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WordPress in HigherEd
22
WORDPRESS IN HIGHER ED HOW WORDPRESS IS BEING USED IN HIGHER EDUCATION
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Some brief information about the use of WordPress in higher education, with details about its usage at University of Mary Washington
Transcript of WordPress in HigherEd
WORDPR
ESS IN H
IGHER
EDH
OW
WO
RD
PR
ES
S I S
BE
I NG
US
ED
I N H
I GH
ER
ED
UC
AT
I ON
WHAT IS WORDPRESS
• Began in 2003 as a blogging platform
• Began to be used heavily as a CMS in 2010 (version 3.0)
• WordPress 3.5 has been downloaded more than 11 million times
• WordPress is used on over 16% of all websites throughout the Web
• WordPress is used on over 50% of websites that use a CMS
WHO USES WORDPRESS?
• Many small business and hobby sites
• CNN, the New York Times and many other major news outlets
• GM, UPS and Sony
• TechCrunch, Mashable, TheNextWeb and most major tech blogs
WHO USES WORDPRESS IN HIGHER ED?
• UMW was 1 of the first to use WordPress as a blogging platform, and 1 of the first to use WordPress as its website CMS
• Other institutions currently using WordPress as a CMS include:• University of Florida (http://ufl.edu/)• Boise State University (http://www.boisestate.edu/)• Southern Arkansas University (http://web.saumag.edu/)• University of Arkansas at Little Rock (http://ualr.edu/)• Lafayette College (http://www.lafayette.edu/) – the first known to go full-
WordPress• University of Central Arkansas (http://uca.edu/)• Maryville University (http://www.maryville.edu/)• John Carroll University (http://sites.jcu.edu/)• …and many, many more (http://wordpress.org/showcase/tag/education/)
NEW INSTITUTIONS ALL THE TIME
Many institutions are thinking of moving to WordPress in the near future:
• Butler University
• Colby College
• University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Colorado Mountain College
• Texas Christian University
• UT Health Center – San Antonio
• …and many more
WHY
WORDPR
ESS?
HO
W W
AS
WO
RD
PR
ES
S C
HO
SE
N A
T U
MW
?
IT GREW ON US
• UMWBlogs began in WordPress ~2007
• Open to all staff, faculty and students
• Complete freedom and flexibility
• Grew exponentially
• UMW website was running on homegrown/Contribute hybrid
• New microsites kept getting set up in UMWBlogs
IT MADE SENSE
• UMWBlogs created ~5000 existing WP users on campus
• UMW is open environment/WordPress is open – Common values
• Interactivity• Innovation• Community
• Better support than many commercial platforms
• Full customization
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbWg-mozGsU (NSFW?)
TECH S
PECS
WH
AT
DO
ES
IT
TA
KE
TO
RU
N W
OR
DP
RE
SS
?
REQUISITE KNOWLEDGE
• LAMP Environments
• PHP• Object-oriented programming• WordPress APIs
• HTML/CSS
IS WORDPRESS SCALABLE FOR HIGHER ED?WordPress.com runs on WordPress!
UMWBlogs
• ~7600 blogs
• ~10,000 users
UMW.edu
• 51 networks
• 288 sites
• ~30,000 published content pieces• 10,000 pages• 15,000 posts• ~5,000 miscellaneous content pieces
• Avg. 15,000 visits/day
HOW BIG OF A SERVER IS NEEDED?
UMW.edu is running on the following hardware:
MySQL running on separate server
Nginx running as proxy cache in front of Apache (http://j.mp/13FcTj9)
*Scale appropriately based on expected traffic
Operating system Ubuntu Linux 10.10
Kernel and CPU Linux 3.2.0-32-generic on x86_64
Processor informationIntel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5660 @ 2.80GHz, 4 cores
Real memory 11.74 GB total, 1.44 GB used
HOW IS IT SET UP?
At UMW, we use a “multi-network” setup
Development, Staging and Production servers (not automatically synced)
Lafayette (@mackensen) has a unique way of implementing
WHAT
DOESN’T
IT D
O?
SLICES, DICES; DOESN’T JULIENNE FRIES
• Won’t write/organize content for you
• Workflow
• Asset management
• Doesn’t necessarily enforce good design decisions
• User-level permissions
PLUGINS TO IMPROVE INTERFACE
• EditFlow – Implements some workflow capabilities
• CMS Tree Page View – Allows drag-and-drop re-order of pages
• RoleScoper – allows granular permission management
• WhiteLabel CMS – rearranges admin area, customizes login screen
• Types and WPToolset – implements custom content types, custom taxonomies, custom fields and template manipulation
• Document repository – manage all documents in single library, across multisite, with persistent links to latest version
• JetPack – adds multiple new features, including spelling/grammar check, image carousels, ability to post via email, custom CSS, etc.
These are not the only plugins that do this, just some examples
OTHER RECOMMENDED PLUGINS
• GravityForms – allows easy creation and management of forms, including integration with Akismet, PayPal, MailChimp and more
• TablePress – allows easy creation and management of data tables, including JavaScript features to allow table sorting on front-end
• TubePress Pro – implements ability to include dynamic video galleries from multiple sources (Vimeo, YouTube, etc.)
• BackupBuddy – allows backup, export and import of full WordPress sites
• Regenerate Thumbnails – recreates all WordPress image sizes after settings changes
• W3 Total Cache – implements multiple layers of caching and performance optimization
• Page Links To – allows easy redirects
• …and more at http://j.mp/17XzSw0
LESSONS LE
ARNED
WH
ER
E W
E W
EN
T W
RO
NG
WHEEL OF MORALITY, TURN, TURN, TURN;TELL US THE LESSON THAT WE SHOULD LEARN• Don’t do it all at once
• Do as much as you can yourself
• Don’t expect perfection• Iterate, iterate, iterate
• Don’t reinvent the wheel
CALL M
E, MAY
BE?
HO
W T
O C
ON
T AC
T O
R S
T AL K
ME
QUESTIONS? COMMENTS?
Twitter: @cgrymala
Website(s): http://umw.edu/ (Multi-Network Setup)
http://ten-321.com/
http://svn.ten-321.com/ (SVN Repo)
http://wphighed.org/ (WP resources for Higher Ed)
Email: [email protected]
SpeakerRate: http://spkr8.com/s/10608
http://about.me/cgrymala
