Using WordPress as a CMS (content management system) is considered to be one of the most effective ways to getting online – but is it really all that? If so, does it offer a solution to all kinds of websites, or are there some limitations to WordPress?

First, lets define what a CMS is – it’s any software which allows you to manage the content of a website easily, without having to hire a programmer to change coding every time you want to update your website.

WordPress is used as a blogging platform as well as a CMS by top web entrepreneurs all over the internet. Let’s look at the reasons why it’s so popular:

1. How much is WordPress? It’s free!

2. How easy is it to install WordPress? If you have the right web hosting package, then its as simple as a click of a button in your hosting control panel, and it installs.

3. Coding of WordPress itself is very light; which means any websites being run by WordPress will be fast.

4. Plugins can be used to enhance your site features (and plugins are mostly free, some ask payment). For example, if you want to rotate your ads on the sidebar of your website, you can do this by uploading a free plugin and pasting the codes of the ads – normally, you would need to manually install a script, which takes time, and requires technical knowledge.

5. Website design is easily maintained by WordPress by choosing a WordPress Theme. There are thousands of free WordPress themes out there, as well as premium themes you pay for; even the most expensive theme is nowhere near the full price of hiring a designer and coder to make your own website.

6. Customizing a WordPress Theme is actually very easy; so you can get a free theme, make some changes, and the end result is a professional looking website.

Now that we have covered the key features of a WordPress Website; here are the main limitations of WordPress:

1. You may not find a plugin that works exactly to your requirements. In this case, you can hire a programmer to create a plugin for you.

2. You may not find a WordPress theme that matches exactly to your requirements; in this case, you can hire a programmer to do this for you.

It’s important to point out that hiring a programmer from a freelancing website does not cost much, especially to create a small plugin or edit a WordPress theme so it matches to your exact requirements.

If you have just installed WordPress and you need to know the most effective plugins for your site, we have compiled a list of our top ten plugins that we use on nearly every site we produce. Although there are literally thousands of WordPress plugins on the Internet, there are only a top few that you really must consider using as a priority, some for ease and others for effectiveness.

Plugins are usually open source extensions for WordPress, some are free and some you need to pay for, but basically they just expand upon what WordPress can do. With so many plugins now available, you can normally find one that will do exactly what you need, with quick ratings and comments so you know exactly which to install and which to give a miss.

Below, we take a look at our top ten essential WordPress plugins.

Contact Form 7 – You will find so many contact form plugins on WordPress, but since we switched to Contact Form 7 this year we really have not looked back. It is so easy to add a new form, duplicate existing forms and add many different field types that you really should be using this plugin if you use or plan to use contact forms on your website.

Really Simple Captcha – Using in conjunction with the above mentioned Contact Form 7, this adds a captcha to the forms that you produce, which helps to stop the majority of the automated spam coming through to your inbox.

Ultimate Google Analytics – By entering your Google Analytics ID, this plugin then puts the necessary tracking code on ALL of your pages, no matter whether they are posts or pages. It’s an ideal plugin because all sites should be running Google Analytics and if you have many pages and frequently add more, this quality bit of kit does the job for you.

TinyMCE Advanced – Although WordPress has got better in terms of making your content look more appealing, this plugin makes the text box more like a word document, allowing you to have far more formatting control with the ability to add tables, fonts and so much more. Just make sure you keep it updated to close security weaknesses.

Google XML Sitemaps – A sitemap is a must for any website in this day and age and this plugin automatically produces an XML Sitemap and then tells all of the major engines about it, including Google, Bing and Yahoo. So easy to install and to run, this plugin is vital and one that you really should be using.

SEO Ultimate – Loads of SEO tools all under one easy to install plugin. It lets you keep track of so many things that you have to see it to believe it, but from keeping an eye on 404 pages all the way through to adding tags and other meta data, this SEO plugin is one of the best we have seen.

AdSense Manager – If you run AdSense modules, then this plugin is fantastic, as it brings together all of your AdSense campaigns and adverts, stores them and allows you to control and add them to any page or post with just a very short insert. It can also be used with other types of third party advertising systems as well.

Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. When your site gets more established and popular you will see a massive increase in spam blog comments on your articles, blogs and posts, but this brilliant little plugin does remove the majority of the bad ones and seems to be very accurate when it comes to its filtering.

WP EzineArticles – As anyone working in SEO will know, content on your own site is the king, but content on decent article websites is also vital to achieve rankings and back links. EzineArticles is widely respected as one of the leading article websites on the Internet, and this plugin lets you automatically submit your articles to your EzineArticles account and best of all it only takes minutes to set up.

Twitter Tools – This plugin just saves so much time its unreal, by automatically tweeting your latest post, blog or article to your Twitter Account. Although it does take a little bit of time to get set up and then connect with your Twitter Account, in the long run this plugin saves you so much time and effort and it even has a URL shorter built in to really make it more effective.

Blogs have set off a trend in online media, being used for everything from angst chronicles to product marketing. Best of all, this popular method of self-expression, earning and marketing among other things comes without a price. Yes, it’s free.

Blogs can be hosted for free on various blogging platforms, of which one of the most popular is WordPress. Fast, easy to use and rich in features, WordPress has become the platform of choice for most sophisticated, conscious and serious bloggers – both personal and professional.

While starting to build a blog, one of the important things to look for is scalability – especially if you want to preserve the content and/or URL of the blog for a few years. Today, you may think you have far more resources than necessary. But a year down the line, you may have a hundred times as many visitors as you bargained for. This is when you begin to feel the need for a sound blogging platform beneath your feet, and wish you had begun with your own domain name rather than the free WordPress(dot)com URL.

Importing an existing blog into a WordPress blog is a one-click affair if you are on any of the well-known blogging platforms such as Blogger or LiveJournal. However, it is impossible to change the URL of a WordPress(dot)com blog to your own domain.

In order to set up WordPress on your own domain, the first thing to do is to install the script. This is also a one-click affair with most web hosts, simply requiring you to select “WordPress” under “script to install”. Once registered, you can choose to start posting immediately, or to set further preferences.

WordPress has a large collection of themes to form your blog header, footer, sidebar and background. Many of these are free, while others are premium and require a fee. Themes can be customizable to varying degrees – from themes that barely allow custom headers to ones that stand as a tall backbone for any structure you may erect around them.

Personal bloggers prefer WordPress because of the advanced categorizing and tagging, which allow them to browse all WordPress posts on a particular topic rather than sifting through Google constantly.

Professional bloggers take comfort and pride in the plethora of features available through widgets and plugins – from the search engine optimization plugins to e-Commerce solutions and directory listings, you have it all.

Every blogger, without exception, loves the Akismet spam blocker – a highly intelligent plugin that lets blogs remain spam-free even without the word verifications that make a commenter’s life hell.

For people who desire some control over their blogging software but are not coders themselves, WordPress is the perfect option. It allows an amazing degree of freedom, with a minimal learning curve and high degree of user-friendliness.

Some business owners start blogs to increase the amount of content on their website while others begin with a blog. To maximize the online impact and ability to make money with your website you need both static content (information that doesn’t change much) and content that is updated regularly (news, specials, tips, etc). The updated content (blog) builds interest, traffic and authority, helping make you the one people trust. The static pages convert that interest and trust into sales.

For most companies, there is no need to have both a website and a blog, you can use the blogging software, Wordpress, as both. Wordpress uses ‘pages’ for your static content, (like the description of your business) and ‘posts’ for dynamic content and news. Pages can have pages and subpages, allowing you to create easy site navigation for your visitors. Categories and tags make it easy for your visitors to move around your site, finding the things they’re most interested in.

Content for Static Pages

Every website should have the following:

* Information about your offer; your services and products
* Benefits; how do you help your customers?Why should they choose you?
* Examples and testimonials. Do you have happy customers? Tell everyone!
* Frequently asked questions – what do most people ask about your product or service?
* Contact information. Where are you? How do people reach you? Maps are always welcome. Ordering information. Don’t make it hard for people to buy. Can people book appointments? Can they buy your products? Don’t bury this, this should be foremost in your planning.

Satisfaction guarantee. If people don’t know you, why should they do business with you? The dynamic pages of your blog can be used for relationship building with your customers and potential customers.

For your blog pages, think about:

Are you running a special promotion? Has anyone new joined your business? Do you have any tips you can share? The amount of things you can share to build relationships is limitless. You don’t have to be a great writer, just be yourself.

With WordPress, it’s easy to design and build a professional website with very little money.

If you are beginning to learn your way around blogging and you are using WordPress it would be best for you to stick to the free themes that are available. The reason I say this is because some of the paid themes that are available are more for web developers.

Some themes will have you enter certain codes and hooks. I learned from experience, even though the theme looks like you must consider how much of a learning curve it will take to customize the theme. The good thing about using paid for themes is that your blog will be unique in format and style.

Plus if you see a theme that you like but is not free more than likely you can find one that is free that is close to theme you want. So one thing you have to ask yourself is what you want your site to look like.

These are some common questions to ask when choosing a theme. What color scheme are you going for? How many sidebars do you want on your blog? Do you want rotating images on your home page? Do you want a custom header?

All of these questions will help you narrow down your search of the perfect theme. If you find 2 or 3, then add them to your theme folders and see how each of them looks on your site. You can always delete the ones that you do not like. So start off with a free theme and then once you get the hang of blogging, move to a custom paid for theme.

WordPress has a templating system, which includes widgets that can be rearranged without editing PHP or HTML code, as well as themes that can be installed and switched between.

The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations. WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; multiple author capability; and support for tagging of posts and articles.

Automatic filters that provide for proper formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes) are also included. WordPress also supports the Trackback and Pingback standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article. Finally, WordPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.