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All Things Digital

By this time, I think all of you know that I’m an avid rabid fan of WordPress, the free open source content management software that powers not only my own website but also that of my travel and tourism design company, Getaway Graphics. In fact, these days I use WordPress to power just about everything from photographer’s websites to restaurants, universities, pubs and farm orientated sites.It’s not because it’s free (although that’s a great reason) it’s also because the tool has made life easier for my clients by providing an easy to upgrade, easy to use interface for routine monthly maintenance to complex marketing tools.

The Christian Science Monitor

WordPress as an Online Magazine Platform

Today I wanted to look at one of the cooler applications of the WordPress platform, online magazines. The blogging tool is a natural fit for online magazines (sometimes called eZine’s) since it’s built in method of creating new posts is similar to that used to create complex newspaper articles. Web sites such as the Christian Science Monitor make extensive use of the build in Search Engine Optimization, as well as automated URL optimization which changes boring web addresses into easy to read, SEO friendly strings.

Chick Speak

Separation of Design and Code

What seperates WordPress from other free open source tools such as Drupal or Mambo is it’s ability to be easily customized with little programing knowledge or experience and to keep those customizations outside the core code. Each website (or in this case magazine) uses a single theme to make itself look and act different but is infact still running virtually all the code of other WordPress websites.  Since all the files which make a website look unique are stored in a single directory, the core components can be updated without having to recode special features or functions.

Oddity Cinema

Stability of Code

Since the front end (what the consumer sees) is always stored in a unique template directory, the rest of the WordPress structure is common among millions of WP installations around the world. I believe this is the single strongest reason to utilize the platform since unlike traditional CMS solutions or custom tools, the WordPress website is being tested, fixed and upgraded routinely by millions of users around the world. There isn’t another CMS  tool in the world that can claim that.

Backend

Boys Life

Finally, the best reason to using WordPress to power a magazine website has to be the easy of use, training and consistency the platform gives to a company or organization. Once trained on using the WordPress system (which usually takes a few hours) users can easily update, publish and manage thousands of pages of content without having to use other tools such as FTP or Dreamweaver.

I started writing this article as a simple means of showing you what I consider to be five excellent WordPress magazine themes but found myself writing a short essay on the positive aspects of the tool. Part of me considered changing the title or even tossing out this piece (as often happens) but instead I’ve decided to keep it along with the five great WordPress magazine themes that I’ve used as feature content for the piece. I hope you’ve discovered something new about WP from me here and if not, I at least hope you’ve seen some great examples of WordPress websites.

The five examples above are:

1. http://allthingsd.com/
   
2. http://www.csmonitor.com/
3. http://chickspeak.com/
4. http://odditycinema.com/
5. http://boyslife.org/