How To Use WordPress as A CMS – Live Case Study Presented By Anca Mosoiu

At almost every blogging event that I have attended over the past few years, I have overheard at-least 1 conversation  – usually between a wordpress lover and wordpress hater (ex. drupal  / jhoomla lover) that goes like this.

WordPress Hater: Oh, WordPress is just a Blog engine, for Amateurs. It’s soooooo not a CMS! That’s why I “heart” Drupal.

WordPress Lover: Not really. There are so many websites that have successfully implemented WordPress as a CMS.

WordPress Hater: Really? Show me!

WordPress Lover: Ummmmm….
(goes silent).

I too have had difficulty defending that WordPress is more than just another blogging engine. That’s why I decided to go see Anca Mosoiu’s presentation of a Real Life Case Study. Anca’s company recently implemented WordPress as a CMS for a Government Organization with 300+ users.

WordPress As A CMS – Case Study At Automattic Lounge, WordPress HQ.

Anca, who presented the WordPress as a CMS case study, is the founder of Techliminal, a web development company and coworking space out in Oakland. The presentation was part of the WordPress 3.0 Installfest Organized by the nice peeps at Automattic (the WordPress Company).

Anca broke the presentation down into 4 sections as follows.

1. The Goals
2. The Implementation
3. Key Features
4. Lessons Learned

I took notes from her presentation attempting to capture the key things to keep in mind when trying to implement WordPress as a CMS. Here they are, in easy to read and understand bullet points.

Goals of the Project

• Goal 1 – Improve Information Architecture.
• Goal 2 – Allow individual contributors greater control of their content outside Twiki pages.
• Goal 3 – Provide platform for feedback, blogs, and other dynamic elements.
• Goal 4 – Improve internal search results through improved content organization.
• Goal 5 – Migrate existing internal WP blogs to new environment.

Why Choose WordPress?

• Reason 1 – Simple tool with lots of customization capability.
• Reason 2 – Existing users within the organization were familiar with it.
• Reason 3 – PHP / WordPress programming expertise was present in the organization.
• Reason 4 – WordPress is an Open Source platform!
• Reason 5 – WPMU allows for more granular permissions and organization.
• Reason 6 – WP levels of access and permissions provide a great light weight work-flow for publishing content.

Implementation Details – WordPress As A CMS

• Main page had aggregate announcements, aggregate events, feeds from other tools and areas.
• Used SubVersion (SVN) for Source (Code) Control.
• WPMU Installation of WordPress.
• WP code, plugins themes, theme customization in SVN.
• Did not keep config files and uploads directory and content in source control.
• Did not look at how to manage database model in source control
• Used Thesis 1.7 (started with 1.6) for Theming / Skinning the site.
• Used WP LDAP Plugin for integrating Access Control
• Used Sitewide Tags Plugin
• Used Breadcrumbs NavXT Plugin
• Used Alkivia SidePosts Plugin after some heavy Customization
• Used FlexiPages Plugin for Page Navigation
• Used Peter’s Collaboration Emails Plugin
• Used Subscribe2 Plugin
• Used Contact Form 7 for feedback submission
• Used lot of links and link categories.
• Customized links to have sorting feature, also gave each link it’s own class.

Development and Performance Lessons Learned

• RSS Feeds (default) were slow and problematic
• WPMU you need a whole server
• Sitewide Tags plugins saved tons of time for aggregating content.
• Setting up new sites takes time.
• Bureaucratic purchasing departments (the Project Client) have hard time purchasing project stuff through paypal, thereby delaying the Project.