged content management system.

One of the main frustrations clients have with content management systems (CMS) is that the content creation / editing process is very abstracted or removed from what it looks like on the live website. This makes it hard for them to visualise what they are creating and editing and how it will look on the website.

In addition to this it was very difficult to create any kind of advanced layouts like columns without resorting to editing HTML code or using tricky "shortcodes".

As a result the rise of additional plugins called Page Builders or Visual Composers has transformed the content creation and editing experience within WordPress with most commercial themes now using one of many plugin solutions.

This is great for the end user but comes with a range of issues:

Welcome to Gutenberg

The team at WordPress are constantly looking to evolve and improve the platform and realised that there is a need for a WordPress native visual editor solution so the Gutenberg project was created. Their goal was to make adding rich content to WordPress simple and enjoyable.

Gutenberg is a new editor for WordPress content. It is names after Johannes Gutenberg. Johannes was the inventor of a printing press with movable type over 500 years ago!

The editor works on the concept of "blocks" that can be dragged onto the page to create content sections and structure. Right now the functionality is only available as a plugin but the plan is to merge it to the core platform some time this year.

Currently the available functionality is fairly limited but is heading in the right direction, hopefully it will provide the same level of functionality available in the current modern page builders providing an integrated way to create visually compelling layouts and content.