Not even sandals are one size fits all. But some things do fit right off the shelf. For Word Press that’s things like changing the Happenings Page. Changing photographs or adding new ones really is pretty easy too. Adding and deleting sub-pages as site users tell us how it should look is just work – it’s not hard.
We can probably compare the existing web site to a bound book and putting the new web site into a three ring binder. Suppose we use Happenings as an example; you can see it as one of the menu items. Given that we use the title and it means something to us, we don’t change it. Even so, the happenings change every month. Whoever is in charge of updating the page that month can either write new copy on the fly in the Visual Editor, or – and preferably -create their copy in their favorite text editor or word processor and put it on the Happenings page when its complete. Either way, the changes don’t show until someone clicks a “Publish” button. Since there’s no real ‘computer-ese’ involved, the process is now scary-simple compared to the old web site.
Somethings – like pulling a Google Map unto the Directions page – are almost done for us. Other things – like a big calendar of the month or putting the church address on the right and looking good – well, not so much. However, making those two things work is really a case of Matt waving his magic (CSS) wand. So still, its looking like this technically good.
In trying to evaluate Word Press’ fitness for Celebration, several, more complex systems got a chance to show of their stuff. Several like Drupal, Joomla, and Django (and others with equally odd names) had their time to ‘dance with the stars’. Each had strengths: like security, ability to get really big, speed of modification. Word Press gets the nod for two very important reasons: it connects with the audience and lets us figure out what we really need the web site to do while were using it.
Books and shoes and sandals aside, its would be good to get familiar with Word Press.
