Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’
WordPress – Using it to manage websites
I’ve been playing around with WordPress for about two years now.
I started off using it for typical blog posting, del.icio.us bookmark posting, and a host of other blog/social media type solutions. I began looking into using it to deploy multiple users and blogs for a side-project I was working on with William Hodges call Resellr (private for now). We checked out WordPress MU. It allows for multiple users and blogs to be installed either as subdomains i.e., rob.collaborationchronicles.com or as directories within the domain i.e., collaborationchronicles.com/rob . This is a great tool as it allows the domain admin to control any aspect of the WordPress install, such as themes, plugins, etc., all from within the WordPress MU admin screen. This was a great solution for allowing multiple users to login and post items, photos, etc. More recently I’ve been using WordPress to act as a stand alone website with all the functionality of a blog (time relevant post, heirarchy, tags, categories), but with the functionality of a website (newsletter, contact us, flickr photos). We can use the power of WordPress as a dynamic webapp that can pull content from a variety of social media sources. With the extensibilty of WordPress paired with the community of developers creating wonderful solutions WordPress really is a great fit for websites. I’ll give you a case example of how I used WordPress to create a fully function website on the cheap and in a hurry.
Claremont Food not Lawns is a local community organization that help to spread awareness about food sources and help people convert their lawns into wonderful gardens. I met them at a Wednesday night Green Market in Claremont. They said they needed help to get a website up and running, as the site that they currently had was unfinished. They had one of the vital components to making a sucessful website: content. I met with Mary Beth and Todd to determine their budget and what they needed done. As a community organization they were going to need the following:
- Monthly Newsletter
- Email contact page
- An events page
- Photos
- A news page (this is where the newsletter content will come from)
- Various information pages (how to volunteer, articles, etc.)
- A Youtube video post
- A link roll, resources, friends, etc.
- A way track traffic
- A way to automate the monthly newsletter
I determined that WordPress would be a great solution for their needs and began creating the framework for how the site would function. I compiled a list of the plugins I would require to accomplish this task.
In term of functionality here are the plugins that I use to handle my needs.
Askimet – For comment spam, it comes installed with WordPress, simply active the plugin and enter your API key from WordPress.com
Google Ultimate Analytics – Google tracking for websites. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/
Tan Tan Noodle Toolkit – For handling remote Flickr set as albums on the site. http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/photo-album/
Example: Claremont Food not Lawns Photos
Google XML sitemap plugin- To create XML sitemaps and auto submit to search engines: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
Example: Claremont Food not Lawns Sitemap
Contact Form- To handle emailing from a form on the site: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
Example: Claremont Food not Lawns Contact Us
Google Calendar- To pull events from a shared Google Calendar: http://code.google.com/p/wpng-calendar/
Example: Claremont Food Not Lawns Events Calendar
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