Anca Mosoiu from Tech Liminal gave a presentation on using WordPress for enterprise websites. She discussed how WordPress Multisite allows different departments within a large organization to have their own sites while maintaining consistent branding. This allows departments to control their own content while still aggregating information at a top level site. Anca provided a case study of a WordPress intranet implementation for a company that involved creating individual sites for departments that fed into a main site through custom development. She noted some challenges in customizing WordPress for an enterprise setting involved menu integration and retrieving posts across multiple sites.

1. Technology Hotspot & Salon
Enterprise Websites with
WordPress Multisite
East Bay WordPress Meetup
Anca Mosoiu,Tech Liminal
July 15, 2012
268 14th Street, Oakland, CA 94612 | Open 9:30 - 7 Monday - Friday | Drop-in co-working space, workshops and technology services | More info: http://www.techliminal.com
Content in this presentation is Copyright (c) 2012 Tech Liminal. CC-Share-Alike. Feel free to use stuff from this presentation, but leave a link to Tech Liminal

2. Introduction
Anca Tech Liminal
• Web Developer • Technology Hotspot & Salon
• Information Architect • Co-Working
• 15 years of experience in • Workshops, Conferences
technology & marketing orgs • Expert, friendly help with web &
• Enterprise apps + websites social media
anca@techliminal.com
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3. Overview
• What do you mean by Enterprise?
• WordPress as a portal
• Case Studies
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4. Enterprise!
• Lots of people (>150)
• Departments / siloes
• Communication and standards
directives
• Ownership and responsibility
• Laws / (Sarbanes Oxley)
• IT
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5. Siloes...
• Each Department has their own
resources / budget
• They might have to use a single IT
provider
• But may be allowed to host content
(marketing) outside the corporate
firewall.
• They don’t want other people in their
stuff
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6. What Enterprise Users Want
• Ability to change their own websites
• Single-Signon
• User-Friendly
• Ownership, permissions, and process
• I don’t want those HR people to touch my stuff!
Control, Process, Support
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7. IT Concerns
• Hosting - Most Enterprise-level organizations are not on LAMP, but many
have the ability to set it up
• WordPress MultiSite uses a medium amount of resources (must have its own
VPS internally)
• Require Robust service contracts, insurance
• Off-site hosting (WordPress VIP, etc)
• Security (sensitive enterprise data)
• Access to corporate data behind the firewall
• People Search
• ERP systems
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8. Legal
• I am not a lawyer ...
• Sarbanes Oxley - requires well-documented process for handling financial
information, makes CEO personally liable for accounting inaccuracies
• Customer data privacy
• Contracts (especially support)
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9. Why WordPress?

10. So Why WordPress?
• Many people in marketing / communication departments like it (and know
how to use it)
• Quick “microsites” for product launches, marketing launches
• WordPress Multisite for larger-scale sites where departments want to
collaborate
• Each Site can be owned by a department
• Each department can have a different layout, but similar branding (theme
framework)
• Aggregate at the top-level site
• Integrate w/ corporate data systems
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11. Case Studies
WordPress Intranet

12. The Solution
Aggregate Feeds from other
announcements from tools and areas
all site areas
Aggregate events
postings from all site
areas
www.techliminal.com

13. The Intranet
Consistent look for all
site areas - This is the
PR Dashboard
More feeds - useful for
PR team
Lots of link to internal
content
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14. Site Areas
• Each Site Area = 1 Site
• Specific set of people to update, maintain
• Some have their own blogs (+ pages)
• Same look and feel, standardized widget placement
• Combined through Navigation Menu
Custom Development
(Menu Integration)
www.techliminal.com

15. This Week’s Events
• Feature is intended to
replace weekly emails
• Aggregate content from
within site areas
• Custom content type
development
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16. Contributors, Authors
• Employees are assigned roles on sites (subscriber,
contributor, author)
• Co-Authors Plus plugin to allow multiple owners for
content
• Gravity Forms for custom data collection
• Google Apps / Forms / Calendar
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17. Things we had to customize
• One Menu made up multiple primary menus
• Retrieve posts from multiple sites (not through RSS)
• switch_to_blog = not good
• Integration w/ People Search functionality (REST API)
• Google Calendar Integration
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18. Lessons Learned
• Plan for the hosting very early
• Find champions for the WordPress site within the organization
• Train developers to be self-sufficient
• Internal culture that allows development = good
• Nothing that “called home” was allowed inside the firewall (so no automatic
upgrades)
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19. Questions?
• anca@techliminal.com
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