About

Randy Tyler is a recognized pioneer and expert in Online Volunteer program development. Since 1998, his work has been noted by numerous news sources from The New York Times to CTV's Canada AM, and shared with non-profit organizations through provincial, national and international conference presentations and published articles. Randy provides training, workshops, presentations and consultation for non-profit organizations. He is a Gold Medallist graduate of both the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba. For further information, please visit: http://www.RandyTyler.org

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Should a Non-Profit Embrace WordPress as a Content Management System? Five Considerations

Based on my approximately 15 years developing non-profit Web sites (the last five working with self-hosted WordPress blogs), I hope the following points will help a non-profit in their decision to embrace WordPress:
  • Content Management System (CMS): Templates can be customized (a task for an appropriately screened virtual volunteer) to modify the look and feel of WordPress. For example, WordPress can designed to have the look and feel of a traditional Web site, magazine or news site.
  • Extensible: As a free, open source application, WordPress is widely-used, actively developed and extensible with a huge number of powerful plug-ins (for example, with the PowerPress plug-in, WordPress can be a powerful podcasting tool, with ready-made RSS feeds and media player.
  • Security Concerns: Due to being widely adopted, WordPress is attacked, which means any non-profit must be committed to security (such as regularly backing up and updating for known WordPress vulnerabilities, including plug-ins). Updating WordPress may break modifications made (such as to CSS files). To address this issue, some developers have moved to adding child themes.
  • Hosting: WordPress at minimum requires PHP and a MySQL database. If your site is critical to your operations, a host must be chosen with a demonstrated (WordPress) hosting track record, including remarkable uptimes. Thus, considering your current and future needs, research and ask colleagues/associates for recommended hosts (host review sites must be approached with caution). If a WordPress site has heavy traffic, CPU and memory usage will have to be considered and shared hosting (in essence, one computer serving many Web sites) may not be workable.
  • Easy Install: For additional adjustments, I suggest downloading WordPress from wordpress.org and manually installing via FTP (or shell access) instead of a host's one-click install.
For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.
Tags   Content Management System   NPTech   NonProfit   Online Volunteering   Randy Tyler   WordPress   wordpress.org