WordPress is absolutely coming into its own as a content management system capable of tremendous customization and traffic...with the right tools and tweaks. It's being used more and more in higher ed and is proving to be a life saver for personnel challenged, budget challenged, and technically challenged campuses. Can WordPress rescue you from static and homegrown "solutions"? This workshop will cover setup, daily use, successes, and failures; level of acceptance on campus; and training. Handouts will include key plugins and customizations. The workshop will go deep into setups, screen-by-screen features, supporting it in unique campus situations, and BuddyPress.
Shelley is the sole Web professional on a campus with more than 3,000 undergraduate students, a thriving graduate studies program, and 400 faculty and staff. Her primary focus is now managing a variety of content providers and juggling the site needs of several dozen departments while also supporting recruiting and retention initiatives campuswide. She handles all social networking and outgoing e-mail marketing communication for the entire university. Shelley is actively involved with the higher education and Wordpress communities online, displays all the symptoms of Twitter addiction (@shelleykeith) and may have actually launched the first University Facebook page. She was the technical reviewer for "Beginning Wordpress 3.0" by Stephanie Leary and recently completed a HigherEd Experts webinar on WordPress in higher ed. Now entering year two of a campus-wide WPMU implementation, she’s incredibly happy the days of 16,000 static pages and duplicated template files are behind her.