WordPress Is Nice But… Website or Blog?

  • I don’t know what the exact percentage is but a lot of people who use WordPress want to make a website not a blog or weblog.

    What I don’t understand is why there isn’t a simple setting within WordPress (and I don’t mean any specific theme) where you can make one selection in the administration panel and just change the whole site to look like a real website. That means removing all references to comments, time and date, author, modified, posted by, posted in, or whatever else it is that makes it look like a blog.

    To me it seems simple and it’s the first thing I get asked whenever I use WordPress to build a website or blog for anyone. They don’t seem to be too specific. They either want a blog or a website. Only a few what it to look like a website and have one link that says blog.

    Why is that so hard to understand? I get the idea of themes. People tell me, “Oh you just need to find the right theme and customize it yourself”. That seems absurd to me. In my search for all the different complicated plugins and changing the code in the appearance editor to make it look like a website (with no blog details) I am amazed at how utterly brilliant all these designers are. Yet I can’t understand why no one with these skills hasn’t figured out how to put one setting in the Admin panel that will work with all themes to select between website or blog.

    Also whenever something like this comes up in the forum you get the same response from the experts. They say, “You’re asking the wrong question”. I’ve always been told there are no wrong questions. And some of the dumbest people, village idiots and children ask the most important questions. You should always listen to these people if you want to hear the truth. At first you may want to enlighten them on your extensive knowledge on just exactly why the emperor is not wearing clothes. I’m sure there’s a million reasons. But in the end he’s still standing there naked in front of everyone.

    Where’s the simple setting to make it look like a website? If anyone has any suggestions or ideas it would be greatly appreciated.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 20 total)

  • The simplest setting to change is in Reading, set the front page to use a static page you create. Then, simply don’t use the Posts functionality – just stick to Pages.

    Here’s a WP site I built that doesn’t use Posts at all, only Pages. https://www.thewittyoffice.com/

    WordPress started off as a blogging platform and has only more recently come to be used as a multipurpose CMS. In fact, Pages didn’t even exist until relatively recently. Perhaps that’s why most themes are built with blogging functionality featured.

    This really isn’t a job for WordPress core. It’s a job for the theme to remove all those references if you don’t want them. As for switching between a normal front page and a blog, zoonini pointed out the Reading settings where you can change it so posts aren’t the main page.

    You have to remember, you keep ‘appearance’ and ‘logic’ in different rooms when it comes to core programming.

    You don’t ‘nest’ your design into the programming, you ‘nest’ a small amount of programming into your design.

    Moving on, WordPress is a BLOG platform that has the capability of acting as a full on CMS. However, it is up the user to do this, the core isn’t built that way. I don’t believe that WordPress should open up the option to do that, because many problems can surface. WordPress has a very good thing going right now, moving it to a full blown CMS is not a very good idea. People understand (for the most part) the programming behind this easy to use, light weight, and not too sophisticated blogging platform.

    Adding such features as your suggesting weights down the product, when the product doesn’t necessarily need all of this. It could ruin it for the rest of us.

    Thread Starter jzenman

    (@jzenman)

    I’m not saying adding anything. I’m saying get rid of things. Simplify.

    Just type in “remove (insert blog feature here) WordPress” into Google and you can find thousands of hits of all kinds of blog features people want to remove.

    For instance even when you select the feature in admin to not allow comments it still displays the “0 comments” above the post. Why? What part of no comments does WordPress not understand?

    It’s also virtually impossible to get rid of the time, date and year the post was modified. Who cares? Like anyone needs that information on a simple site where you write things occasionally? Maybe I don’t want people to know I haven’t written anything in a while. But God forbid you want to take it off.

    Maybe WordPress needs to stay the same but someone should just create a plugin to remove every blog feature they want. Half of the plugins I’ve installed are the ones to remove things. So I’m saying it’s already too bulky. There’s all kinds of things in it you never use and just the simplest things people try to do they have to look up how to edit code. Give me a break.

    For instance even when you select the feature in admin to not allow comments it still displays the “0 comments” above the post. Why? What part of no comments does WordPress not understand?

    That’s because the THEME has the function in the file to show that. Disabling comments will not remove that code from the theme. Nor should WordPress have to or need to.

    It’s also virtually impossible to get rid of the time, date and year the post was modified.

    On the front end? You delete maybe a couple lines of code and it’s gone. In the backend? It’s not going anywhere. It’s more useful than it is annoying for pages and the like.

    You need to start thinking that everything displayed on the front end can be controlled using themes.

    Maybe WordPress needs to stay the same but someone should just create a plugin to remove every blog feature they want.

    Then build one. Core is to cater to the masses. Sure there are people that want to remove things and they can. But I’d say that they mostly don’t fall into the majority. Also, just because you don’t see a certain feature being used a lot doesn’t mean that it’s true across all sites. I’m pretty sure wordpress.com has great use cases for nearly every feature which gives the core devs good insight onto what to add/remove.

    Thread Starter jzenman

    (@jzenman)

    On the front end? You delete maybe a couple lines of code and it’s gone.

    Oh dude. How do you do that? That’s the last thing I need on my personal site. I got everything off except the time, dates and 0 comments in Blog.

    Here’s my Minimalist site.

    https://www.jamesinman.com

    Where do I find that? I got all kinds of conflicting instructions.

    In index.php, remove these lines:

    Posted: <?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?>

    (line 18)

    Comments: <a href="<?php comments_link(); ?>"><?php comments_number('No Comments','1 Comment','% Comments'); ?></a>.

    (line 21)

    p.s. I downloaded a default copy of Minimalist. If yours has been modified (which it looks like it has) the line numbers may be different. Look for code similar to the above in index.php and you should find it. If you have trouble, please use a Pastebin to post your copy of index.php.

    Thread Starter jzenman

    (@jzenman)

    Thanks but that didn’t work because I had already got rid of those in the index.php. It looks like what the problem was my inline posts plugin needed to be edited.

    What bothered me the most was the “0 comments” when comments were supposed to be off. So I found that in my inline posts plugin and deleted the comments link line.

    I would think the WordPress settings would over ride any and all plugins and themes. Especially if you’re telling WordPress in the admin to turn off comments. When you still have the link that says “0 comments” it looks like no one cares to even comment on what you wrote when actually you have the comments off.

    Normally when you turn off comments without changing your theme you get a line that says “Comments are off” or something to that effect – not “0 comments.” If that’s not what happened on your site, it may be a flaw in the theme or your plugin.

    Thread Starter jzenman

    (@jzenman)

    But even so “Comments are off” is like saying out loud, “I am being quiet now!” when the librarian just told you to shut up.

    Right. Well, as several of us have already said, removing that line of code usually takes about 3 seconds. ??

    If you’re still having trouble with something in your theme or plug-in, please let us know or start a new thread.

    Thread Starter jzenman

    (@jzenman)

    Isn’t this thread supposed to be for “Feature requests; criticism”? That’s why I started it. It’s just my point of view on what would make things easier for everyone. Looking at the whole picture of how this tool is used in the real world. The real world of people who wouldn’t know where to start to edit a .php file in 3 seconds.

    And no it doesn’t take 3 seconds to remove everything off WordPress to make it look like a website. I have above average computer skills and I know it took me a while. I’m also saying this because I know a lot of people who need a website and this is the easiest tool going right now to get a page online. And you know something is going on when you have the government and media corporations complaining about WordPress. The last thing they want is for everyone to be able to make a webpage.

    Settle down jzenman. It’ll be ok ??

    There are Media and Government sites are ran off of wordpress.

    https://www.honeytechblog.com/top-10-government-sites-powered-by-wordpress/

    I almost feel like your forgetting that WordPress is ‘free.’ Most people will usually hire on someone that is capable of Web Designing. That’s why there is a rise in studies of Web Design and Programming. You can have modifications done to your website for a very cheap fee. It becomes less costly when your not paying for the core.

    Now I do understand that not everyone can afford to hire on a web designer, but you can afford the 19.99 for a beginners PHP/MySQL for dummies book. They are even cheaper used, though they might have a few coffee stains.

    If you want a full blown CMS, choose a full blown CMS. If your wanting a blog, choose WordPress. If your capable of designing and programming and want a CMS, choose WordPress and customize it ??

    Simply stated.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    If this is just critique, then I’m changing it to ‘Not a Support Question.’

    If you want HELP, set it as not-resolved. If you just want to discuss, have at, but that’s not a req for help, per say.

    I get what you’re saying @jzenman. What I’ve found is that I say “WordPress is a good option” and the response is always, “isn’t that for blogs”.

    And they WERE right at one point. WordPress however, is on it’s way to becoming a very well crafted content management system. IT DOES still need adjustments in order to put it over the top. But that’s not to say that it can’t be used to build websites in it’s current form, rather then blogs.

    We built The Total Widget Control Plugin to help make WordPress a very viable CMS solution.

    As for your question, it would require another plugin to do what you’re asking. WordPress is very happy with the direction that they’re going and they’re not going to shift path’s just because some people want to minimize.

    I think what really needs to happen, is that somebody just needs to build a plugin that changes the verbage from blog to website verbage. Such as NEWS instead of POSTS.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 20 total)
  • The topic ‘WordPress Is Nice But… Website or Blog?’ is closed to new replies.