What Kind of Site Can I Have with WordPress?

Whatever they use to build them with, most people who want websites want “standard” websites of the kind that first developed in the 1990s: an ordered collection of pages describing your products and services. WordPress does a fine job at producing a site like this, and the new menu system in WordPress 3.0 lets you organize pages and sub-pages easily—and re-organize them if you decide you want them in a different order.

But WordPress can also power specialty websites for particular business needs. For instance, Web Loft created a site for the New Mexico Film Affiliates with a production directory and a job board as well as a paid member community. For In Weave Rugs, we built a WordPress e-commerce site with a sophisticated online store. With the help of thousands of available plugins, you can turn WordPress into:

• A classified ad site
• A voting site where readers can submit links or ideas for other readers to rate (like Digg)
• A portfolio (design, artwork, photography)
• A newspaper or magazine
• An events or tour manager for your band or theater group
• A booking calendar for your hotel
• A business directory
• A coupon code site
• A social media pressroom
• A collaboration and project management tool

The truth is, WordPress can be almost anything you want. When Web Loft builds a WordPress site, we start with this powerful, flexible platform, choose the best of the 10,000 existing plugins, and add custom code and design to make each site unique—and uniquely suited to its purpose.

In the next post in this series, we’ll take a look at some examples of great WordPress design.

4 Comments

1. I’m curious what plug-in you used for the paid member community. Are you willing to share this info?

   John Schop
   September 29, 2010 at 6:02 pm

2. Let me check with Marina on that one. Web Loft may have custom-coded it; they sometimes do. But there are several membership plugins for WordPress.

   Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with 'sketch')
   September 30, 2010 at 3:50 pm

3. Member functionality was actually custom coded, but if you would like more details, go ahead and shoot us an email.

   admin
   September 30, 2010 at 8:38 pm

4. Thanks for sharing the information. That’s a awesome article you posted. I found the post very useful as well as interesting. I will come back to read some more.

   Word Press Designer
   September 16, 2011 at 11:29 am