This document discusses creating a school website using WordPress. It recommends determining your audience and focusing content on them. Schools have much content so the homepage should represent the whole community. Key sections include about, admissions, academics, alumni, athletics, student life, news, and philanthropy. Multisite allows organizing the site into subdomains or subdirectories for different audiences. Plugins can add functionality like forms, calendars and custom fields. Tips include joining a meetup, hiring a developer, and paying them well.

1. Getting Schooled
Creating Your School Website with WordPress

2. homework sites
learning management systems
student or teacher blogs
informational sites
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3. Before you Begin

4. know your audience

5. parents
students
staff
community
donors
alumni
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6. #WCLVPA @eileenviolini

7. Consider who the site is actually for; is it for the
parents, the teachers, or the students? Then
direct your homepage content to that audience.
Tom Rose, @slurve“
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8. The content quandary

9. Schools are content beasts
and everyone wants to be on the
home page in main navigation.
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10. Your school story is about your entire
community, not just one group.
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11. about
admissions or enrollment
academics
alumni relations
athletics
student life
news
philanthropy and support
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17. Tools to up your game

18. multisite

19. Multisite = Many Sites on One Install
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20. A Multisite network is a collection of sites that all share the same
WordPress installation. They can also share plugins and themes. The
individual sites in the network are virtual sites in the sense that they
do not have their own directories on your server, although they do
have separate directories for media uploads within the shared
installation, and they do have separate tables in the database.
WordPress Codex
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“

21. share plugins
each site can have its own theme or look
update once across the network
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22. —Subdomain—
athletics.yourschoolsite.org
—Subdirectories—
yourschoolsite.org/athletics
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23. Multisite can better organize your site and
prevent information overload for your user.
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24. athletics.yourschoolsite.org
alumni.yourschoolsite.org
donate.yourschoolsite.org
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25. plugins

26. a form plugin
a calendar plugin
a custom field plugin
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30. All . The . Time .
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33. tips

34. join a meetup.
find a great developer.
pay them well.
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35. #WCLVPA @eileenviolini
RESOURCES
Multisite
https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/wordpress-multisite-
masterclass-getting-started/
Learning Management Systems
http://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/tips-tricks/how-to-
create-a-school-website-with-wordpress

36. Thank you!
Eileen Violini
@eileenviolini
eileenviolini.com