Using WordPress for a large website

Scott Taylor: WordPress in the Enterprise at eMusic

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Source: http://www.wptavern.com/how-emusic-transitioned-from-clunky-cms-to-wordpress

Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

I’ve been doing a lot of work with the self hosted version of wordpress (download from wordpress.org) and am now seriously thinking of moving this blog over to it on shared hosting.

The self hosted version gives you a lot more control over the theme and plugins etc.

So if you’re interested in making the move, this video will be of great help in getting the content back to what it looked like in wordpress.com (i.e. it tells you what plugins to use – very important).

Other useful information can be found here: HOW TO: Transfer Your Blog From WordPress.com to WordPress.org [VIDEO]

Blog Subscriptions

There seems to be two main ways to manage blog subscriptions for WordPress:

• WordPress Blog Subscriptions
• Feedburner (supports platforms other than WordPress)

Both give readers the opportunity to sign-up to receive your blog posts via email and both offer stats so you can monitor usage. Feedburner also provides an RSS feed (and is owned by Google).

New WordPress.com theme: Paperpunch

WordPress.com have introduced a very clear and modern new theme named Paperpunch.  I especially like the footer layout.

New Custom Menus in WordPress.com

I just discovered that WordPress.com supports custom menus.  It’s now possible to mix pages with blog categories in your menu structure (although not all themes support this yet).

Have you ever wanted to have a different title for one of your pages than the label displayed in your site’s navigation? Ever wanted to change the order of the list of pages to an order you chose yourself? Ever wanted to be able to mix pages, categories, and random links in your navigation instead of your theme deciding for you?
Jane Wells, New Custom Menus Feature (and a few others)

This is a great new feature and one I’m looking forward to using in the future.

Update: Find the themes that support Custom Menus in WordPress.com by using the Custom Menu Feature Filter.

Blogging: Some great advice

This is a presentation by Syed Balkhi, Founder of WPBeginner.com.  It contains some great advice on blogging and promotion.  Especially useful if you use WordPress as he lists his must have plugins).

WordPress.com supports photo slideshows

WordPress.com now supports photo slideshows.  Read Share Photos with a Slideshow on the WordPress.com blog.

Great feature!

DNS Editing Deployed

WordPress.com has now deployed DNS editing.  Read more on the WordPress blog.  Learn about Domains and DNS on WordPress.com support.

Also check out these two wikipedia articles:

• Domain Name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name
• Domain Name System (DNS): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System

New WordPress.com theme

WordPress.com have added a new theme to their themes collection (also available for wordpress.org).  It’s called Titan and looks very good.

I particularly like the support for widgets on the footer and the use of categories for manu items – very professional.

A demo is available here: http://titandemo.wordpress.com/.

Starting WordPress Theme Development

If you’re thinking of creating your own WordPress theme it may be worth reading these blog posts.  Although written a few years ago they should still be a help in getting started.

• Designing a WordPress Theme From Scratch
• WordPress.com Custom CSS – All The Styles for the Sandbox Theme

Here’s a quick video on how to edit the css of an existing theme.

WordPress Tutorials – How To Edit Your WordPress Theme (by StartABlog)