Beyond Wordpress

Throughout the faculty initiative for the Domain of One's Own we specifically asked you to spend time experimenting with Wordpress. Part of this reason is because Wordpress is one of the most popular and widely supported publishing platforms on the web right now. And partly because we've used Wordpress extensively here at UMW both with UMW Blogs and now with our main university site umw.edu. But Wordpress isn't the only piece of software out there and it's worth exploring what else is available. If you recall from the article on LAMP Environments our server runs Apache, MySQL, and PHP which together represent the backbone of a lot of open source web-based software out there. While some software will require you to upload a set of files, create a database, and enter all those settings into a configuration file, we've made it a lot easier by using a plugin called "Installatron" that gives you one-click access to a variety of open source software installers (it's likely how you installed Wordpress at the beginning of this initiative). Let's look at what else is out there.

Blogging and CMS
Wordpress began as a blogging platform but has slowly transitioned to a full fledged "CMS" or Content Management System capable of driving full websites. You'll find a lot of other software available under this category. The runner-up in terms of support and popularity is Drupal but many users find the interface for it too technical. Some apps like Typo3 and ModX are built as frameworks for large scale websites. Others like Concrete5 and TextPattern are more geared to smaller sites and blogs. The automated installer also has the option of letting you demo the software before installing and that's a great option to take advantage of. There's a link to the demonstration on the left sidebar when viewing the details of a particular application.

Photo Galleries
If you're familiar with Flickr, SmugMug, or even Facebook Photos you might be wondering if it's possible to have something similar on your own domain and the answer is yes! We have a few pieces of photo gallery software available and you might decide to setup a subdomain like photos.mydomain.com to run it. The two popular platforms are ZenPhoto and Gallery. After installing one of these you'll have a great web interface for uploading and managing your photos and creating nice photo galleries that you can send to family and friends. In some cases photo gallery software may make more sense for an artist to use as their portfolio site than a full Wordpress installation.

Educational Software
Did you know you could install a learning management system along the same lines of Canvas right in your domain? Under Community Building apps you'll notice Moodle is an option and many schools actually use Moodle as their LMS. Obviously you wouldn't have the same level of integration with your students that Canvas provides but it may be something worth exploring just to know what's out there. There's also a great piece of forum software called phpBB in the community app section that allows you to setup a discussion board which can be great for running with a course. If you want to install Wiki software you'll find a few options out there. MediaWiki is the most popular with an interface similar to Wikipedia but there are some other great competitors that offer more modern interfaces like DocuWiki.

This article isn't meant to discourage you from using tools that are already out there like Canvas, Flickr, or Dropbox. Running every tool you use through your own domain can be time-consuming in the level of management required. What you gain of course is full control of the platform. You can customize things exactly how you want them and tweak them until your heart is content. By using third-party tools you relinquish some of that control in return for a managed experience where someone else gets to worry if the site isn't working, not you. But you won't be able to adjust the look of a photo gallery on Facebook, it will look how they decide it should look. That's the tradeoff. Ultimately we want you to know that there's more out there than just Wordpress and it can be easy to setup a subdomain, install a piece of software, and play around with it.