Back in March, Philadelphia’s DoT ask us to take a look at the website for Philly’s 4th of July celebration, Wawa Welcome America. The design firm that originally had the project did a great job with the design but the Welcome America team was having a difficult time using the CMS (Content Management System). They asked us if it was possible to move the site onto the popular, open source blogging platform WordPress (it is).
John Mertens and I took on the project and within 20 hours had the site mirrored onto WordPress. With only a few minimal design changes and a whole lot of added functionality the site is now live and well.
WordPress has become a staple for many web designers/developers. It’s easy to install, very easy to design for (even has 1,000’s of free themes to use out of the box), has a library of plugins that can add just about any function, and of course it’s OpenSource. On the user’s side, WordPress allows for lightning quick implementation and management of content, from text to images to video and audio (and yes, you can link to PDFs too). It plays very well with social media and many 3rd party sites are using the API to tie directly into WordPress. Did we mention it’s free! Heck, even the code used to run WordPress.com is opensource (WordPressMS). If a city’s Dept. of Tech wants to have a way to implement a new website, using their pre-designed templates, in only a few clicks… WordPress.
For these reasons and more, WordPress is a great option for civic departments looking to launch and maintain a dynamic website in months, not years and with minimal investment.
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