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It struck me that this issue is not new. Indeed looking at the report on the first IWMW event in 1997 Colin Work, then of University of Southampton, gave a talk on Information Flow and the Institutional WWW.
As described at
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue11/web-focus/
Institutions may adopt a number of information management models including:
No management
An "anarchical" model, which reflects how the web initially developed within many institutions. This model facilitates rapid growth, but has many disadvantages including uneven coverage, diverse interfaces, contradictory information, uncertain responsibilities, etc.
Centralised management
The centralised management model will be familiar with managers of information systems available before the web. In this model, information has to be sent to a centralised group which is responsible for "processing" the information before it is made available. This model provides consistency in style and presentation, but does not scale well, with a potential bottleneck in the information flow.
Distributed management
In this model, responsibilities can be devolved to departments/groups, providing a more responsive and flexible service. However, the model can tend towards the "No management" model unless there are effective information policies in place with an editorial board to ensure compliance.
Things have become even more complicated since then!
Luke suggests that we should explore outsourcing solutions. At this year’s IWMW 2016 event there was a parallel session on “Debunking the Myths of WordPress & External Hosting” – see
http://iwmw.org/iwmw2016/talks/debunking-myths-wordpress-external-hosting/
There don’t seem to be any slides available and I didn’t attend the session but I recall a number of people saying that they felt the session was very useful. Perhaps if anyone on this list attended the session they could give a summary.
Thanks
Brian Kelly
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus
Twitter: @briankelly
Blog/website: ukwebfocus.com
From: Managing institutional Web services [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Luke Taylor
Sent: 04 October 2016 10:35
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Managing Wordpress websites
We currently have a similar set-up as below, but are currently investigating moving to an outsourced WordPress instance, so we don't have to manage the infrastructure, software upgrades, etc.
Luke Taylor
Assistant Director
IT Services
University of Bristol
Computer Centre
Tyndall Avenue
Bristol, BS8 1UD
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+44 (0) 117 394 1156
A top 5 UK university with leading employers (2015)
A top 5 UK university for research (2014 REF)
A world top 50 university (QS Ranking 2016)
On 4 October 2016 at 09:58, Andrew Palmer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Here at Brunel we had a similar problem (and still do in part, but we're making progress). We have recently launched a WordPress Multisite, which allows us to create WordPress sites (hosted on premise) in a matter of seconds. We offer requesters the option of either a custom URLs (at a cost due to domain name and SSL certificate) or a .brunel.ac.uk name for free. They often opt for the latter.
We are now able to build themes and plugins and deploy them selectively to individual WordPress subsites. And when we need to upgrade something, we only have to upgrade the multisite, and everything is upgraded.
If anyone would like more information on creating a WordPress Multisite environment let me know.
Andrew
Web Technical Manager
Brunel University London
-----Original Message-----
From: Managing institutional Web services [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Shiv Sandhu
Sent: 03 October 2016 14:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Managing Wordpress websites
We have our central CMS that hosts the majority of our content. Recently we have seen a rise in the number of Wordpress sites popping up created and managed by departments and academics, bypassing our CMS.
Has anyone had any success in controlling this? From a web management and brand point of view we would like everything on our main domain and branded correctly but currently we are facing the issue of separate domains and subdomains being created and non-branded websites going Live.
Can anyone share any guidelines in managing this?
Regards
Shiv
Senior Web Architect
Web Team (Creative Team)
External Relations
University of Leicester
LE1 7RH
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