How to use WordPress as a website?

One among the most asked questions about WordPress, the blogging software is that how to use WordPress as a website? We all know, when it comes to blogging, WordPress is the best blogging software which is extremely easy to configure and customize. However, the question is can we use WordPress as a website? Can we customize WordPress to work as a complete website and content management system? The answer is “yes”! You will be amazed to know that you can use WordPress blogging software as a complete website with just 5 minutes of tweaking.

To begin with, all you need is a fresh installation of WordPress blog. You can use any theme of your choice, I recommend using the popular Studiopress themes because they are highly customized and give the look of a website. But feel free to use any theme of your choice, any theme can be used to give the look of a website.

Once you are ready to convert your WordPress blog into a website, go to the theme editor: Appearance > Editor
Then go to the header.php file to edit this file.

All you need to do is tweak this piece of code:

<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&hierarchical=0&title_li='); ?>

The above code may be a little different depending upon the theme you selected. It may be simply:

<?php wp_list_pages(); ?>

Those in between (sort column, menu order, etc.) are just different parameters to display “pages” with style in the top menu bar at front end of your website.

The trick here is to display only those pages that you wish to display in the menu bar. So if we simply change the code to display selected pages in the menu, any other page you create will not show up in the menu bar.

For eg.,
You wish to create a WordPress website that has 5 main pages that should be displayed in the top menu bar:
Home, Products, Services, About us, Contact us.

And then you wish to create hundreds more pages but do not wish to display all of those pages in the top menu bar.

So, instead of using the wp_list_pages() function, you can assign “manually” the pages that you wish to display in the top menu bar, like this:

<li><a href="http://www.devduff.com/">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="/products/">Products</a></li>
<li><a href="/services/">Services</a></li>
<li><a href="/about-us/">About us</a></li>
<li><a href="/contact-us/">Contact us</a></li>

That’s all! Now feel free to create thousands of pages and customize as per your need, create silo design, link them where ever you like to. Also, you can create a separate page for blogging and display it in the menu. You can have a static front page. Change the settings to show a different page instead of showing your latest blog posts as the home page.

Also, you can do the same thing with Categories. Instead of using the wp_list_categories() function, using the above method, you can display your WordPress website categories the way you want. You can perhaps, change the order of categories, display most important categories or display fewer categories, according to your choice.

WordPress offers tremendous flexibility to make your web presence. And it is free. What more do we need to get going with a gorgeous looking WordPress website in minutes? If you enjoyed reading this article and found it useful, please share your joy by leaving a comment below or share it with your friends. Your comment love will encourage me to share more useful WordPress tutorials with you.

Tags: Website designing, Wordpress Tutorials