Using WordPress to Manage your Department’s Web Site
Mar
18
Back in October, Prentiss Lee Ladkani, webmaster for the College of Education, sent out an e-mail asking if anyone in UF’s web community used WordPress to manage their sites.
Carlos Morales, webmaster for the College of Medicine, responded saying his college uses WordPress extensively. The sites that are managed by WordPress include their news site called Insider, the department of radiology, and the electronic medical records site.
Morales also included a few short descriptions of the sites:
- The Insider was the college’s first implementation and uses an independent WordPress installation, LDAP authentication and minor customizations.
- The department of radiology is also an independent installation with LDAP authentication. In addition, they use WordPress sharing with the directory database to list faculty members.
- The electronic medical records site is an example of a site managed by WordPress MU, or multi-user, which allows them to create multiple sites without having to install WordPress bases for each one.
Morales also wrote about the success of working with WordPress MU. “It’s so easy to work with”, Morales wrote, “it takes me seconds to create an entirely independent site based off of my templates.”
Working with WordPress MU was enough of a success that the department rolled out a college-wide site publishing service called Medinfo Sites that manages everything including blogs and traditional pages.
The sites supports comments, so long as you login with your GatorLink.
“I love the flexibility and power WordPress offers, and we’re constantly improving and tweaking the features and designs,” Morales concluded.
While I found that e-mail informative, I decided to get some more background information and sent Morales a follow-up e-mail. Here are the questions and answers:
When did your department decide to start using WordPress and why?
Sometime around March 2008 we were (charged with the task of) with creating an internal news site for the College of Medicine. I came back a few days later knowing WordPress would be the perfect solution. I jumped into it head first and began learning how to use the system, modify existing templates, and eventually create my own custom templates. The result was the Insider, which continues to be improved every chance I get (but is still heavily based on pre-made templates).
How has WordPress improved your web site?
WordPress offered a solution that removed me from the role of touching content. This let me focus on how best to display content to our different users. WordPress saves me time because it makes it easy for a web-novice to manage the content on their site. It saves us money because we don’t have to hire expensive web developers to try and recreate the same thing, or maintain it, or expand it (which would be impossible to do, seeing as how hundreds contribute to the WordPress core).
Would you recommend WordPress to other departments in UF’s Web community?
I make my rounds advising units and colleges on WordPress (and WordPress MU) regularly. I feel it’s a content management system that will give our sites a needed boost in features, function, and usability, while at the same time saving the university some money. I really believe in the product and the community around it.
If anyone has any comments or questions about using WordPress, feel free to add them here.
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