Self-Hosted WordPress

As part of domain hosting setup, we will also configure a self-hosted WordPress installation. During the second half 2009, we looked at several content management systems, blogging engines, and other open source web page creation tools. We installed them, tested them, and discussed them extensively. As a result, we came to the conclusion that WordPress is the most useful system, taking into consideration the wide range of non-profit needs and capabilities a website system would need to serve.

Ubiquity
We have found WordPress to be the preferred and most widely used system by developers and designers.

Enhanceability
WordPress creators have taken extra time to perfect the injection points for enhancements, which can happen in two ways. The first enhacement method involves “themes”, which deal with most, if not all, design issues and the overall look and feel of a website. This includes how the menu is rendered, how the front page looks, how flexible a header graphic is, the inclusion of a sidebar, and how archive pages are handled. The second way to enhance WordPress is via plug-ins, which are related to the feature set of a site.  The most commonly used plug-ins deal with management of comment spam on a blog, and add social sharing links on the bottom of each page.

Grows with Your Needs
Over the last few years, we have found that  basic features may get you started quickly, but then, with usage and practice, the need and want for more features, additional options and an updated design begins to creep into the mind of website owner. They then find that their current system doesn’t allow for all or some of the added needs or a new design. And, in order to accommodate additional features or a new design, the entire site would need to be recreated from the ground up; in essence, work completed in previous years, has to be done again. With WordPress, your information on pages and posts is stored in a database, and is always available to you. If you have added needs and you need to change to a theme with more options, you can simply obtain a more feature-rich theme, and apply it to the current WordPress installation. In this case, only minor adjustments would typically need to be made. Or, perhaps you need a better image gallery or enhanced subscriber administration. With WordPress, chances are, there is already a plug-in available to add the desired feature to your site.

Documentation & Self-Study Material
Although we are scheduling WordPress beginners and WordPress advanced classes, you will not always have the time for classroom instruction, or you are looking interested in a very specific feature or information. WordPress comes with a incredibly large amount of documentation, including a huge library of user guides. For quick learners, there is also a large library of How-to-Videos. Some of the documentation is highly technical, and some is user-oriented.

Resources Available
Many non-profits do not have the ability to invest a lot of time and money into education, but are always looking for volunteers to augment the staff’s knowledge. Because WordPress is so ubiquitous, the knowledge is also widespread. Any investment in learning and mastering WordPress you, your staff and volunteers make, is not limited to our service or your organization. The knowledge gained can be re-used in other areas of life. Designers and programmers that specialized in WordPress are also available for specific customization. The architecture of plug-ins and themes allows for very granular adoption of the feature set, and reduces the risk of a large re-development initiative or investments in a re-design.

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