WordPress vs. an army of clunky content management systems

An interesting insight at ZDNet.com into what many companies go through when trying to get their content on the web by creating their own content management systems (CMS): WordPress vs. an army of clunky content management systems.

What’s so great about this article is the reminder to those of us in ministry that we have some wonderful, free tools at our disposal for the taking. We don’t have to go through what many companies experience when trying to shape their own CMS. Just use WordPress.

How do I add images or files to my posts?

Using Image and File Attachments in your WordPress posts – on the WordPress Codex

Simplify that site

50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog and keep your readers focused on the content.

How much information should we make available on our website?

Answer: All of it.

Does that help?

Matt Perman writes at DesiringGod.org with a challenge to ministries to put all the sermons and articles and content they have on their website, make it easy to get to and give it away.

Make it Free: Improving Online Effectiveness by Removing All Barriers to Accessing and Sharing Content.

If you are a Christian media ministry, I commend the following vision for maximizing your effectiveness online: Post all of your content online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface.

This basis for doing this follows from the purpose of ministry and the purpose of a ministry website. The purpose of any ministry is, at root, to spread the message of the good news of God’s grace. And the purpose of a ministry website is thus to serve as an avenue for spreading that message.

I suggest you go read the whole thing now as you consider what you should be making available on your ministry website.

How do I capture sermon audio for our website?

While not specific to WordPress I get this question often because this topic is new for many small churches. But not totally new since most churches have sound systems that have been set up for capturing sermon audio to tape. Though when you start talking about MP3’s and sermon podcasting and the like, it gets confusing. Read More »

Sermon Cloud

How do I add audio to my site? It’s a common question for churches and pastors but the answer isn’t always so easy. Now some of the hurdles may have been lowered just a bit. Read More »

How do I add posts to my site?

The WordPress Codex has a detailed piece on adding content or “posts” to your website.

There’s a lot of helpful information there about adding content even if you have already figured out how to create a new post.

You can learn something about WordPress Pages too: What can WordPress Pages do for my site?

I’m looking for a WordPress FAQ

Want to see some answers to common WordPress questions? Just the “new to WordPress” FAQ mam.

What can WordPress Pages do for my site?

Want to know what to use Pages for in WordPress? Read up here.

What’s the difference between categories and tags

Matt at WordPress.com explains the difference between categories and tags:

What’s the difference between categories and tags, you ask?

As best as I can explain it, categories are things you create ahead of time and only have a few of. Imagine them like sections of your site. The signs on aisles of grocery stores. Tags are one-off keywords attached to a post. You may add a tag to a post that you’ll never use ever again. Categories are meant to be permanent, tags are ephemeral.

Since WordPress version 2.3, tagging has been a part of the core system. Until then tagging was only available via a plugin. Matt’s post is about WordPress.com hosted blogs but his answer should help you understand a little better how to use categories and the advantages of tagging for your WordPress powered site.

See also: WordPress 2.3 Tag News