How Does a WordPress Powered Blog Work?

[Anonymous]

I’m thinking of adding a blog section to [THIS](http://reallycoolstuff.net/JV “”) website and a friend said that worpress already does a few things for you. Is this true? and what are some advantages and disadvantages of using wordpress?

[TheDoc]

This question is *way* too broad to answer properly. WordPress does many things some of them are great and some of them are poor.

[tomrogers123]

WordPress has lots of good content management stuff done for you right out of the box. This includes storing content robustly in a solid MySQL database structure. Not only does this mean your content being independent of structural markup as it should be, it also give you practical benefits like tracking changes to pages (so you can easily revert to an earlier version if needs be. It also has handy components which would take ages to hand code – like a robust login system – already done for you. Just generally, its community as very active and has some of the best documentation I’ve seen for an open source project.

As far as the major disadvantages are concerned, some might argue (me included) that it is a good blogging platform but is just playing at being a full CMS. I know I [might get shunned for that thinking](https://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/41-wordpress-as-a-cms/) but I really stand by it. Some of the stuff in the theme system requires on logic that should not be part of the presentational layer (eg. a custom “query_posts” loop) and it’s only when you start comparing it to the more complex options that you begin to see where the differences are.

Overall, for a small blog, I’d say WordPress is the right choice. Given that data is stored in a proper way, you could still migrate to something in the future if you needed more flexibility with types of content etc. I know WordPress has custom post types but it is difficult to control the data types of custom fields.

[Derek Wood]

If you just want a simple no frills blog on a webpage, you can just embed a tumblr.

@tomrogers123(This website is built with WordPress and I do not consider it a small blog. )

I think of WP as a PHP frame work with a friendly backend user interface that stores(through user input) and pulls information from a mySQL database to display your content. This information is often presented by loops that call a list of posts by type and/or various other taxonomies. . The data is then wrapped in html tags and styled with CSS. This can be blog posts, photo galleries, or just static stuff on pages like an essay “about” page etc. You can make everything on your site editable from the backend. Employing custom post types and custom fields, (I have really been loving “Advanced Custom Fields, ” it can be anything you want it to be. It is getting better and better and there is a huge community to learn from and share with. The downfalls are that there are a lot of poorly designed templates and plugins that are buggy and just made to make money. Also – there is a lot of talk about whether or not mySQL is rad or not. Static sites do not have to loop, so in effect they are faster… but It is hardly perceivable. I fought WordPress for years. I wanted to do everything myself, but It turns out I just didn’t know what I was doing. After watching our good friend Chris Coyier’s tutorial on lynda.com 2 years ago, a ton of searching on the codex, and a lot of practice, the php all makes sense and I just think WordPress is super rad. I mean, it is free. That is insane. You have a team of super talented groundbreaking developers working for you for free. If you don’t think that WordPress can be a full featured CMS, then you just haven’t experienced it yet.

But honestly… if you just want a blog on a page – and you don’t want to learn all this stuff – grab a tumblr. Search google for how to embed it. Styling it is a bit whacky the first time, but you’ll figure it out.

[rctonnie]

I see on your site that you are somewhat new to web stuff. From my experience, if you plan to continue expanding on your current page, WordPress is a great CMS. As I’m sure you know, this entire site is powered through WordPress.

I bought a month of Lynda.com so that I could watch Chris’s wordpress theme course (linked in the CSS-Tricks footer). That was all it took for me to learn how to power a regular site through wordpress and add blog functionality.

cheers.

[Author]

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