WordPress: Cloud Discussion, Content Migration, Plug-ins, How others are using

Several websites on campus are built on WordPress (e.g. anderson.stanford.edu), others are going to WordPress (e.g. law school) and many of the attendees were not using WordPress yet, but were interested.
 
 
 
Questions:
 
Does University IT support WordPress?
At the moment, Stanford Web Services is a Drupal shop, but University IT is interested in providing development / design and support for WordPress, and is beginning to explore how to grow the team to do this (the team is small and had to focus on one platform).
 
Would people be interested in a Stanford Sites-like hosting solution for WordPress? (automatic updates, many plugins, but limited in the addition of new plugins)
It seemed like people were interested.
 
Should we start a community of practice?
If you are in interested in starting a community of practice please contact jstroth@law.stanford.edu
The communities of practice website has guidelines on how to get a COP started.
 
Would people be interested in a WordCamp for higher ed?
People seemed interested. If we create it under the Wordcamp umbrella, they would provide support - and provide access to top developers for talks, as well. This would be camp dedicated to higher education (there hasn't been one in a while - the last one was a higher ed summit at a WordCamp SF).
 
Would it make sense to have WordPress and Drupal each cover a niche of the web publishing at Stanford? For example, Drupal for bid departments, and WordPress for events and personal sites?
It was mentioned that Law is moving to WordPress, and they have 300 content providers. Also, that it would be useful to have a bundled offering / turn-key solution for sites such as research groups and other small sites.
 
What is the demand for people's home pages? How many students use WordPress?
We couldn't say for WordPress, but if it's any indication, there are 1,400 websites on Stanford Sites and 68% of users are people.stanford.edu users (individual users - not groups or departments). The demand could be quite strong. Other things mentioned were the ability for students to keep a domain of their own throughout their careers, so they can begin to build a portfolio and take it with them when they graduate. Some schools have done this in collaboration with WordPress.com. Other schools allow you to drop any HTML into a folder for it to be shown on your homepage.
So, we asked, why shouldn't people automatically get a website when they join Stanford, and be able to switch platforms if they want to?
 
Comments:
 
One issue with having two content management systems at Stanford (Drupal and WordPress) is that you need to duplicate integration for them (CAP, events, courses).
 
Faculty ask us to help them build WordPress sites, but there is no bandwidth. Sometimes, not even enough bandwidth to help them choose the right platform.
We can help them install WordPress, but then who will build it?
 
JB Christy has built a great Stanford Cardinal theme which can be used by departments and official groups.
 
Law uses the multi-site model for WordPress, and Jennifer mentioned she has talked to other universities that use that method of hosting successfully. Some of them use git repositories to keep track of custom code. Vendors are required to share the work with the rest of the university.
 
It was noted that because WordPress offers backwards compatibility and easier updates, the investment in code for one version carries for a longer time. With Drupal, modules and themes have to be re-written every major update.
 
 
Faculty want different templates, their own stories.
 
CAP as a home page for faculty isn't customizable enough for faculty who want different templates and a way to tell their own story. WordPress allows them to do that, but it would be great if one could push to CAP and not just pull information from it.  (Law, Earth Sciences and GSB expressed interest in pushing information to CAP from their websites).  Dumping content from a Stanford WP or Drupal site is easier than what CAP offers and so it could be a way for faculty that leave or come to Stanford to take their information with them.
 
Speaking of information, currently (at least for the law school), entering bibliographic information is a very manual affair.
 
 
Some use cases mentioned:
 
- Faculty web page. Faculty members want their own designs
- Book site
- Class website with multiple bloggers, integrated with WebAuth and that can be carried on to the next year.
- Department site with many contributors
 
Some suggested plugins:
 
- HTTP Authentication plugin
- SimpleSAML
- wp-cli
- WP All Import (importing XML or CSV)
- ACF (advanced custom fields) - for custom content fields
- Pods
- Gravity Forms
- User role manager (to create additional users / permissions)
- AmazonS3 - to store images in S3
 
WordPress Theme:
 
- Stanford Cardinal (designed by JB Christy)