Some brief information about the use of WordPress in higher education, with details about its usage at University of Mary Washington

3. WHAT IS WORDPRESS
• Began in 2003 as a blogging
platform
• Began to be used heavily as a
CMS in 2010 (version 3.0)
• WordPress 3.5 has been
downloaded more than 11
million times
• WordPress is used on over 16%
of all websites throughout the
Web
• WordPress is used on over 50%
of websites that use a CMS

4. WHO USES WORDPRESS?
• Many small business and hobby sites
• CNN, the New York Times and many other major news outlets
• GM, UPS and Sony
• TechCrunch, Mashable, TheNextWeb and most major tech blogs

5. WHO USES WORDPRESS IN HIGHER ED?
• UMW was 1 of the first to use WordPress as a blogging platform, and 1
of the first to use WordPress as its website CMS
• Other institutions currently using WordPress as a CMS include:
• University of Florida (http://ufl.edu/)
• Boise State University (http://www.boisestate.edu/)
• Southern Arkansas University (http://web.saumag.edu/)
• University of Arkansas at Little Rock (http://ualr.edu/)
• Lafayette College (http://www.lafayette.edu/) – the first known to go full-
WordPress
• University of Central Arkansas (http://uca.edu/)
• Maryville University (http://www.maryville.edu/)
• John Carroll University (http://sites.jcu.edu/)
• …and many, many more (http://wordpress.org/showcase/tag/education/)

6. NEW INSTITUTIONS ALL THE TIME
Many institutions are thinking of moving to WordPress in the near future:
• Butler University
• Colby College
• University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Colorado Mountain College
• Texas Christian University
• UT Health Center – San Antonio
• …and many more

8. IT GREW ON US
• UMWBlogs began in WordPress ~2007
• Open to all staff, faculty and students
• Complete freedom and flexibility
• Grew exponentially
• UMW website was running on homegrown/Contribute hybrid
• New microsites kept getting set up in UMWBlogs

9. IT MADE SENSE
• UMWBlogs created ~5000 existing WP users on campus
• UMW is open environment/WordPress is open – Common values
• Interactivity
• Innovation
• Community
• Better support than many commercial platforms
• Full customization
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbWg-mozGsU (NSFW?)

11. REQUISITE KNOWLEDGE
• LAMP Environments
• PHP
• Object-oriented programming
• WordPress APIs
• HTML/CSS

12. IS WORDPRESS SCALABLE FOR HIGHER ED?
WordPress.com runs on WordPress!
UMWBlogs
• ~7600 blogs
• ~10,000 users
UMW.edu
• 51 networks
• 288 sites
• ~30,000 published content pieces
• 10,000 pages
• 15,000 posts
• ~5,000 miscellaneous content pieces
• Avg. 15,000 visits/day

13. HOW BIG OF A SERVER IS NEEDED?
UMW.edu is running on the following hardware:
MySQL running on separate server
Nginx running as proxy cache in front of Apache (http://j.mp/13FcTj9)
*Scale appropriately based on expected traffic
Operating system Ubuntu Linux 10.10
Kernel and CPU Linux 3.2.0-32-generic on x86_64
Processor information
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5660 @ 2.80GHz,
4 cores
Real memory 11.74 GB total, 1.44 GB used

14. HOW IS IT SET UP?
At UMW, we use a “multi-network” setup
Development, Staging and Production servers (not automatically synced)
Lafayette (@mackensen) has a unique way of implementing

16. SLICES, DICES; DOESN’T JULIENNE FRIES
• Won’t write/organize content for
you
• Workflow
• Asset management
• Doesn’t necessarily enforce
good design decisions
• User-level permissions

17. PLUGINS TO IMPROVE INTERFACE
• EditFlow – Implements some workflow capabilities
• CMS Tree Page View – Allows drag-and-drop re-order of pages
• RoleScoper – allows granular permission management
• WhiteLabel CMS – rearranges admin area, customizes login screen
• Types and WPToolset – implements custom content types, custom
taxonomies, custom fields and template manipulation
• Document repository – manage all documents in single library, across
multisite, with persistent links to latest version
• JetPack – adds multiple new features, including spelling/grammar
check, image carousels, ability to post via email, custom CSS, etc.
These are not the only plugins that do this, just some examples

18. OTHER RECOMMENDED PLUGINS
• GravityForms – allows easy creation and management of forms, including
integration with Akismet, PayPal, MailChimp and more
• TablePress – allows easy creation and management of data tables, including
JavaScript features to allow table sorting on front-end
• TubePress Pro – implements ability to include dynamic video galleries from
multiple sources (Vimeo, YouTube, etc.)
• BackupBuddy – allows backup, export and import of full WordPress sites
• Regenerate Thumbnails – recreates all WordPress image sizes after settings
changes
• W3 Total Cache – implements multiple layers of caching and performance
optimization
• Page Links To – allows easy redirects
• …and more at http://j.mp/17XzSw0

20. WHEEL OF MORALITY, TURN, TURN, TURN;
TELL US THE LESSON THAT WE SHOULD LEARN
• Don’t do it all at once
• Do as much as you can yourself
• Don’t expect perfection
• Iterate, iterate, iterate
• Don’t reinvent the wheel

22. QUESTIONS? COMMENTS?
Twitter: @cgrymala
Website(s): http://umw.edu/ (Multi-Network Setup)
http://ten-321.com/
http://svn.ten-321.com/ (SVN Repo)
http://wphighed.org/ (WP resources for Higher Ed)
Email: cgrymala@umw.edu
curtiss@ten-321.com
SpeakerRate: http://spkr8.com/s/10608
http://about.me/cgrymala