Using WordPress to power your non-profit websitePresentation by Jason King at Making Links 2008
You shouldn’t have to rely on a web designer to make content changes
Nor do you need to learn web design
Take control of your own website
WordPress started out as a very good blogging tool…
• Posts
• Ordered by date
• Archived by month and year
• Organised by category
• Performs well in search engines e.g. Google
• RSS feed
…and evolved into a capable content management system
• Pages can be structured in a hierarchy
• Plugins add new functionality
• Customisable themes and templates
• Built using popular technologies
• Categorisation of content
• Upload documents as well as images
Why is WordPress a good CMS choice for a non-profit?
It’s free
It’s open source
It’s built on popular, tried and tested technologies
It’s evolving.
New versions are published regularly, bringing improvements to functionality and ease of use
Simplicity. Anyone can use it
Documentation is better than many other open source CMS
It’s very popular
The WordPress forums have an active community of users
WordPress is very flexible.
Take a look at these non-profit organisations’ websites to see how different they are in content, layout and design…
Children’s Rights
Too Young to Work
Greek Care
Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
What can you do in WordPress?• Publish your news immediately
• Or schedule your announcements
• Create and rearrange pages
• Maintain a links page
• Categorise your pages, posts and links
• Publish a photo gallery
Just for practice, you could get a free account with www.wordpress.com
Host WordPress on your webspace
• Download from www.wordpress.org and upload files by FTP.
• Your hosting provider must offer PHP and MySQL technologies.
• Some web hosting comes with one-click installation of WordPress (but check you’re getting the latest version)
The famous “five minute installation”
Despite the WordPress boast, installation takes more like an hour (halve that if you’ve done it before). But that’s still pretty quick!
If you’re not confident, pay someone or get a volunteer to install WordPress for you
You’ll need to install upgrades
•WordPress is regularly improved, made more secure and new features added.
•So upgrade several times a year.
•Plugins also have to be upgraded but that’s a quicker, one-click task.
Get a new look with a new theme
Download a free or paid-for theme
• Do you want a theme for a blog?
• Or a CMS type theme?
• Or a magazine style theme?
• Download free themes from http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
• You can also buy themes
Design your own theme
• If you can write semantic, standards-compliant XHTML and CSS… then you can learn to create a WordPress theme
• There are lessons in the Codex
• There are many tutorials on the web
• Get help from the WordPress forums
The motto of
WordPress is that: Code is
Poetry
<p>The motto of <cite>
WordPress </cite>
is that: </p>
<blockquote> Code is Poetry </blockquote>
Hire a WordPress designer
•Make sure your web designer has had WordPress experience
•They should be able to create a theme from scratch, not just take the default Kubrick theme and change the header graphic
You get what you pay for
Want more functionality?
A few plugins that make WordPress a better CMS
• Search Everything - pages can be searched
• SEM Search Reoaded - better search results
• Breadcrumbs Nav XT - breadcrumb navigation
• Dagon Design SiteMap - adds a sitemap
• cForms - insert forms
Resources
• www.wordpress.org
• www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/15/wordpress-developers-toolbox
• www.wordcamp.com.au
WordCamp Australia
WordPress for Dummies
Alternatives to WordPress
• Blogger (if all you want is a blog)• Joomla (popular CMS, well supported)• Drupal (very complex, very flexible
CMS)• Adobe Contribute (software for
directly editing HTML on an existing static website)
• Many, many others!
www.kingjason.co.ukwww.slideshare.net/jasoncharlesstuartking
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