July 2009

To set up WordPress for both CMS and Blog:

1. Create a Page and call it “Home”. This is your default home page.
2. Create a Page and call it “Blog”. This will show in /blog/.
3. In Settings/Reading,
4. Set to show “Home” as the static page for Pages
5. Set “Blog” as the static page for Posts.
6. In Settings/Permalinks, change the “Common” rule to /blog/%postname%.
7. Ta da! Your pages will be created as mysite.com/page/ and your blog posts will appear in mysite.com/blog/post/.

After 7 years of using handmade PHP pages on LearnIrishGaelic.com, I finally moved the site over to a WordPress installation.

What this means is that I have one of the most mature web application at my fingertips. Adding a new page no longer means creating a new PHP page, and worrying about how to update my navigation menus.

What’s better, I read Brian Yerkes writing about how to use WordPress both as a CMS and Blog. This means that the main part of your site can be static pages, while WordPress still handles /blog/ as a blogging application. Follow the settings above to get your own CMS powered by WordPress, while having a blog section.