WordPress’s blogging features are the reason WordPress was created in the first place. It started out as a blogging platform. It has since grown into a full-fledged content management system, and is fast becoming a platform on which applications can be built. Both the CMS use case and the applications use case present the possibility that a site owner might not need any of WordPress’s blogging features. While I think most sites have a use for a blog, (you need a way to keep your visitors up-to-date with what’s going on with your business or application, after all), the ability to disable blogging features until they’re desired is something that’s been lacking from the WordPress ecosystem for a long time.
As with everything else, there’s a plugin for that
With the Disable Blogging plugin, you now have the ability to disable all of WordPress’s blogging features non-destructively. This means that, if down the line you decide you want to add a blog to your site after you’ve disabled all the blogging features, you can do so by simply deactivating the plugin.
What features does it disable?
The plugin disables the following features by hiding them as long as it’s active.
- • Posts and everything related to them
- Comments and everything related to them
- Comments from pages
- Blog related widgets
- Pingbacks, Trackbacks, and XML-RPC header links
- Biographical info and Admin Color schemes on the user profile page
- Press This Bookmarklet
- Posts via email
- Howdy, help tabs, and query strings from static resources
Think of this as the nuclear option if you want to do away with blogging on your site completely.
There are two things that immediately stand out during testing. The first is that logging in takes users to their profile page instead of the Dashboard. Second, the Dashboard and the link to it are gone. If you’re used to seeing the WordPress dashboard, running WordPress with it disabled can be a jarring experience, and, if you use this on a client’s site, and you’ve shown them how to update the site before adding this plugin, you’ll want to explain to them what they should expect before you enable this.
The WordPress dashboard serves a useful purpose, especially on sites where you need to quickly glance at things like e-commerce data, so I would only recommend using this in situations where your client isn’t depending on getting easy access to their data snapshots. It’s not that it’s not possible for them to navigate to the various sections of the administration panel to find their various stats, but it can be seen to add a layer of complexity.
If you’re looking for some user testing data before you make the leap, check out Jeff’s post on WordPress Tavern to get a sense of what it might be like to activate this plugin on your site.
All of this notwithstanding, if you know that, (at least for now), you don’t want a blog on your site, this is a good option that allows you to disable it until it’s needed.
Good content is the foundation of any website’s success. It doesn’t matter how awesome your product or service is, or how much of a difference it can make in the lives of others. If you don’t tell anyone about it, clearly and while demonstrating that you have an excellent grasp of your subject and its audience, you will not make a sale.
There’s a lot of writing advice on the web, and it can be hard to find out which advice is best for your situation. If you’re looking for a place to start, I would recommend the following from Copyblogger on writing with power and authority.
I would also recommend studying their archives. There’s a lot of free, actional content you can use to build your own content library, and you can use all of this material regardless of how successful you are right now, or regardless of how you measure success. All it takes is a serious time investment on your part, but if you’re trying to run a business and make sales, you already knew that you have to invest a lot of time and hard work.
I’m working on a site for a client that includes e-commerce functionality. Since they have to ship physical goods, and are using Stripe already, and since they don’t want to bring in another outside service that they have to pay monthly for to handle their shopping cart, I’ve selected WooCommerce as the overarching plugin to handle most of the e-commerce. Most of the e-commerce sites I’ve done over the last couple of years have included third-party shopping carts, and so WooCommarce itself hasn’t figured much in my workflow, and I was expecting this experience to contain just as much unpleasantness with regard to accessibility as it did a year ago when I last looked seriously at WooCommerce.
I am very pleasantly surprised, delighted, and pleased to report that Automattic has been working on the accessibility of WooCommerce since they first acquired WooThemes a year ago. It’s got a ways to go, (especially since Select II is involved), but there’s definite improvement here. They’re using Aria in a few cases where necessary due to some custom controls, and they’re using it properly. I believe Automattic deserves praise for this, and encouragement to keep up the good work. Making WooCommerce accessible is going to be a long, hard slog, and I’m very glad to see things heading in the right direction. So keep up the great work Automatticians, and I’ll be cheering you on every step of the way.