This section is about getting your WordPress blog or web site up and running with its correct structure and content in place and about being able to effectively maintain and manage the site on an ongoing basis. Some of the principal issues you will need to consider are…   Quick Page Links   Site Structure and Navigation Publishing Content Additional Plug-Ins Links SPAM Control Search Engine Friendly web Addresses WordPress Site Security

For further consideration of WordPress management issues, please refer to the WP Management postings section here >>

Site Structure and Navigation

The structure and navigation of your site can be changed as requirements change – after all, flexibility is one of WordPress' great advantages - but it is worth spending some time at the outset of your project considering how your information should be structured and presented within the site design that you already have in place.

If you are using WordPress to drive a web site rather than a blog, then your task will be simplified as you will only have pages to consider rather than pages and posts (which will need to be logically categorised).

You will still, though, need to decide what your navigation or menu structure will be.

Which pages, for example, will appear within your menu structure as options and which pages will not be menu options but linked to from other page content? After all, if your site has a significant amount of content and all your pages are set up to be accessed from menus, then the menus will be extremely complicated and cumbersome.

If you are using WordPress as a blogging platform, as implied above, more thought and planning will probably be required.

This is not only because your site will consist of pages and blog posts but because blogging implies there will be significant amounts of content regularly added to the site which must be organised and made as easily accessible as possible to blog users.

You will probably have only a limited number of pages, conveying largely 'static' data – information about the nature and purpose of the site, for example, or terms and conditions, contact details, etc. – with most content being in the form of blog posts within categories that need to make sense to your users.

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Publishing Content

WordPress is built for ease of use by non-specialists, whether it is used effectively as a content management system to 'drive' a web site or as a blogging solution.

But WordPress still has a learning curve even if it is less steep than with most other software solutions. This needs to be borne in mind, specially if you wish your site to have a consistent, professional appearance over time that will inspire confidence in your content.

And your site may also have several plug-ins, required to enable the site to perform as required, and these will also have to be mastered.

WordPress, with its quirks and idiosyncracies, needs to be learnt through use and its potential and limitations understood.

Additional Plug-Ins

You may well find that further plug-ins are required for your WordPress site, specifically to assist you in the organisation and management of site content. These may, for example, be related to the sequencing of blog categories and links, the inclusion or otherwise of pages as menu options or, perhaps, a plug-in to make your site content as search engine friendly as possible.

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Links

If your WordPress site is a blog, your links to external sites – your 'blogroll' – are likely to be an important component of your site. After all, blogging is a community activity and it is not only communication with your site visitors that you are likely to be concerned with but also communication and links with other blogmasters.

You will need to be able to organise and manage your external links much as you will need to do with your blog posts.

SPAM Control

All webmasters want their sites to be popular, attracting large volumes of visitors, but one annoying consequence of high traffic levels may be SPAM – unsolicited and irrelevant communications sent either via blog comments or through a web site contact form.

Measures may need to be taken to limit SPAM if this becomes onerous in terms of site management.

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Search Engine Friendly Web Addresses 

We have seen above that additional plug-in software may be required to improve site search engine optimisation. In addition, though, and more fundamentally, other changes may be required to ensure that web site page addresses are presented in a search engine friendly format, reflecting page content rather than consisting of a string of apparently meaningless code. You will see that this has been done on this site.

Database-driven web sites can be problematic in terms of achieving good search engine visibility, but WordPress comes relatively well equipped to perform in this area.

WordPress Site Security 

This issue may appear at the bottom of this page, but it is an absolutely critical issue that cannot be ignored – at least if you value the time and effort you have devoted to building your WordPress presence.

Database-driven sites such as WordPress ones provide you potentially with far more sophistication than 'traditional', static web sites, but they are more vulnerable to problems and security issues.

Regular backups of your database data and other site files are essential so that your web site can be restored if disaster strikes.

WordPress is also constantly evolving and newer and better versions of the software are regularly released. You will want to have the capability to effectively upgrade your WordPress version at some point with minimum risk and effort.

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