So its pretty natural that many people have used WordPress for making there blogs or portals. WordPress as a CMS has developed a lot. It now has lot more features and options as compared to its older versions and its time we take advantage of these features. There is one such work/feature that I would like to discuss today.

I was presented with a nice and big financial portal powered by WordPress. The site was almost a year and a half old With 10 posts added each day. It contained lots of categories, tags, images, plugins and what not. I was to redevelop it. A new theme, new features overall would make it more polished. It was to have features like job board, a forum, ads integration and memberships. It all seemed much nicer to me. Make a local installation of WordPress on my Mac using MAMP, add theme, plugins and get the data. But things started getting ugly. Here is the full story.

I downloaded MAMP and installed in on my Mac so that I can get to run WordPress easily. Once MAMP was installed and running, I downloaded WordPress 3.0 and installed it. It was very easy to install WordPress. Once the setup was done I changed few options in the WordPress setting menu. Do Remember while redevloping a site, u need to copy the same permalink structure as that of the existing site/blog. This helps in keeping your search engine visitors. At this point I also logged into my PHPmyAdmin and exported the WordPress database. This is not required, but I always do it so incase things go wrong I can just delete and import the database instead of installing WordPress again.

Then the theme was added and minor changes were made to suit the portal needs. Plugins where added for funtionalities like job board, security, videos, spam protecion, forum, memberships, etc. Once all this was done the last part left was importing the data from the live site to my local wordpress blog. The reason I wanted to get the data was because I needed to set category menus in the theme and also test the full site before it went live. Now there are few methods that can be used to export the data one WordPress installtion to another. One can use the WordPress export/import feature or one can also direcly export / import the MySQL database. I was more comfortable with the WordPress export / import option.

I exported the wordpress XML file using the export feature from the live blog. The size was 49MB. So while importing I had to change my PHP limits on my local machine. Also while importing the XML file there is an option called “Download and Import file attachments”. I checked this option as almost all of the post contained images which were taken from the live site while importing. This made the importing a long task. Importing over 7000 entries does take time. So instead I found an easy solution. I Googled and found out that there is a program called WXRspliter to split the XML file into small parts which can be easily imported. Thanks to Ranger Pretzel for making such a lovely program. I splitted my XML file into 10 parts and then imported them one by one and the importing went smoothly. All the posts, tags, images, categories were imported perfectly.

Now the site is fully ready on my local machine for testing.

Related posts:

1. Must have Plugins for WordPress.
2. Making your website: Some Pre-made options.
3. WooCommerce Plugin and Theme Installation Video

Having said that, some knowledge of coding or experience, is always an advantage, so that you can make custom changes. But still its not required, because your site would work well even without any changes. Well, lets get to understand each options closely.

Basic or Blog site.

If you plan to make a site wherein you will share your knowledge, write reviews, or on some particular topic on which you can write, then WordPress is the best option to choose. WordPress is a blogging platform. You can install this in a similar manner you install any other software. Many hosting providers offer options to get WordPress installed directly. WordPress is also a good option to make your portfolio site.

Below are some of the websites made using WordPress.
PratikBagaria (yes this too is powered by WP)
FashDesigns

Discussion, Groups, etc.

Now, if you want to make a site where people can come and discuss on topics, get updates and share things. For such sites there are 2 options. You can use PHPBB or Buddy Press.
Both of the names mentioned above do same kind of work, but in a totally different way. PHPBB is a forum script. A forum is a place where people can come, register and discuss on various topics. On the other hand, BuddyPress is a concept which is more close to networking sites. People can come, register and even have their blogs, and discussion groups. Each member has its own profile page, which contains updates about his blog, news and stuff.

Below are some of the forums made using PHPBB.
phpBB Community
Forum4Finance

Buddy Press can be tested using this site.

TestBP

So now its your turn to decide. Its better to make up your mind first as to what matter your site will contain and the main purpose of the site. It then becomes easy to find a solution.

Comment here or contact me if you want to get more information on making websites.

Related posts:

1. Redeveloping a WordPress Blog.
2. Must have Plugins for WordPress.
3. WooCommerce Plugin and Theme Installation Video

Many a times I use WordPress for more then just blogging, I use it for for making forums, photo gallary, portals and more. Plugins helps me to add special functions as well as integration. Here are the plugins which I always install along with my WordPress installation. They are must haves as they make your blog more friendly and organized.

Akismet

This comes pre-installed  with your WordPress Installation. It helps to protect your blog or site from Spam Comments. There is no need for any other plugin or function to stop spam, Akismet takes care of everything easily.

Adsense Manager

So you have decided to earn something from your blog! Adsense Manager will help you organize the ads. It will make blocks or your ad codes, which can be placed anywhere in your design to start showing ads.

Easy Contact

A contact page for your blog is very essential. We don’t want to say “This is my email id, you can mail me here”. This would not look nice and people don’t generally prefer mailing. Instead this plugin will make a simple contact form that can be placed on your site. It also provides spam protection.

All in one SEO Pack

This will have you optimize your site and blog for Search Engines. This will let you specify title, tags, keywords for each page or post individually.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Instead of pasting your Analytics code manually on each page or footer of your blog its advisable that you use this plugin and just enter your Websites tracking code, rest everything will be taken care off by this plugin.

Gravatar

Everyone likes to show some image besides there comment. Also, it looks nice to give your commenters a face. Gravatar will display your users image they have selected to reflect on your blog, whenever they comment.

Pages Comments

Now if your blog is very famous and you are getting loads of comments, its better to break them into pages rather than having a big vertical scroll on your page.

Subscribe to Comments

I always make a point that I install this plugin. It helps in updating everyone about there discussion. It also saves time of your users to manually come and check everytime to see if there is a new comment or reply posted. This is automatically send and email to the reader when a new comment is posted on topic of his interest.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. There is lots to discover in plugins. Keep searching and you will find many.

Let me know if there are some more plugins which you like and install it everytime, so that the same can be featured here as well.

Related posts:

1. Redeveloping a WordPress Blog.
2. WooCommerce Plugin and Theme Installation Video
3. Making your website: Some Pre-made options.