18 Unique Uses of WordPress and the Plugin or Theme Used
Everyone knows that WordPress has been a popular and powerful open source blogging platform. Many people have been using WordPress because of its simplicity and user friendly blogging tool and even as a content management system (CMS).
When extending WordPress functionality for your existing site, you can find dozen of plugins that can help you add-on features without the hassle of changing to another platform. All you have to do is to find the right plugin(s) that you need and install it into WordPress. With the combination of plugins, hacks and creativity, WordPress has been often used in different unique and unconventional ways.
Below we will share with you some of the different unique uses of WordPress and the plugins or themes used.
18 Unique Uses of WordPress
Twitter Site
If you are a twitter fan, and love to build a twitter-like site, the easiest way is to use WordPress with Prologue theme. Go to "Add New Theme" at the admin, do a search for P2 install and activate it.
Forum
If you need to add a simple and light-weight forum to your existing WordPress site, you can try adding 1 of the following forums built for WordPress, instead of installing the full pledged forum which can be overkill or bloated.
More Resources:
Tumblelog
Turn WordPress into a Tumblelog which allows you to make short and quick posts like publishing posts, sharing links, videos, images or whatever little scribbles you want to make online.
More Resources:
- Tumblelog WordPress Theme by Themeshaper
- Pockett by Nyssa J. Brown
CSS Gallery
Most of the CSS Galleries you find online are powered by WordPress. It helps to collect and archive nice websites that can inspire you for your next project.
CSS Gallery Theme by Os Designer
More Resources:
- Css Gallery Theme 2.0 by UrbanTrash
- Snapshot by WooThemes
Community News Site
Building a community news site that aggregate news among your niche help you bring community news to one place.
More Resources:
Photoblog
A photo speaks a thousand words. The use of a photoblog focuses on the photographs rather than text. It helps photo lovers and photographers to share their photos easily, and at the same time has the capabilities of a blog. Simple, no text!
More Resources:
eCommerce Site
WordPress is used as a blog, but what if you need to sell some products, build another eCommerce system? To save trouble, there are some great eCommerce plugins that you can integrate into your existing WordPress system and start selling right away.
More Resources:
Invoice System
As your business grows, you might need to send itemized invoices to your clients. Having an invoice system helps you to keep track of your client's billing and allows your clients to pay using their credit card.
Job Board
Many established blogs offer job board listing among their niche when they have huge readerships. You can turn WordPress into a Job Board that lists the available jobs, and charge job posters for posting their entry.
More Resources:
Business Directory
Easily turn a WordPress site or blog into a simple directory where people can submit their links, and you can moderate those submissions.
Membership Subscription Site
To have pay-to-view, membership-oriented, subscription-based content publishing platform, you can turn a WordPress into a membership subscription site that only paid members can enter.
More Resources:
Contacts and Company Manager
Turn your WordPress into a contacts and company manager to keep track of phone numbers, email addresses, websites, social networks and other types of information regarding your clients.
More Resources:
Digg-like Voting Site
Like the voting system from Reddit of Digg? You can add the voting functionality to your site for visitors to use. With more changes to the themes, you can clone a Digg-like voting site.
Newsletter Mailing System
Sending Newsletters or Electronic Direct Mail has been part of online email marketing. With Feedburner or WordPress plugin you can add the newsletter mailing function into your existing WordPress System.
WordBurner - Newsletter Manager Using WordPress and Feedburner
More Resources:
Wiki
Need a Wiki for your WordPress site? Use this plugin to transform WordPress into a custom, knowledge based application to power your documentation needs. You'll be able to add articles and frequently asked questions, rate content, show related articles, and much more!
Auction Site
It’s a breath of fresh air for the WordPress community. Turn WordPress into a site that hosts auctions on your blog.
Review site
Turn WordPress into a powerful review site engine, allowing you to easily create user-powered review sites on virtually anything – to review products, services or add star ratings to your existing website or blog.
Social Networking Site
Add a social networking layer to a new or existing installation of WordPress MU. This transforms your network of blogs into a social networking site, so each blogger can interact and get to know more about one another.
More Resources:
Other WordPress Use?
There are many different ways we can extend WordPress. Just note that WordPress can only help you to extend to a certain level of functionality. If you need more features, consider other alternatives for your requirements. Remember, it is still a blogging platform.
Have more unique uses of WordPress? Share it in our comments section below.
thank you for the great collection.
this is great roundup overall. thanks for putting them together
Really nice post it would help me alot
Nice list, the auction part was new for me, hehe :) I hope the first author to come up with that idea got his work listed in the WordPress.org showcase, there's a collection of unique WordPress users.
~ K.
Thx for this great list. But what's about Flash Games Site? There ist also a Plugin Suite available to transform WordPress into Online Games Portal.
See here: http://netreview.de/myarcadeblogpro
Best Regards
Daniel
Nice self-promoition plug...
very important plugins, thanks for share..
Excellent plugins list thanks for sharing
~n
I've been using WordPress to run a custom Flash games arcade for almost a year now without any particular arcade plugins. Just a flash embed plugin and everything else to make the site great and presto.
You can check it out at http://physics-games.net
Another example of a non standart use of wordpress. Community for artists and art lovers. Talks, discussions, ratings and so on. Check it here artstork.com
Nice overview. I wasn't aware of several of these uses for WordPress.
Dang, some good stuff on here, unique stuff too. Thanks for WordPress stuff!
Thanks for linking to the WP e-Commerce Plugin & the Wiki Plugin that we made. Its not everyday I read a post that links to both :)
Nice site. Nice article (thanks Japh & my mates at AIOSEOP for the link!!)
WordPress sure has come a long way. From blogging to WP Auctions? Amazing!
Thanks for mentioning RoloPress. We really appreciate it! We just put up a demo site so people can see how it works: http://demo.rolopress.com.
Thanks again!
Thank-you Terrance. Was going off to bed as your website was going to be my last site to see.
Wow, interesting WordPress plug-ins. I'm now wide awake, itching to get finding out more and trying these plugins on my blogs. Off looking over RoloPress and WordBurner to start.
Thanks, Cheers
thanks. nice info. realy usefull
Wow.. thank you
never though that wordpress can be used like that
Thank you...
wordpress rock.. :)
Nice list!
I didn't even know that there is a Wiki plugin for WP!
It's great!
thanks
Hi, I´m Looking to use wordepress like a electronic journal, with articles/research, but I didn´t find plugins or themes for this use.
Thanks.
Great Post
Hi, does anyone of you know if it's possible to use wordpress as project manager?
One of the best list's of WP modules that I have seen in a long time, thanks for sharing.
Great list and timely too - we released Accumulo today :) More info here on the Accumulo release post
these are simply stunning........ these people make our lives so simple :)
thanks a ton
Nice collection :-)
Terrance
I wrote a similar post on W3Avenue back in October: http://bit.ly/kq2nP.
WordPress is such a wonderful platform, you keep on looking for more - and the amazing part is that most of the time you succeed.
Good job and best wishes.
The RoloPress plugin was very nice im doing a project with that plugin, and works perfect.
Woho finally find you "FV Community News"! :D
Awesome list. Very inspiring to see such unique WordPress powered sites.
Great round up. I miss a portfolio theme for WordPress here.
Thanks
Great Article and awesome collection. Thank for sharing this information.
WordPress plugins do their best jobs. I love wordpress. and this article is very useful. thank you.
Thanks for the amazing list. I was just wondering the "forum" plugin does it kill lot of bandwidth?
Thank you for this list. I have been wanting to incorporate some of these ideas into my blogs. Now I know that I can.