Everyone is familiar with the most common WordPress use case – blogging. But what if that isn’t the only way you could utilize WordPress to meet your online needs? What if you didn’t want to make a blog but something else instead?

Sure, there are plenty of other applications. However, WordPress dominates the market with its ease of use and constant community feedback. This leads to regular improvements and new features being introduced. Thanks to the increasing functionality of WordPress, turning it into something more than a blog is not only entirely possible but is how the application is mostly used these days – as a platform to build something different than a blog.

In our latest HostArmada blog post, we will be looking at the top 5 cool ways to use WordPress without making it into a blog. Instead, we will look at ways to shape it into other interesting things you may need!

WordPress for E-commerce

Yes, that’s right! Did you know that with WordPress, you can create an actual e-commerce site? It’s fully possible and has been for some time. This is possible thanks to the WooCommerce plugin – one plugin amongst many that fill a niche role in customizing your WordPress. When you’ve set up WooCommerce, this versatile plugin allows you to track sales, do inventory, and accept reviews.

In addition to that, It can be configured to accept various payment methods, such as PayPal, Skrill, and all sorts of credit cards. An ideal way to start your own online shop with WordPress isn’t it? We think so, but it doesn’t end with WooCommerce. There are plenty of other e-commerce WordPress plugins or solutions that could help you get your store going.

Fostering a forum community via WordPress

Can you create a forum with WordPress? The short answer is yes. The long one is also yes, but let’s talk a bit more about how you can do that, to begin with. When using a plugin called BBPress, you can create different forum categories, reply to topics, improve users’ engagement with some extensions, and have access to tools that let the forum users have their own signatures.

It is useful to know that BBPress is compatible with the Total WordPress theme, and it can be used as a great combination with it. Whether you decide to use this plugin or another one from the vast pool of available forum plugins, you can rest assured that you’ll have the necessary tools to get your forum started.

WordPress for your own Social Network

A lot of people have an ambition to create their own social media platform just like Facebook has become in modern times. Creating something such as Facebook might not be impossible, however will certainly take years to get there. What if you wanted to use something you are familiar with to get you started? What if you could create a social network from the comfort and familiarity of the WordPress application? Well, as you have likely guessed you know where we are going with this. You can do it! The secret is in BuddyPress.

This plugin works well for small social networks, such as for teams, companies, or even college groups. But you can always get even further than that! With WordPress, the sky is the limit when it comes to pretty much any sort of functionality you want to implement. Why not become the new Mark Zuckerberg, eh?

Create a charity with WordPress

Did you know that it’s rather easy to use WordPress to raise funds via WordPress? Charity events are a great way of creating communities with the sole purpose of helping others. By organizing and putting up crowdfunding links to your WordPress site and by using the correct set of plugins, you can motivate and subsequently inspire your visitors and subscribers to patronize a cause, service, organization, or product.

The “Charitable” plugin allows you to use a fundraising toolkit, which provides full control of your fundraising. Through this, you can invite your users to support a certain cause. The plugin is very flexible with the payment gateways it supports and has incorporated PayPal, Stripe, and even offline payments if required.

Just a WordPress job board

Yes, that’s another less well-known niche WordPress can create. You are perfectly capable of creating a WordPress-powered Job board. Like with the other plugins we mentioned so far in this blog post, you can integrate one that will help you make this a reality. There are those that allow you to do paid listings. Some allow quick and easy CV uploads. Others can help you send out daily, weekly, or monthly job alerts. Those are all great features for any aspiring job board WordPress website, to be sure.

However, you should keep in mind that you should have an already established following before you start a job board. There is only disappointment to be had if you get thousands of visitors in a month but end up losing them in the grand scheme of things just as fast as you gained them!

Conclusion

That’s everything that we got for you in terms of useful and cool applications found in the varied WordPress usability that’s just waiting to be tapped into. So if you’d like to make one of those, be sure to consider the options that you have at your disposal when working with WordPress and its many plugins.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at any time. HostArmada remains ready to be deployed 24/7!