I can take a stab at this – but I’m sure other people have strong opinions on it as well ;)
1.
Wordpress, itself, is a blogging engine. There are a LOT of people who use it as a content management system as well. I can’t find the reference, but I’ve seen stats that show that > 20% of all websites
run some variant of Wordpress. Wordpress misses a lot of features that you would typically find in a normal content management system, including reusable content blocks, etc. Most people who have never used another CMS don’t know about those things and
don’t miss them.
2.
To use Wordpress in any manner other than a basic blogging site, you will need some plugins. How far your site deviates from a basic blogging engine will determine how many plugins or customizations
you will need to install. There are some well written plugins and some that were literally written by a 5th grader with no programming experience. It is hard to identify which is which without reading the code or being close to the community.
Patching plugins and Wordpress itself is a must as it is a huge target.
3.
Generally, yes. You need to install PHP and Wordpress in your production environment (you will need a database as well, but that can be on another server). There are plugins that will export the site
to .HTML, but in most cases they don’t work well and tend to break quite a few of the core WP features users find useful. Someone else on the list may have found one that does a better job than the ones I’ve played with.
4.
Most of the resources I’ve found have been pretty dated. The docs on wordpress.org are pretty good if you follow them step-by-step.
-Nick
From: Resotko, John [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 10:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MSUNAG] Wordpress: some questions for experienced users/admins
Good morning MSU!
(imagine I used a Robin Williams voice for that!)
I’ve had some questions about Wordpress from one of my faculty that I can’t answer, because I don’t use it, and I don’t have it installed on any of my web servers. I was hoping that an experienced Wordpress
user or admin could answer a few questions for me. If you know, please let me know by replying in list or offline. I’m happy to take a phone call if you have the time.
1)
Is Wordpress a decently featured CMS? In years past it was very popular for setting up blogs and similar user managed content, but is it a robust CMS?
2)
To make it useful as a CMS, do you need a lot of plug-ins installed? Nearly every article I read about Wordpress security seems to indicate that plug-ins are the inroad for many security attacks,
and the more plug-ins you add, the more time you will spend continuously patching your Wordpress installation for security fixes. Is that your experience?
3)
Do I need to install Wordpress on the web server where I want to manage content, or can a separate Wordpress server be set up to do development and editing, and then only push out HTML content to
the production server once that content has been approved? I’d rather not install yet another set of tools on our production web site if I can avoid it. I’d rather be patching a development Wordpress server than take the chance of introducing more software
to my primary web server that needs more patching.
4)
Can anyone refer me to a decent article on basic Wordpress administration and setup? Anything you have found useful would be great.
Well, again, my thanks in advance for any information you may be willing to share. Have a great morning!
John Resotko
Assistant Director, Systems Administration and Support
Michigan State University College of Law
648 N. Shaw Lane, Room 208 Law Building
East Lansing, MI 48842-1300
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 517-432-6836
fax: 517-432-6861
MSU IT Council , Law College representative and board member:
https://tech.msu.edu/itcouncil/index.php