Tag Archives: WordPress

What Kind of CMS’s Do Museums Use?

Posted on January 22, 2013 by in Articles, Drupal, Non-Profit, wordpress

First – I know my mom and other folks who are not as tech savvy as others will probably read this – so I’ll answer their question first – what’s a CMS? Well, CMS stands for Content Management System – basically – it’s software to help people manage their content for their websites. I imagine many people reading this will already know that though.

So – now that we’ve gotten that question out of the way…there are many (MANY) Content Management Systems out there. I’m wondering – what are the most popular systems currently on the market?

There are folks in the WordPress community that claim we power >16% of the web. We first heard this stat in 2011. We’re avid fans of both WordPress and Drupal – so we are wondering – is this really true? It turns out – yes – it’s pretty true.

But is this the case for arts organizations and nonprofits? We decided to do some research for ourselves. We took a random sampling of 500 museums and worked to find out what CMS they were using to power their home site.

Here’s what we’ve found so far

More than 10% (55) of the 508 sites we sampled are running WordPress, and 46 (just less than 10%) are running Drupal. All in all, over 20% of museum sites are running open source code. And it looks like WordPress is indeed the most popular open source CMS currently around. While I have not (yet) surveyed every museum and nonprofit out there, this is a good start and I guess is indicative of what we’re looking at.

Here’s a chart of our preliminary findings.

CMS Use

Some stats from WordPress

Why are we bothering with this research?

Well – for starters – we build websites. So, in some ways, it’s a little bit of market research.

Second – because we can :-) Who said research wasn’t fun? We’re curious and we want to know how organizations are managing all their incredible content.

Finally – it reinforces our belief that open source is the way to go (only a handful of folks are using Sharepoint, by Microsoft).

REQUESTS 

We’ve got a few requests :

1. If you’d like to participate in this survey, add your data, or share how your organization is managing your web presence…well…there’s a survey for that :-)

2. If your org uses WordPress and you’ve already completed that first survey, do this survey instead

Share Your Data

3. And of course, if you have nice infographics skillz – hit us up! We intend to open up this data soon, and want to make the data look pretty.

4. Leave a comment if you want to get updates on this project or help out in any way.

Happy web making everyone!

Greater Jamaica Development Corporation

Posted on January 24, 2012 by in

Greater Jamaica Development Corporation is a fantastic organization. They are one of New York’s oldest not-for-profit local development corporations. Since its founding in 1967 by the Regional Plan Association and local business, civic and community leaders, GJDC has stressed economic development as it pursues its community-building mission. However, their site was disorganized, and had not been updated in over 1 year.

We worked very closely with their in-house designer to build out a completely new custom WordPress site. We also worked with their team to help migrate over all of their content.

Community Organizer 2.0

Posted on January 24, 2012 by in

When Debra came to us, her WordPress site was disorganized and was using a pre-built template. We gave her a completely new logo and totally reorganized her content. In order to highlight all the great resources she has, we also created a completely custom presentations page. Overall, her traffic has increased, she’s received more leads, and she’s received great feedback.

NYU Center for Religion & Media

Posted on January 24, 2012 by in

Before NYU’s Center for Religion and Media came to us, their site was simply outdated. They were lacking a workable Content Management System and needed a design refresh. We setup their department on WordPress, got them on better hosting, helped them port over all their content, setup an events management system, and reorganized their site structure. Since the launch, they have been adding content with great ease and are once again proud to promote their organization’s website.

ABOUT NYU CRM
The Center for Religion and Media at New York University is one of ten Centers of Excellence funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. It is a joint project of the Religious Studies Program (Angela Zito, Director) and the Center for Media, Culture, and History, (Faye Ginsburg, Director, Barbara Abrash, Director of Public Programming). Jeff Sharlet is the editor of the Center’s innovative web journal, The Revealer: A Daily Review of Religion and the Press.

Solaire Generation

Posted on January 24, 2012 by in

Solaire Generation is a market leader in green energy, helping transform parking lots into energy plants. For this project, we built out a custom portfolio page and products page, highlighting their work. We also created a custom video player. We also provide support for their servers.

WordPress on Rackspace Cloud Sites

Posted on July 14, 2011 by in Articles, interesting, Tutorial, wordpress

Installing WordPress can be either an easy or difficult process, depending on which hosting company you’re working with. For people using Bluehost, Dreamhost, and Godaddy all you need to do is go into the control panel and do what is called a “one-click installation.” When running a “one-click installation” script you are basically telling the host where on the server you’d like the WordPress files to be placed, and creating a mysql database (with username and password) to house all the information that will be pulled in through the WordPress site. That is the quick and painless way to create a WordPress site, but not all hosting companies are created equal.

Recently, my colleague and I were in the market for a new company to host our client’s sites on. We were in search of a host that has great support, technology to accommodate database driven sites, respects the privacy of its clients, and has security measures in place which will prevent client sites from being hacked. After reviewing a slew of hosting companies we discovered Rackspace. Not only do sites (referred to as Cloud Sites) hosted on Rackspace run fast, but their chat support is informative and efficient. The only downfall to Rackspace is the arduous process required for doing a WordPress installation on a cloud site. Rackspace cloud sites do not have a “one-click installation” option, so to create a WordPress site you must start from scratch, and do it manually.

This post is split into four sections:
How to Create a Client
How to Add a Site
How to Create a Database
How to Install WordPress on the Server

Read More…

MTV Act WordPress Plugin

Posted on June 26, 2011 by in

Together with the fantastic design and strategy team at Purpose, we developed a custom WordPress plugin for MTV’s Act Blog, helping people take collective action.

Some of the basic tech details :

Our custom plugin utilizes custom post types to allow MTV to build a directory of actions. The plugin also connects directly to the Social Actions database and gives the MTV bloggers access to a large set of actions to plug into their posts.

We also worked with the Gigya API – this particular piece encourages visitors to share their actions with their friends.

Many thanks to all the folks who spent countless hours working on this!

MoMA – Impressions from South Africa

Posted on June 26, 2011 by in

MoMA needed a more flexible system for their rotating exhibits within the Prints Department. They were constantly developing new sites for every new exhibit. This new implementation allows the Museum to customize the theme, menu, and layout. Not only does this save on development efforts, it will save the money a good deal of money.

On a tech notes, this WordPress installation features custom post types so the works can be queried in multiple layouts for multiple image galleries. We also built in integration with a custom image gallery library called Ajax-Zoom so user can zoom in on specific images.

aCanaryTorsi

Posted on June 26, 2011 by in

We worked very closely with Yanira Castro (the artisitic director and founder of acanarytorsi) to develop a completely custom identity for her company and website. To create the background video for her website, we directed a full video shoot. We also designed multiple versions of the site before finalizing the current design.

In addition to using a custom CMS for the flash front-end, we also integrated Slideshow Pro to manage the galleries, and WordPress to manage the blog.

This project was listed as one of Slideshow Pro’s Top Ten Websites.

Ways to Backup Your WordPress Site

Posted on June 9, 2011 by in Articles, interesting, wordpress

Oh no! My dog ate my website! That is exactly what it feels like when you upgrade your WordPress site and your older plugins don’t exactly get along with the new software. When dealing with WordPress, it is not uncommon to run into a few bugs and hiccups. Sometimes you upgrade for security (like when a new version of WordPress is released). Or maybe the newer version of that plugin you love runs much faster or looks much sleeker than its crusty predecessor. Whatever reason you chose to modify your WordPress setup, it is imperative that you back everything up – just in case things go wrong (and they do).

So – without ado – here are a few options that will help (and most likely save) you or your client’s website.
Read More…

Tech4Good Meetup Discusses Online Community Building

Posted on April 28, 2011 by in interesting, meetup

Tech4Good is a meetup group that connects people from all types of industries. Whether you are a non-profit organization, a funder, a programmer, an individual with a great idea, or a social changemaker, this meetup group will welcome you.

As most good meetups do, members are encouraged to share, learn and collaborate.

This month’s speaker, Justin Isaf, briefed folks about the benefits of managing communities. Justin currently manages 4 million comments a month for the Huffington Post Media Group, and has eight years of experience building highly leveraged online communities.

He covered topics like :
- how to spot the trolls who spam communities
- the importance of reaching critical mass of contributors and commenters
- how to get people talking to each other
- and…a URL to download an e-book version of Randy Farmer’s Building Web Reputation Systems.

Justin also offered three tactical approaches to leveraging communities (Twitter, Forums, and Blogs) while giving insight into their strengths and weaknesses. Twitter, for example, can be used to build conversations between followers, but those kinds of communities will never grow as large as the more traditional Forums. Blogs, on the other hand, give Community Managers more control over their communities than the other two approaches. Justin also discussed the Pros and Cons of being a community manager. “You need to have thick skin to do this work,” he stated after describing an experience where one of his former community leaders started spreading rumors about him on the web.

Read More…

WordPress 3.1 Book Giveaway – Free!

Posted on April 27, 2011 by in free

The last few blog posts I’ve posted here have all started out with “exciting news” – this one’s no different as we’re doing a Giveaway of a WordPress book!

WordPress 3 Complete by April Silver is a thorough guide on all things WordPress and even includes code samples if you get the e-book. We’ve got an advance copy and will be posting a review soon. But you don’t have to wait for my review – you can win a copy today. To enter to win a copy of the book, simply post a comment on why you want this book, how you would use it, or simply link to your current WordPress site. A winner will be chosen randomly using random.org.

What you will learn from this book :

  • Install WordPress in a variety of environments
  • Upgrade WordPress from older installations
  • Add images, videos, tags, and categories to blog posts
  • Personalize and control the content of your website
  • Manage the look and feel of your site with customized themes
  • Allow users to have a variety of control over content
  • Link your website to the outside world through feeds, syndication, and podcasting
  • Create custom post types to manage books, movies, people, or anything else you can imagine
  • Design and create your own themes and plugins from scratch

So – leave a comment! Let us know in the comments section why you could use this book and you could win a free copy. Good luck!

Allison Fine

Posted on April 26, 2011 by in

We ported Allison Fine’s site over from wordpress.com to her own domain, with a completely revamped look. During the process, we created an archive of her podcasts, setup a media gallery, and worked to highlight her multiple books.

New Directors / New Films

Posted on April 26, 2011 by in

We developed a brand spankin’ new WordPress site for MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, celebrating the 40th year of this awesome film festival. We used lots of new WordPress features (like custom post types). This allowed us to archive 300+ films and directors from the past 20 years of the festival.

Design by Brigitta Bungard

Julia Haltigan

Posted on March 27, 2011 by in

We love Julia’s music and wanted to make sure others could hear all the good stuff she’s got.

For a long time, Julia only had a flash site. She couldn’t update it, and the site stayed lonely and neglected. After working with Julia, we put together a new site, with a whole bunch of new features like:
- an online store
- a lyrics archive
- audio players
- video gallery
- photo galleries
- and even a blog!

The Defibulators – Brooklyn Country Cookout

Posted on March 27, 2011 by in

This site was put together for The Defibulators’ music festival at SXSW, featuring over 10 bands. We put together a full event lineup, and photo gallery. We also included individual audio players so visitors could listen to the bands.