As we discussed in a previous post, WordPress has evolved into much more than a blogging platform. In fact, it can be used as more than a content management system (CMS). The following themes and plugins demonstrate the various uses of WordPress. This list by no means exhausts all possibilities, but it should hopefully inspire you to think outside the box with your WordPress site.
1. Customer Feedback
It’s no trade secret that business owners should listen to what their customers are saying. Otherwise how will you know what to change and improve? There are actually some WP themes specially tailored for collecting customer feedback, such as Ideas from AppThemes. Responsive and SEO optimised, this theme is compatible with WordPress 4.0 and WooCommerce.
2. YouTube
Have you ever wanted to replicate the YouTube experience on your site? Well, you can with themes such as VideoTube, which is compatible with WordPress 4.0. The responsive theme allows users to embed or upload videos and the homepage is easy to build with plenty of widgets. The theme includes automatic video resizing for thumbnails, has a like button and view counter and comes with easy to change theme colours.
3. Help Desk
When you need to provide your users with a knowledge base and help desk, you can’t go wrong with the Support Desk theme. Not only is it responsive and compatible with WordPress 4.0, it includes a community forum powered by bbPress and a built-in live search feature and allows you to create multiple FAQ pages for recurring questions.
4. Booking System
Suppose you want to enable users to book rooms, venues or tables. The Booking System Pro plugin supports several configurations and can be combined with WooCommerce so you can accept payments. Before you buy, just make sure that the plugin has the right features for your business model.
5. Twitter
The p2 theme, created by WordPress, will transform your site into a powerful, Twitter-like platform with inline comments, a posting form right on the homepage, inline editing of posts and comments and real-time updates. At SGD we’ve been using it for internal communication and we’re quite pleased with the experience! And since Automattic is running the show, you can rest assured that the theme will stay up-to-date.
6. Amazon Store
If you sell products on Amazon, you can buy a plugin to add directly into a WooCommerce store. The plugin will pull in products from Amazon that you can list on your site. It links directly with your Amazon affiliate account so that any sale that’s made will earn you commission, and what’s more, it pulls in all of the product information, specifications, images and reviews in a click of a button.
7. Real Estate
Real Homes is really an invaluable theme for real estate professionals. Responsive and compatible with WordPress 4.0, this theme is packed with useful features such as Advanced Search, Google Map with property location markers, simple & grid listing, user login & register, front end property submit & edit, payment integration with PayPal, plugin support, custom widgets, various templates, easy theme options, easy to use meta-boxes and Google reCAPTCHA support.
If you would like any of these features incorporated into you site, or if you have another idea, please feel free to drop us a line. We’d love to get in touch!
Image © Mehmet Cetin
