The Power of WordPress

Our succeeding with small projects webinar is a toolkit of processes, techniques and platforms that mStoner uses to produce smart solutions for the many smaller sites that we’ve launched for clients. Today we focus in a bit more detail about one piece of that toolkit we feel is worth your attention: WordPress.

Way Beyond Blogging

WordPress may have begun solely as a blogging platform, but it has grown into the most popular CMS solution in the world, dominating the market with almost 55% of CMS-enabled sites running on the platform. WordPress has long since shed its identity as merely a solid blogging option, and has become the CMS of choice for those who need a powerful and easy-to-use system that can be implemented rapidly. We at mStoner think highly enough of WordPress that we upgraded our website CMS to WordPress in 2012.

Why can WordPress be great for .edu?

• Ease of Use: The WordPress content editing environment is widely viewed as being the most highly usable of all CMS options, including more costly enterprise systems. This is a real strength of WordPress and the primary reason that it is so popular. The administrator interface allows users to manage pages with a minimum of coding expertise.
• Support: It is easy to find support for WordPress from various places including via the community, freelance developers, and via robust plugins that have a solid track record and ongoing support/updates.
• Cost: As an open-source solution, WordPress does not come with any licensing fees, and it requires less internal technical expertise and resources to implement than many mid-level, commercial enterprise systems.
• Time to Implement: WordPress implementations offer time savings that aren’t always available with other systems. Specifically, the ability to run content migration in parallel with design production can help shorten a project’s timeline.

Great examples of WordPress in Higher Education

There are tons of great examples of WordPress .edu sites. The official WordPress showcase is a great place to start, and here are a few we think are worth taking a look at:

• Boston University Admissions
• University of Toronto Alumni
• Lafayette College
• University of Mary Washington

If you’ve been trying to decide how to tackle some of the projects on your plate that aren’t full-blown campus-wide relaunches, consider taking a look at the small project success webinar and exploring WordPress as a CMS. If you’d like to know more just contact Mallory Wood, our director of marketing, at mallory.wood@mstoner.com.