My slides for the IWMW 2010 conference, Sheffield, July 13th 2010. I discuss the use of WordPress in the context of my work at the University of Lincoln.

1. Beyond blogging
Joss Winn
University of Lincoln
http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/tag/wordpress
jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk
http://twitter.com/josswinn
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

2. WordPress is a useful
way of
understanding the
world we live in*
*I explain myself in the notes to these slides

3. People seem to like WordPress
wordpress.com

4. Institutional benefits?
It's easier to support hundreds of blogs
on an institutional platform than
hundreds of blogs on third-party
services

5. Enhances the university brand.
Open and progressive
Good academic content is good
SEO

6. A WordPress Network is a
repository of research,
teaching and learning

7. “Can WordPress be a
VLE
PLE
LMS
CRM No!
ECMS
etc...?”

8. It's Open Source.
What about support?

9. WordPress = Blogs, right?
Nope

10. ‘BuddyPress’
Just a set of
social networking
plugins for
WordPress.
No big deal.

11. BuddyPress: Social Network
Blogs: Websites (optional)
WordPress Network: Administration

12. Posts = dynamic content
Pages = static content
Categories = formal taxonomy
Tags = informal taxonomy
Widgets = versatile miscellany
*Custom post types in WP3

13. Members = Find people
Groups = Identify with others
Activity = Track site-wide activity
Friends = Connect with peers
Messaging = Email
Profiles = Digital identity
(Forums = requires bbPress)

14. It’s time to
stop thinking
about ‘blogs’
and start
thinking
about
WordPress
as a
technology
platform

15. OPACPress: Turning a WordPress
Network on its head
http://lncn.eu/fy9

16. Scholarly publishing with WordPress
http://lncn.eu/cq9

17. Addicted to feeds?
http://lncn.eu/a29
http://example.com/feed/
http://example.com/feed/rss/
http://example.com/feed/rss2/
http://example.com/feed/rdf/
http://example.com/feed/atom/
http://example.com/category/my_category/feed/
http://example.com/tag/my_tag/feed/
http://example.com/tag/tag1+tag2+tag3/feed/
http://example.com/comments/feed/
http://example.com/2009/01/01/my-latest-post/feed
http://example.com/2009/01/01/my-latest-post/feed/?withoutcomments=1
http://example.com/author/joss/feed
http://example.com/2009/feed
http://example.com/2009/01/feed
http://example.com/2009/01/15/feed

18. WordPress
Your “Social Repo”
http://lncn.eu/k67

19. Real-time Jail breaking
http://lncn.eu/g25

20. Deliberative documents
http://lncn.eu/hj5

21. Journals
http://lncn.eu/ce6

22. Scientific Publishing
http://lncn.eu/ci5

23. … and more
Microblogs
Lifestreams
e-Portfolios
LDAP/AD support
Shibboleth support
etc, etc, etc...

24. Things you should know
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
http://codex.wordpress.org
http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks/
http://codex.buddypress.org/
http://wpdocs.labs.thedextrousweb.com/
http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.0

25. These are slides to accompany a presentation at the Institutional Web Manager's
Workshop, Sheffield, UK. 13th July 2010.
1

26. WordPress is a useful
way of
understanding the
world we live in*
*I explain myself in the notes to these slides
02/23/10 2
Hello. My name is Joss. I work at the University of Lincoln, UK, in the Centre for
Educational Research and Development. We’ve been using WordPress for about two
years now. When I joined the university, I asked for my own server. If you’re going to do
research and development with educational technology, having your own server is a good
idea. I’m not an ‘IT guy’. I just think that if servers are the machines that run the code
that runs the ‘developed world’, I’d like to know how they work. Before I started working
at the university, I’d never taken any interest in WordPress or web applications in
general. I liked tinkering with Operating Systems in my spare time.
I like WordPress because it’s a useful way of framing the Internet. I’ve learned a lot by
approaching the web and WordPress in this way. Similarly, I learned a lot about
Operating Systems by using Linux.

27. People seem to like WordPress
wordpress.com
02/23/10 3
Why WordPress?
It’s popular. Millions of people choose to use it, support it and develop for it.
It’s flexible. Think of it as a web development platform, not just ‘blogging software’. The
development of WordPress tracks broader developments in web technology. Sometimes,
it leads them.
It’s open source. No license fees, no restrictions on use. You are part of a community.
Statistics: 25 million sites (http://en.wordpress.com/stats),
(http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins), over 10000 plugins (
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes). around 1200 themes
Its use continues to grow (http://google.com/trends?q=wordpress,+blogger,
+movable+type,+typepad&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

28. Institutional benefits?
It's easier to support hundreds of blogs
on an institutional platform than
hundreds of blogs on third-party
services
02/23/10 4
The way the multi-site environment works means that I effectively support one blog,
rather than many. If a whole class of students needs blogs or adding to a single blog, I can
have this set up in minutes.

29. Enhances the university brand.
Open and progressive
Good academic content is good
SEO
02/23/10 5
All blogs get a university domain name. The university brand is valued by many staff and
students. The rapid production of generally good quality content is good SEO for the
university as a whole.

30. A WordPress Network is a
repository of research,
teaching and learning
02/23/10 6
Blog posts from across your WP platform can be aggregated into a single site for
browsing, searching. Imagine how useful an institutional archive might be if the majority
of staff and students used WordPress to write about their research, teaching and learning.
Instead of your institutional scholarly output being held in Word and PDF documents,
they can be published in modern, open web standards such as HTML and RSS. When
they’re published in this way, your collective research, teaching and learning, can be
visualised, interpreted and discovered in ways that are still being invented. Your content
will move with and benefit from progress made on the web.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/

31. “Can WordPress be a
VLE
PLE
LMS
CRM No!
ECMS
etc...?”
02/23/10 7
WordPress is a very versatile tool, but don't expect it to do everything. Organisations
really need to move away from thinking about 'one tool to rule them all'. It's tempting to
work this way because it's easier for people to learn just one tool and easier for
organisations to support just one tool. But if you want a VLE/CRM or ECMS, etc. I
would recommend you look elsewhere. Having said that, I do think that WordPress is a
good technology platform, so if you're prepared to invest the development time...
What is important in a publishing tool like WordPress, is that it's easy to get data in and
get data out. WordPress is superb in this respect and as a consequence, can work well
with other applications you choose to use.
Data formats like RSS/Atom and good Access Management (single-sign-on) are a way of
loosely joining applications into a whole. That is how the web works. That is how
institutional uses of the web should work, too.

32. It's Open Source.
What about support?
02/23/10 8
The community is huge and responsive to answering questions
htp://wordpress.org/support/
http://wordpress.org/support/forum/14
htp://buddypress.org/forums/
http://musupport.net/ (Paid – really good people, lots of experience, work closely with
WordPress core developers)
htp://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wordpress
For paid support and a growing community, I'd recommend:
htp://premium.wpmudev.org/ (Cheap)
http://vip.wordpress.com/support/ (Not so cheap, but proper 'enterprise support' with an
SLA. You'll get support from core WordPress developers)

33. WordPress = Blogs, right?
Nope
02/23/10 9

34. ‘BuddyPress’
Just a set of
social networking
plugins for
WordPress.
No big deal.
02/23/10 10
Really. It’s no big deal.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress/

35. BuddyPress: Social Network
Blogs: Websites (optional)
WordPress Network: Administration
02/23/10 11
I find it useful to think of BuddyPress as a social networking layer, that sits on top of (or
in front of??) a WordPress Network. You can use BuddyPress all day long and never go
near a blog. In my experience, BuddyPress has made WordPress Networks easier for
people to use. People can create a WordPress blog in their own time but still participate
in the community. Over 95% of students use Facebook. BuddyPress is easier to use than
Facebook (and people don’t throw Zombies at each other).

36. Posts = dynamic content
Pages = static content
Categories = formal taxonomy
Tags = informal taxonomy
Widgets = versatile miscellany
*Custom post types in WP3
02/23/10 12
Understanding a few of the core WordPress concepts can help you imagine how you
might structure your website and what it might be used for.

37. Members = Find people
Groups = Identify with others
Activity = Track site-wide activity
Friends = Connect with peers
Messaging = Email
Profiles = Digital identity
(Forums = requires bbPress)
02/23/10 13
These are what BuddyPress brings to WordPress

38. It’s time to
stop thinking
about ‘blogs’
and start
thinking
about
WordPress
as a
technology
platform
02/23/10 14
Seriously. WordPress + BuddyPress is a platform for communities on the web. Each
‘blog’ can, in fact, be many different things.

39. This is a blog post about OPACPress, a project proposal to use a WordPress Network
as a library catalogue platform. It’s WordPress.com on its head, because it’s taking a
relatively small number of sites (<100) and populating them with up to 1m
records/blog posts. WordPress.com has millions of sites, each with relatively few
blog posts.
15

40. This is a blog post about using WordPress to author academic articles, with
supporting metadata.
16

41. This is a blog post about the variety of feeds available on a WordPress site.
17

42. This is a blog post about aggregating records from Institutional Repositories into
WordPress to provide a ‘social’ front-end to repository content, where people can
discuss the papers. I like Tony’s idea (in the comments) about using it to curate
journals from freely available repo content.
18

43. This is a blog post about HookPress, a plugin that integrates web hooks into
WordPress, for real-time actions and notifications. It also links to other posts I’ve
made about how XMPP, SUP, RSSCloud and PubSubHubbub are all easily integrated
through the use of plugins.
19

44. This is a blog post about our work on WriteToReply and JISCPress, using WordPress
as a document publishing platform for detailed comment, annotation and
deliberation.
http://writetoreply.org/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/digressit/
20

45. Journals
http://lncn.eu/ce6
02/23/10 21
I also run Open Journal Systems at the University of Lincoln. I’m torn between using
WordPress or OJS. OJS is a good tool, but because it supports what can be a complex
workflow of blind-peer-review, it’s also quite difficult for some people to use. I think
WordPress would make a decent journal publishing tool and it would be easier to use at
the expense of losing some specific functionality which OJS provides.
There’s a WordPress Publishers blog that highlights how WordPress is being used for
different types of web publishing. For managing the journal workflow, plugins like these
might be useful: http://publisherblog.automattic.com/2009/06/02/wordpress-plugins-
collaboration-emails/

46. Scientific Publishing
http://lncn.eu/ci5
02/23/10 22
With the LaTeX plugin, authors can publish scientific formulae. It’s supported in the
comments, too. So reviewers can use LaTeX in their responses.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-latex/

47. … and more
Microblogs
Lifestreams
e-Portfolios
LDAP/AD support
Shibboleth support
02/23/10 etc, etc, etc... 23
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wpmu-ldap/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/shibboleth/
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/p2
http://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioswp/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lifestream/

48. 02/23/10