Which themes and plugins are commonly used when wordpress is used as a CMS? Something that eliminates post timestamp, comments, RSS feeds and add configurable cascading menus in the website header and page specific menus in the sidebar.
kleo: all of those attributes can very easily be removed with comment tags...if you go into your "Appearance" window and look at the Main Index or Post templates you can find where date/time/RSS is located and comment it out...as for comments, that should also be in the post template, just comment it out and turn comments off in the admin panel.
I use semiologic on a lot of my sites. Use the cache plugin if you are planning to get a lot of traffic.
Yes, there isn't a Wordpress forum. I too often find myself liking the simplicity of Wordpress for my sites which are not blogs persay. I'd like to know more about this too, unfortunately, there's not too much I can tell you right now.
There are a number of themes on the market that can accomplish this, and if you are willing to spend a few bucks nearly all the designers will remove the parts that you don't want to show. WP Remix is a cool piece of software (although I have not purchased it), Brain Garder's Themes are configurable, One Theme. In fact there are probably half a dozen out of the box solutions that can be easily modified to do whatever you want. Most people are looking for "free" and most good designers don't go the extra mile to make their free themes incorporate so easily the CMS type features. I am currently doing a lot more Wordpress then Joomla after the release of WP 2.7, and I set almost everything up as a CMS.
You can indeed ask this in the Wordpress forums: http://wordpress.org/support/ Note that you can also use custom themes. Our Wordpress website uses a completely custom theme. You can also use the huge list of free themes by doing this Google search: free wordpress seo themes The reason I added SEO is because you'll want to get traffic, and an SEO optimized site is where you need to start.
I never said that I'm looking for free themes and plugins - paid ones are ok as well as long as they work well.
Well, There are Many themes out there premium and free ones which can serve your needs as a CMS for your website. But Still if you're really looking for perfect CMS theme for wordpress, then go for custom made themes. And for that you have to hire a talented designer and a coder.
The whole point of CMS and using wordpress is to avoid customization and amount of time it takes to develop a website and maintain it. I don't see how having something custom would achieve any of these goals. I've looked at WP-Remix and it looks pretty much like well packaged rubbish to me. Not worth it's money at all. Semiologic wasn't that great either. The best one I've found so far is Atahualpa - it's the closest to what I was looking for.
Sucks big time. Just look at your Page Source to discover 760 rows of rubbish JavaScript and CSS. That's Seven Hundred Sixty rows! Wake up!!! Slows down the navigation and administration tremendously regardless of the browser. After a couple of hours of wasting my time, Atahualpa went rattling down my trashbin putting a big fat period to the experience with suggestion I switch my Explorer to some kind of other browser (cannot remember the name). Globbits! Nobody tells me what to do! And I actually hate to say that, because the guys have spent loads of time creating this. I really hope that the next version will solve the problems. I really wish good luck to them. The closest thing to perfection that I've seen so far is Arthemia. http://michaelhutagalung.com/2008/05/arthemia-magazine-blog-wordpress-theme-released/ I've used free version and had a test-drive of the paid version. Liked both, will probably soon switch some of my client blogs to Arthemia. It is not perfect but then if you're not afraid of editing the theme (through the in-built WP theme editor), you'll get everything you need. A good suggestion is to use "Advanced Category Excluder" plugin with it to make the most of the unique category management of Arthemia. I loved http://www.sizlopedia.com/tigopedia/ but now it is a bit dated. Black Splat is easy to customize (and it genuinely passes XHTML validation). http://samk.ca/freebies/free-wordpress-theme-blacksplat/ Well, yeah, there are many nice themes out there but the bottomline is that if you want to make the maximum, you'll have to get down customizing whatever theme you use.
If you know a little yada yada in html, css, and php. So maybe these might be help a lil': First, follow the codex here: http://codex.wordpress.*org/Making_Your_Blog_Appear_in_a_Non-Root_Folder (please remove the [dot] with ".", since i have no privileges (yet) to put a direct link in my posts ) After that, you will have a brand new blog.php (follow the instruction above to know what kind of php code you should write on it. --> as simple as copy paste) Second, you will have a home.php. Whether it's exist (before) or not, change ALL of the code of this home.php with the "page-without-sidebar" templates php codes. "Don't forget to backup your default home.php" If ur blog's theme didn't have any, try Inove Wordpress theme, since it has the "page-without-sidebar" templates with the packages. IF YOU USE INOVE, then you should see these on your home.php: <?php /* Template Name: Page without sidebar */ ?> <?php include('templates/start.php'); ?> <!-- container START --> <div id="container" class="one-column"> <?php include('templates/header.php'); ?> <!-- content START --> <div id="content"> <!-- main START --> <div id="front"> <?php include('front.php'); ?> </div> <!-- main END --> <div class="fixed"></div> </div> <!-- content END --> <?php include('templates/end.php'); ?> Code (markup): Take a look at the 8-10th lines. You will notice something different, isn't it? Your default customized home.php SHOULD be like these (once again: IF YOU USE INOVE): <div id="main"> <?php include('templates/page.php'); ?> </div> Code (markup): That means you should make a new div's CSS: "front" and a new "front.php" Have fun filling this front.php with FULL html content with all of divs you like (Yeah, no php codes required here!). Of course, don't forget to add their css' to your style.css. If u're still confused, you could try a nice free html templates you like from the internet. Copy the image required by the divs'you want to add to your wordpress theme image folder, the divs' CSS, and the html for your new home.php Still confused? I know.. I'm sorry if my tutorial here is hard to understand one. But still, these are the great ways to save about $70 to buy a premium wordpress CMS themes like WPREMIX instead of make it yourself for free. A little reward for yourself after these confusing tutorial? Hell yeah! Check this out: Your CMSed Homepage --> My blog's sketch in Indonesian mixed with English. Logically-structured blog content Now you have a WordPress-managed CMS with a unique front page and logically-structured blog content, congrats!