Ten Good Websites That Use WordPress as a CMS
A tremendous number of well-designed WordPress sites are floating around the web. Sometimes, you can look at a website and not even know if it’s a blog or a site built with blogging software.
Because users can extend the WordPress software to function as so much more than just a blog, people refer to WordPress as a content management system (CMS) rather than merely a blogging platform.
Here are ten WordPress websites built with tools and techniques that go beyond the blog.
Nourish Network: Nourish Network is a website that runs on the WordPress platform with the BuddyPress plugin fully integrated so that it can host and run a fully featured social community. Nourish Network utilizes all the available components that the BuddyPress plugin offers, such as member profiles, private messaging, groups, group forums, extended profile fields, social media, members’ photo albums, friends, and status updates.
Time Healthland: Not only is the Healthland website fully powered by WordPress, but it’s also one of the VIP WordPress customers that takes advantage of the VIP offerings from Automattic, the folks behind the WordPress.com service.
Time Healthland is a great example of a WordPress-powered website that goes beyond the typical blog type layout by getting creative with post thumbnails, popular posts, posts by category, featured videos, and social media integration.
IconDock: IconDock is a website created by the folks from N.Design Studio and is a perfect example of using WordPress as an online shop. IconDock has a fully functional and easy-to-navigate e-commerce shop where visitors can purchase high-quality icons and graphics. IconDock utilizes the WP e-Commerce plugin and the DropShop commercial add-on plugin to create the drag-and-drop shop feature for its products.
WeGraphics: WeGraphics is an e-commerce shop, powered by WordPress and the Cart66 shopping cart plugin, that sells digital or downloadable products. One visit to the website shows how WordPress and an e-commerce plugin, combined with a beautiful design and layout, can provide you with a pretty fantastic storefront online.
WebDevStudios: WebDevStudios is the website of the VIP WordPress consultants who designed and developed the Time Healthland site (described earlier in this chapter). The WebDevStudios site is also a pretty stunning example of what you can do with the default Twenty Ten theme.
Mozilla Labs: Mozilla Labs is an online hub for developers to network, collaborate, develop, experiment, research, and learn about building web applications. Built on the WordPress platform, Mozilla Labs takes advantage of custom category templates to create different types of content displays for each of the unique sections of its Projects page.
Kate Rusby: Kate Rusby is a folk musician whose website is powered by WordPress. The first thing that caught my eye is the pleasant, whimsical graphic design work that’s been applied to her WordPress theme. Through stunning graphic work, creative CSS styling, and HTML markup, her website design is clean, professional, and very eye-pleasing.
LIVESTRONG: The official blog of Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG organization is a nicely designed WordPress theme that places the blog content front and center on the front page but also uses some interesting tools to provide additional content from some of its other websites.
For example, in the right sidebar, you find great information and navigation links for its cancer support resource page on the web; its Team LIVESTRONG page about walks, runs, and triathlons to help raise awareness and money for cancer research; and its Take Action section that brings you to its LIVESTRONG Action page on the web.
Katy Perry: Recording artist Katy Perry has a website that uses WordPress to showcase her message, music, and content offerings in a nicely designed (if not very bright) package.
A lot is going on with Katy Perry’s website, but it’s a clean design that’s easy to navigate and includes some great features, such as the latest tweets from Katy’s twitter account, a Breaking News section, blog posts, a music section, and a photo gallery.
E.Webscapes Design Studio: A way to illustrate some great things that you can do with just one installation of the WordPress software. WordPress not only powers a great blog, but also is the foundation of a fully functional business website.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
archive
1. (noun) A list of previous blog posts, in chronological order. 2. (verb) To place files or blog posts in a safer place (on DVD or another server) for longer-term or backup storage.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
attribute
Used in an HTML tag to give an instruction to a Web browser. For example, in This link goes to <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>, the <a> tag gets an attribute (href) and a value ("http://www.google.com") to go along with the basic tag. In this case, the attribute indicates to the browser that what comes next is a hypertext reference — in this case, a Web page.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blacklist
An often-centralized list of e-mail addresses, URLs, and IP addresses used by spammers that are then forbidden in any blog post on your blog. With an up-to-date blacklist, a lot of spam is stopped before it becomes a comment.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
block
To stop all contact with a MySpace user. He can’t comment on your blog page or send you any message that you actually receive.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blog
A combination of the words Web and log. Bloggers (individuals, groups, or businesses) post a chronological log of information. Content is determined entirely by the author(s) of the blog; many are personal journals.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blog post
An entry in a blog, possibly containing text, images, and other media.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blogger
The author of a blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blogging policy
Outlines what you’re allowed to post in your blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blogging software
Technology that enables you to blog. Can be either hosted or nonhosted.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blogroll
A collection of links used or recommended by a blogger.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
cookie
A short piece of computer code, stored on your computer, that enables Web sites to remember certain settings and information the next time you visit that site.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Dashboard
A kind of control panel in Blogger that shows you the blogs you’ve set up, giving you access posting, using help resources, or even creating another blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
definition list
A type of HTML list that gives a term and then its definition and has built-in spacing to lay out those elements properly.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
disk space
Amount of room available on your hard drive.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
domain
A domain is the address, or main URL, that people type in the browser to get to your Web site. The domain name you choose can’t be used by anyone else.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
domain registrar
A service that enables you to register a domain name.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
entry
An single posting in a blog containing text, images, or other media, or any combination of those things.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Facebook
A social-networking service that enables you to keep in contact with families and friends via the Web.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Flickr
A Web site that allows you to share, organize, edit, and otherwise manage your photos.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Friend List
Your virtual online address book in MySpace. You can become someone’s friend by either sending a fellow MySpacer a Friend Request or by being on the receiving end of a Friend Request from another MySpace user.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
hosted services
Manages the data, software, and Web hosting of a blog; the blogger just manages the content.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
HTML
The computer coding used by Web designers to create Web pages.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
hyperlink
A navigation tool that allows a user to go from one Web location to another by clicking. Hyperinks (or just links) are typically underlined.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
hypertext reference
In HTML, the address that a hyperlink connects to when clicked. For example, in This link goes to <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>, the hypertext reference (href) is http://www.google.com. Hyperlink references can also jump to new positions on the same page, open a new e-mail message, or begin a file download.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
link
Short for hyperlink, a navigation tool that allows a user to go from one Web location to another by clicking. Links are typically underlined.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Mom test
A self-test that flags inappropriate blog posts. If you’d let your mom read the post, then it’s probably passed the Mom test. Specifically, don’t blog about topics you think will hurt others; don’t blog about others without their permission, even about topics you consider inconsequential; and don’t identify friends and lovers by name without their permission.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
MySpace
A social-networking service that enables you to keep in contact with families and friends via the Web.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
MySpace profile
Your MySpace identity. It can contain as much or as little information about you as you’d like.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
news aggregation
The ability to aggregate news by using RSS feeds. Having a news aggregator included with your blog package allows your site to pull in information from another blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
nonhosted service
Blog software that you set up on your own Web server. It allows you to take on all responsibilities related to maintaining your blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
ordered list
Contains items that must be listed in a particular order, such as a list of ranks or preferences. It may also indicate a list of steps for the reader to follow.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
pinging
An automated notification system for search engines and newsreaders, letting those services know that your blog has been updated. A ping occurs when one computer asks another whether it’s there; the second computer confirms its presence.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
post
1. (noun) An entry in a blog containing text, images, other media, or any combination of these. 2. (verb) The act of creating and/or uploading a blog entry.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
private profile
A MySpace profile that’s limited on who can view it, such as only people on your Friend List.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
public domain
The status of publications, processes, and product designs that are free from copyrights and/or patents and are available for anyone's use.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
social network
A service, such as Facebook or MySpace, that enables to keep in touch with people you know — and meet people you don’t know.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
spam
Unsolicited electronic messages sent in bulk that may be commercial, nonsensical, or malicious. In addition to e-mail spam, blog comments and blog forums can be targeted by spammers.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
tag
A relevant keyword associated or assigned to a piece of information, such as an image, a blog entry, or a video clip. Tags are usually chosen informally by the content creator or by the online community; they help give content to nontext media and organize information for ease of searching.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Trackback
A technology that tracks references to a blog posting that occurs on other blogs. They allow bloggers to link to blog posts on related topics.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
transparent
1. Being honest and truthful on your blog. Also means that you admit mistakes and engage in dialogue with readers who leave comments. Considered proper blogging etiquette. 2. Integration of applications, programs, and media from different sources in such a way that the end user is unaware that the content is not self-contained.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
unordered list
unordered list is a series of bulleted items and is used for lists that don’t require numbering.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
video blog
A blog consisting of video files, or the practice of placing a video file in a blog post.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
video-sharing service
A service, such as YouTube, that enables you to share video with others.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Web host
The Web server where you software, graphics, and other files live online.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Web server
Technology that looks at what Web page is requested and then feeds the browser the appropriate file. It does most of the hard work of serving Web pages to visitors coming to your Web site.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
whitelist
A list of preselected users who are allowed to comment on your blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
YouTube
A video-sharing service.