This document summarizes the history and features of WordPress, including its use at Edge Hill University. It discusses how WordPress was adopted across the university starting in 2006 and its benefits like being open source, having a large community, and constant evolution. Key features are highlighted like responsive design, custom post types, and popular plugins. Limitations, security, and future plans are also mentioned.
Weebly allows you to create professional looking online ePortfolios. Their intuitive drag and drop features enable you to quickly and easily publish your work on your own website.
Weebly allows you to create professional looking online ePortfolios. Their intuitive drag and drop features enable you to quickly and easily publish your work on your own website.
IWMW 1999: Beyond brochureware - building functional university websitesIWMW
Slides for talk given at IWMW 1999 held at Goldsmiths College on 7-9 September 1999.
See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-sep1999/materials/ou/
This power point presentation presents the definition of web tools, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, explain the differences and also give examples of them. It is written in simple texts.
This presentation presents a training outline for presenters to address various aspects of Moodle. At the moment the training resource listed in the presentation is geared entirely towards use in Easton Area School District.
Presented by Chris Strasbaugh at the Annual Conference of the Visual Resources Association, March 12-15, 2014 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Session #4: The Teaching Turn: From Static Collections to Dynamic Learning Centers
ORGANIZER: Heather Lowe, California State University, San Bernardino
(on behalf of the VRA Emerging Professionals and Students Group)
MODERATOR: Jasmine Burns, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
PRESENTERS:
• Stephen Cardinale, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Anna Bernhard, Colorado State University
• Molly Schoen, University of Michigan
• Chris Strasbaugh, Vanderbilt University
Much of the business of creating and disseminating images has moved away from individual academic departments and isolated image collections toward centralized cross-discipline departments. This has left many visual resource centers looking for new ways to engage users and support the educational goals of their institutions. One way centers are meeting these new challenges is by transforming from being a storage silo for physical slide collections to being a collaborative learning space where students and faculty alike can come to work on projects and refine imaging and videography skills. As many resource centers make this move toward more teaching and learning, the physical spaces and skill sets of employees have also shifted. This session will examine case studies of visual resource centers programming that is directed to teaching imaging skills and how this new role is shifting their profile within their institutions.
So, you are probably wondering what makes me so awesome? You got me there. I guess awesome is relative to your needs. Maybe, that's where I can be considered awesome by most, I am a creative problem solver, divergent thinker, and all around fun person to be around.
My strengths lie in my ability to assess systems, fix them or improve them with the human element in mind....and by human element, I mean people.
Yes, people.
The fact of the matter is no matter what software, online course, website, etc... is built, it doesn't matter if people don't use it.
I am talking about usability, user experience, user interface design.
Most problems with technology are not hiding in the lines of code behind the scene but rather in the user interface or other processes. That's where I come in.
Are your applications making you and your users sad? Are you looking to implement a new technology on an enterprise level? Are you having problems communicating with your IT staff?
Maybe I can help.
IWMW 1999: Beyond brochureware - building functional university websitesIWMW
Slides for talk given at IWMW 1999 held at Goldsmiths College on 7-9 September 1999.
See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-sep1999/materials/ou/
This power point presentation presents the definition of web tools, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, explain the differences and also give examples of them. It is written in simple texts.
This presentation presents a training outline for presenters to address various aspects of Moodle. At the moment the training resource listed in the presentation is geared entirely towards use in Easton Area School District.
Presented by Chris Strasbaugh at the Annual Conference of the Visual Resources Association, March 12-15, 2014 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Session #4: The Teaching Turn: From Static Collections to Dynamic Learning Centers
ORGANIZER: Heather Lowe, California State University, San Bernardino
(on behalf of the VRA Emerging Professionals and Students Group)
MODERATOR: Jasmine Burns, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
PRESENTERS:
• Stephen Cardinale, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Anna Bernhard, Colorado State University
• Molly Schoen, University of Michigan
• Chris Strasbaugh, Vanderbilt University
Much of the business of creating and disseminating images has moved away from individual academic departments and isolated image collections toward centralized cross-discipline departments. This has left many visual resource centers looking for new ways to engage users and support the educational goals of their institutions. One way centers are meeting these new challenges is by transforming from being a storage silo for physical slide collections to being a collaborative learning space where students and faculty alike can come to work on projects and refine imaging and videography skills. As many resource centers make this move toward more teaching and learning, the physical spaces and skill sets of employees have also shifted. This session will examine case studies of visual resource centers programming that is directed to teaching imaging skills and how this new role is shifting their profile within their institutions.
So, you are probably wondering what makes me so awesome? You got me there. I guess awesome is relative to your needs. Maybe, that's where I can be considered awesome by most, I am a creative problem solver, divergent thinker, and all around fun person to be around.
My strengths lie in my ability to assess systems, fix them or improve them with the human element in mind....and by human element, I mean people.
Yes, people.
The fact of the matter is no matter what software, online course, website, etc... is built, it doesn't matter if people don't use it.
I am talking about usability, user experience, user interface design.
Most problems with technology are not hiding in the lines of code behind the scene but rather in the user interface or other processes. That's where I come in.
Are your applications making you and your users sad? Are you looking to implement a new technology on an enterprise level? Are you having problems communicating with your IT staff?
Maybe I can help.
In 2007, I helped found the UX Future Group, a user group internal to my organization. It was inspired by the work of people like Cynndd Bowls in Undercover UX. The idea was to evangelize for the adoption of UX methods and strategies in the organization. A user group was one way to do that by showing ground-up support for more user research, usability testing, and user centered design practices.
The user group primarily catered to visual designers, product managers, and UI engineers since there was no formal UX role at the company. This was a presentation about the results of a survey I conducted about the UX training and development needs our teams were looking for.
Presentation from the second Liverpool Social Media Café.
"Ever find yourself struggling to cope with too much information on the superinterwebs? Find out how to tame the social media beast with Michael’s top tips for handling social media overload!"
Slides from my PHP North West 2009 talk "Building an Anti-CMS (and how it's changed our web team)" based on my experiences leading Edge Hill University's Web Services team.
Stuff what we're doing at Edge Hill UniversityMichael Nolan
Presentation from 22nd July workshop session at Institutional Web Management Workshop 2008. Skip to slide 41 for my BarCamp session "10ish five-minute ways to improve your website".
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
60. <script>
// Function to slabtext the About Slider Content headings
try {
Typekit.load({
loading: function() {
// Javascript to execute when fonts start loading
},
active: function() {
jQuery("p.slabtextdone").slabText({
// Don't slabtext the headers if the viewport is under 380px
"viewportBreakpoint":380,
"fontFamily":"trajan-pro-3"
});
},
inactive: function() {
// Javascript to execute when fonts become inactive
}
})
} catch(e) {}
</script>
Slab Text
I’m assuming that everyone who’s signed up to this session has a rough idea of what WordPress is about but it’s probably useful to say a little about it’s history and clarify some terms.
WordPress started in 2003 as a fork of b2/cafelog, a PHP weblog system. It developed pretty rapidly:
Tags and categories
Better support for pages as well as diary style posts.
The WordPress MU system got merged back into core WordPress.
Over the last couple of year WordPress has developed pretty rapidly with a new point release every three to six months. They’ve continued to release some significant features and that’s what we’ve been able to use at Edge Hill.
WordPress.com: hosted version of WordPress operated by the main project sponsor of WordPress.org, Automattic. Free blogging service based on WordPress Multi Site with somewhat limited functionality - can’t install your own plugins/themes.WordPress.org: this is the open source project website. Download the software and install on your own server with PHP and MySQL
WordPress MU: originally a branch of WordPress.org designed to allow multiple blogs to run from one site/database. Since 3.0 WordPress allows you to “Create a Network” with it’s multisite feature.
WordPress MU: originally a branch of WordPress.org designed to allow multiple blogs to run from one site/database. Since 3.0 WordPress allows you to “Create a Network” with it’s multisite feature.
Manyhosting providers provide “one click” installation of WordPress and some will take responsibility for keeping it up to date (but many will not)
WordPress VIP from Automattic - $3,750 per month
Edublogs: hosted multisite blogging platform for $1000 per year
Plugins build on WordPress to provide additional functionality not part of the core WordPress software. Plugins are typically listed in the WordPress plugin directory but you can create and install your own manually. In a multisite install of WordPress the “super admin” can choose which plugins to allow site administrators to install and may choose some to be installed across all sites. WordPress will check to see if updates are available to plugins and prompt to install the latest version.
Themes allow the appearance of WordPress sites to be changed using a combination of HTML, CSS and PHP. At its most basic, a theme will provide headers, footers and the content block for pages and the CSS that styles them but can be expanded to provide custom templates and vary what shows between pages. Themes can be extended by child themes allowing you to override only those parts of the theme you need to and not have changes overridden by changes to the parent theme.
Widgets are WordPress’ way of dropping content into different parts of the site. Widget areas or sidebars are defined by the theme and the widgets themselves are defined by WordPress, plugins or themes.
We’ve been using WordPress for quite a long time at Edge Hill. Our first steps into hosting blogs were in individual WordPress blogs sometime in 2006. We started out with a handful of separate WordPress installations but quickly realised we needed something better.
We’ve been using WordPress for quite a long time at Edge Hill. Our first steps into hosting blogs were in individual WordPress blogs sometime in 2006. We started out with a handful of separate WordPress installations but quickly realised we needed something better.
In early 2007 we launched a full scale production WordPress MU service - a single copy of WordPress that’s able to host multiple blogs.
This was followed quickly by Edge Hill’s Hi applicant website which blended information for prospective students with WordPress MU blogs and bbPress forums.
We’ve also used WordPress for several standalone websites - typically organisations where Edge Hill supplies administrative support including web hosting.
During that time our main corporate website made use of a blend of technologies. Core systems were built with Symfony, a web application framework which allowed us to manage structured content without adopting a full scale content management system. Other pages made use of Dreamweaver templates but to the user the whole site looked the same. Edge Hill hasn’t faced the problem of fragmented websites that other institutions face for quite a long time.By late 2010 departments were relying on their websites more and more and the relatively centralised website management model - where the web services team actioned many of the updates - began to be seen as a barrier to getting things online. This coincided with a subtle shift in the positioning of the University to make it’s brand reflect its 125 year history over its relatively new University status.
By late 2010 departments were relying on their websites more and more and the relatively centralised website management model - where the web services team actioned many of the updates - began to be seen as a barrier to getting things online. This coincided with a subtle shift in the positioning of the University to make it’s brand reflect its 125 year history over its relatively new University status.
Several strands of work we rolled into the OMAC Project. Officially OMAC stands for Online Marketing and Communications but it’s probably a backronym to fulfill our Director of Corporate Communications lifelong ambition to name a project after a comic book series.
Several strands of work we rolled into the OMAC Project. Officially OMAC stands for Online Marketing and Communications but it’s probably a backronym to fulfill our Director of Corporate Communications lifelong ambition to name a project after a comic book series.
The basic brief was to give academic departments more control over their content. I’ve not been shy about my dislike of content management systems over the years so this provided something of a challenge to us - how to balance the control and structure of a tightly managed site with the limitations that are universally present in CMS. We needed something that fitted in with our existing site and with our skills.
The basic brief was to give academic departments more control over their content. I’ve not been shy about my dislike of content management systems over the years so this provided something of a challenge to us - how to balance the control and structure of a tightly managed site with the limitations that are universally present in CMS. We needed something that fitted in with our existing site and with our skills.
So how did we settle on WordPress?
Open Source - no vendor lock-in - WordPress started as a fork and if Automattic take their toys home the community could fork it again. Even the vast majority of plugins and themes are open source.
Active community including local SWIG user group sponsored by WordPress implementers Interconnect/IT
Content inventories: identify what content ROT and help determine what to migrate into the new sites. Focus on calls to action on each page.
WordPress training: initially group sessions which worked for some but not others. We now almost exclusively train one-to-one or in very small groups with real content.
WordPress documentation: Interconnect/IT provide a WordPress user guide which we purchased to customise. For the first couple of versions we edited out irrelevant sections but we now give out the full guide.
In some ways the OMAC project confirmed many of the things I dislike about content management systemsNo silver bulletGetting ownership is hardTraining needs to be done on the job - editing hello world pages on the Department of Magic doesn’t workDepartments have surprising priorities - almost every meeting I’ve had involved lengthy discussions about staff profiles but virtually no effort put into information about courses.There’s still a need for training in writing for the web and not just in using the system but there appears to be a limited appetite for this.
It took about nine months to migrate 90% of academic sites and another nine months to do the rest!
It took about nine months to migrate 90% of academic sites and another nine months to do the rest!
It took about nine months to migrate 90% of academic sites and another nine months to do the rest!Ultimately if the departments failed to engage we would just do the work for them - WordPress provides an easier system for us to update sites so we’re able to benefit from the move even if departments don’t always.
Ultimately if the departments failed to engage we would just do the work for them - WordPress provides an easier system for us to update sites so we’re able to benefit from the move even if departments don’t always.
Since then we’ve been able to produce sites much more quickly. When the department of Natural and Geographical Sciences split in two on results day last year we were able to turn around separate sites for Biology and Geography in four hours. When requests come in for a conference website we can fire up a WordPress site and hand over access with very little ongoing support.
WordPress had proved itself a solid performer for content based sites but it wasn’t until last year that we started to test how far it could go with more advanced systems.In January 2012 we were awarded funding as part of the JISC Course Data project to build a system to manage CPD information and publish data in a way that others could reuse. Since the data is owned by Faculties and Departments we decided to use the project as a testbed for developing more complex functionality in WordPress.
Custom Post Types were added to WordPress in version 3.0 and have become the easiest way to manage different types of information and for the Edge Hill Course Data project we implemented Course and Presentation custom post types that mapped to the XCRI-CAP schema.
Custom Post Types were added to WordPress in version 3.0 and have become the easiest way to manage different types of information and for the Edge Hill Course Data project we implemented Course and Presentation custom post types that mapped to the XCRI-CAP schema.
Custom Post Types were added to WordPress in version 3.0 and have become the easiest way to manage different types of information and for the Edge Hill Course Data project we implemented Course and Presentation custom post types that mapped to the XCRI-CAP schema.
/about was one of the first non-departmental websites to move to WordpressNeed to replicate some “advanced” functionality in WordpressIf we can create these features in Wordpress we can increase flexibility for users, and simultaneously reduce our workloadCreating graphics as web elementsWeb fontsBannersSlides
This is a page from our original /about site.Slider which uses graphics for each slideYou can see our fancy font – Trajan ProBanners with text and images, again using Trajan ProTo edit these pages, the web team had to create new graphics all the time to keep the content relevant
The first step was to look into Web Fonts which have become better supported recently and which might help offer a solutionThis is Trajan Pro 3 from TypeKitLooks lovely but doesn’t render so well at low resolutions on PCs. Looks lovely on a tablet or smartphone though!
So, we added Trajan Pro 3 from TypeKit which we pay a license forIt’s as simple as including a javascript file and then using the font in standard CSS
So, the addition of the web font is the first step in being able to create these 2 elements on the fly, we’re going to use it in the sliders and the bannersWe wanted to replace the graphics that make up our mega-menu too but at the moment the display isn’t good enough at low font sizes
We created a “Sliders” plugin with a Custom Post Type of Slider, and a Custom Post Type of SlideHere you can see there are 2 sliders in the /about site at the moment, one for homepage, one for profile page (the page we’re looking at).Notice each slider has a “slug”
So to add a new slider you simply click Add New, then give the slider a title at the top, a “slug” at the bottom, and then you drag the slides you want from the right hand side into the left hand side of the Content area, and order them by dragging them. Then click Publish/Update.
The Slides which you were dragging around in the content area are created through the same admin menu, by clicking Slides > Add New. Here you can give each slide:a titlesome content which is the large text blocka colour for the backgroundA featured image which is the image for the right hand side of the slide
Then to add the slider to the page, we simply use a shortcode on the page we want to add it to, as shown, using the “slug” which we referred to earlier
The only other bit that happens in the background, to get the effect we want, is that we use a jQuery plugin called SlabText. This gives us the headline style justified text. We need to include the slabtext JS file, and then activate the slabtext for each slide like this, after the typekit font has been loaded.
And here we have the finished article – this slider is created using our Slider pluginHas real text for User Updates and SEO purposesHas editable imageHas editable background colourAdd/Remove/Edit slidesNext slide shows original slider for comparison
This is the original slider so you can compareNow lets talk about recreating the banner images below the Slider, how can we achieve the same user functionality as for the Sliders as easily as possibly?Only want to create new plugins where necessary – so if we can use native Wordpress functionality then that’s better – so that’s what we didHave a good look at the banner, it has:A background imageA title above itSome text on two lines in Trajan Pro
Here you can see the page in the editor as before with the slider shortcode.Below you can make out the two banner images, lets look at the top one which we can see. It’s an image with a caption…
So, we start by uploading the background image – now, here you will see that the background image is the right size and the blending of the photo has already been done. So it’s not as easy as we’d like, yet(!), because someone (we) still has to prepare the background image first…Once uploaded, we give it:a Title (this appears above the banner)Some alt text for best practiceA Caption (this is the banner text)A URLAlign it right
Now in the Advanced settings, we add a CSS class of “banner”Our code then filters the page content and looks for images with a class of banner. If it finds them then it takes the various elements we’ve defined here and re-orders them to give us the look of banner that we actually want. Without the CSS class, it’s just an image with a caption.
So that’s how easily we can create the banners. The beauty is that, although the background images require creation, the text can be edited. So for example, we have these banners that say “Visit Our Next Open Day on 14th July” which can be edited by Student Recruitment, we don’t have to keep creating new banners.Next slide shows the original page
This is the original page on our symfony site with all graphics
And this is the page we created using our wordpress features which can be easily edited
Just move to next slide
WordPress as a FrameworkLooked at moving more “functional” sub-sites over to wordpress with structured data like news posts, events, hence we moved /news and /eventsWent to and fro with theme vs plugins – where to put styles and functionality???Settled on common edgehill2012 child themeof TwentyTwelveWordpress themeCustom ehu- plugins for events and news sitesOverlapping development with consistent structure, naming conventions etc.
Responsive design built on WordPress Twenty Twelve (Mike to talk about more later)Wanted to move to a “Story” model (stolen from itv.com/news)Custom Post Type (story)Link posts to Stories (if desired)Extensive use of Sidebars (Widget areas) and WidgetsTalk about when we look at /events
This is a Story pageHas a short intro at the top which gets updated as the story develops. The story also has a featured imageAs the story develops, instead of modifying the post which is what we used to do, we now add new posts with new informationThis also allows us to use another WordPress feature which is Post Formats – explain Post FormatsShow different post formats (story updates)
This is how you specify a post format when creating a postNice things is you can format different post formats differently, so we make an “Aside” quite a bold design, Quote has a quotation graphic and a background colour, Image inserts the featured image full width etc.
Custom Taxonomies (departments)
Pages for department news
Feed for department site using FeedWordpress
Administration UIUse Token Input in custom meta boxes to make joining stories and posts easy
Dashbar links
Content checklistDefault behaviour of Wordpress is good, but not good enough – ie crops images but chops heads off, auto-excerpt is longer than we want etc.
WordPress as a FrameworkLooked at moving more “functional” sub-sites over to wordpress, including /news and /eventsWent to and fro with theme vs pluginsSettled on common edgehill2012 child theme of TwentyTwelveWordpress themeCustom ehu- plugins for events and news sitesOverlapping development with consistent structure, naming conventions etc.
Sharper development practices –refactoring of /news and edgehill2012Custom Post Types (event and location [hierarchical] )
Administration UIUse Token Input in custom meta boxes to add locations to events
Location page pulling through events for that location, and also child locations
Timeline JS plugin [hacked to pieces]Data feeds (iCal, json, xml)
Extensive use of Sidebars (Widget areas) and WidgetsTo allow curation of homepageFor Corporate Homepage FeedAuto-expiring option for events
Paul Boag wrote an interesting blog post about his scepticism towards SEO but that changed. One of the tools he used to SEO his site was WordPress SEO and it allows lots of things. Twiter Cards and Facebook excerpts.
Mod Rewrite for WordPress
Clone posts and pages including their hierarchy and metadata. Used in conjunction with another plugin that includes the contents of one page into another it'
WordPress’ long history had meant it does some quite nasty things with databases. In particular it has a habit of storing serialised strings in various tables. Domain names and full URLs are frequently stored in the database meaning to move a site you can’t just dump the SQL and import into live database – you need to search and replace.
Works with your LDAP server – we’ve had it running on both our WordPress networks for several years hooking up to Novell eDirectory and we’ll soon be moving to Microsoft Active Directory.
DashboardInter-site content sharingExplore the limits of WordPress – eProspectus?Complex content – study at Edge Hill? Corporate Homepage? Charts and tabular data.Document management; secure content; personalised content
Don't use too many plugins - gets painful checking compatibility. And if you have multilingual needs it's not the best - we're mainly recommending it for sites that don't need to be bilingual (many of ours do, being Welsh...) as we use WPML, but it complicates the admin UI and has issues with other plugins sometimes. So for single language sites, knock yourselves out, full multilingual think carefully."Enable PHP to pull through staff profiles etc from your pre-existing databases.Categorisation make menu creation easier.“outsource your hosting. WordPress has frequent security updates, and you probably don't need the hassle!"Older staff usually need a fair bit of hands-on training and support with using the software. Whereas younger staff who are used to social media pick it up very quickly themselves.Give WordPress users a copy of your social media guidelines (eg http://www.ioe.ac.uk/about/documents/About_Policies/SMGuidelines_final.pdf )“Use Apache reverse proxy magic to have multiple independent developer development sites running under one hostname accessing one database.. If that kind of thing floats your boat.Have a schedule of what is going to be written and when or it just won;t happen - e.g. see the Web Team blog. Ooops!When using a 'coming soon' plugin ALWAYS include an admin login link
"How to get multiple wordpress sites working.How to use wordpress as a CMS.“"Pros and Cons of the platform and issues to be aware of when migrating to/switching to WordpressThe importance/relevance of mobile support for institutions“Integration of other media into Wordpress, e.g. social media.Really, really hard questions for the speakers."We'd like to adopt Wordpress.com as a website platform for research centres at our Institute, who need a microsite (ie a site sitting outside our CMS-delivered corporate website).We'd like advice on how best to support this venture. And to know if (and how) complex functionality can be added (eg password protected areas). “"Categorisation vs Page creation:Categories are a great way to organise the content from the blogroll but transferring older content from a previous site puts that content to the top chronologically.“Case studies of innovative wordpress use where there is audience engagement. Can't make the session (will be at one on open data) - but would like to see the slides or catch up at some point. Spoke briefly last year - now we're using WordPress a lot in anger...