Using WordPress as a Replacement for a Content Management System

[mandy]

This article describes how we used one blogging package (WordPress) to replace a traditional content management system (phpWebSite) to run a community website. As a result, ordinary people in the community can now maintain the site, the site has all sorts of new features such as RSS feeds, and the webmaster can do more useful things (such as hacking WordPress plugins)...

Next, I had to make WordPress work like a CMS. The first clue that WordPress might do the job was its support for static web pages. WordPress provides the usual chronological blog posts (called "Posts"), but it also understands traditional web pages (called "Pages" -- there's an original naming convention for you). You can arrange pages in a hierarchy, with child Pages listed beneath a parent. Pages are essentially static; once you put them on the site, they stay there and don't disappear off into an archive. That sounded like a CMS to me.

I now needed to find a way to use one of these Pages as a home page, which would be displayed in a different layout from the other content pages...

full article: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/...o-cms.html