We are well past the days when WordPress was only for blogs.  Now WordPress is considered a full featured content management system (CMS).  And the beauty of it is, once set up, absolutely anyone with 15 or 20 minutes of training can go in and update and maintain the content.  It’s a simple matter of opening the site in the right place and inserting or updating whatever you want.  I have trained students and admin assistants who were able to master this in no time.  Of course, someone web savvy has to be available for the occassional question.

What I’ve found to be the trickiest part of creating websites for others is determining how much the site owner really wants to update their own system.  Some like to do it all, or have an intern or assistant who is happy to do it.  Other professionals don’t want to touch it with the proverbial 10 feet pole.  I’m not sure why that is.  I don’t know if they are tech phobic or are afraid of it or think their professional station puts them above that kind of work.  Although why some professionals are willing to pay webmasters to do clerical work is something I don’t quite understand particularly when I explain their assistant can probably do it, or they can pay someone $10 an hour to do it. But, be that as it may,  it’s the job of the service provider to keep the client happy, so if someone doesn’t want to update their own system, that’s fine.  But the fact is, anyone with 15 or 20 minutes training can update and maintain a WordPress website.

WordPress  as  a Content Management System –  a state-of-the-art publishing platform which is  feature rich, continuously updated, with thousands of man hours in development time and a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.

Features which extend the already deep functionality, include the following:

•    Plug ins which automate hundreds of the most useful tasks from SEO (search engine optimization, so your website can and will be found) to placing advertisements, should you want them, on every post. New plug ins are offered almost daily

•    Widgets, individual pieces of code which provide a single interaction to frequently used functions such as clocks, calendars, news aggregators. Widgets have the capability of automatically updating content areas of your website. For an example, a widget might be used to automatically update the navigation sidebar as new pages are added.

•    Themes control the look and feel of the website in this system.  The site owner has access to a choice of hundreds of themes, which are constantly updated and to which additional themes are added continuously.  A theme may be changed with a single click.

•    Support – Because of the popularity and widespread use of this platform, it is supported by extensive developer communities, experts, technicians and web hosts, so there is ample support for whatever your needs are or might become in the future. This eliminates the potential for a site owner to be marooned with obscure or little used software and platform and consequently face the difficult task of finding support to fix technical issues or adjust to changing needs.

Training, Continuous Updating and Maintenance

As web developer or webmaster, or if you hire someone to do this work, you may want to add the following services…. the first is a necessity but, as mentioned, usually only takes about 20 minutes.
•    Provide whatever training is needed to adjust to the new system.
•    Provide a monthly review and audit that both identifies trouble spots and recommends improvements and also assures continuous smooth operation of the site owner’s system
•    Upgrade the website’s software and plugins monthly, as needed or required

Trust me, this is easy. If you have any trouble or issues, give me a shout at gretchen@ggwebgroup.com. And…..good luck!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Effective Website Development Project Plan (forwardleap.com)
• Great Place For WordPress Themes! (secondprinciple.com)
• Another Reason To Love WordPress–Plugins (appscout.com)