WordPress as a CMS

Using WordPress as your Content Management System

Background on WordPress

Information about WordPress and its Usage

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is used by 59.9% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 22.1% of all websites.

– W3Tech

wp-downloads

Who Am I?

Curtiss[1]

Senior Web Technologist

University of Mary Washington

@cgrymala

  • In charge of all development on the UMW website
  • Manage multi-network instance of WordPress for UMW
  • Freelance for various small businesses, colleges & universities, and non-profits
  • Evangelize WordPress

UMW Website:

  • 55 separate networks
  • 314 total sites
  • 104 separate active plugins
  • 38466 published pieces of content
  • 14289 published posts and 16425 published pages
  • 30577 attachments

UMWBlogs

Domain of One’s Own

Who Uses WordPress?

Major News Blogs

wp-cnn

Tech News Sites

wp-tnw

Fortune 500

wp-sony

Why Would You Choose WordPress?

WTF-Picard-meme

Cost

  • WordPress is free
  • Platforms are free
  • Premium items relatively inexpensive
  • Main costs are hardware & network

Openness

  • Open-source
  • Written well
  • Documented well
  • Transparent and democratic

Flexibility

mr-fantastic

  • Robust theme and plugin API
  • Endless possible applications
  • Over 30,000 free plugins

Breaking Down Myths

  • Just for blogging
  • Difficult to customize
  • Insecure
  • Only for small sites
  • Slow

 

 

IT-Security-Memes-3

a9dcbd045a422b574275744267bf7287[1]

W3 Total Cache, Dropbox and Photon
on Shared Hosting
Site5-Fizz-Man-2[1]

W3 Total Cache and Photon
on Shared Hosting

Site5-WPHighEd-2[1]

WPEngine Hosting

WPEngine-WPHighEd-2[1]

W3 Total Cache on Shared Hosting

Bluehost-UMW-Apps-2[1]

Nginx Proxy Cache on Dedicated Server

UMW-Web-Site-2[1]

Test Results

#

Host Configuration

Caching

HTTP Requests

Size of Page

# of Successful Hits

First timeout

Avg. Load Time

1

Shared hosting (Site5)

W3 Total Cache, Photon for images, Dropbox for common assets

115

1 mb

350

63 concurrent users

125ms

2

Shared hosting (Site5)

W3 Total Cache, Photon for images

58

1.2 mb

741

73 concurrent users

169ms

3

WP Engine

WP Engine caching, Photon for images

54

1.2 mb

6,392

210 concurrent users

151ms

4

Shared hosting (BlueHost)

W3 Total Cache

32

1.5 mb

4,812

179 concurrent users

465ms

5

Dedicated server

nginx proxy caching server

109

1.8 mb

5,896

189 concurrent users

260ms

WordPress vs. Non-WordPress

Site Name

URL

WP?

Size of Page

HTTP Requests

Response Time

University of Mary Washington (UMW)

http://www.umw.edu/

Yes

1.8 mb

109

57 ms

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

http://web.mit.edu/

No

228 kb

16

51 ms

University of Arkansas Little Rock (UALR)

http://ualr.edu/

Yes

906 kb

54

267 ms

College of William and Mary

http://www.wm.edu/

No

2.7 mb

73

228 ms

University of Southern California (USC)

http://www.usc.edu

No

2.3 mb

46

342 ms

WP Engine (non higher ed)

Yes

794 kb

118

93 ms

Before You Dive In

  • Blog-based roles
  • Paradox of choice
  • No workflow
  • Media/asset management

Core Improvements

  • Constantly Updated
  • Consistent Improvements

Plugins To Improve Interface

Questions?

Funny-meme-Sometimes-I-question[1]