Explore St. Louis Case StudyUsing WordPress as CMS

Ed MorrisseyPartner & Chief Creative Officer

ed@integritystl.com www.integritystl.com

Agenda

–Introduction/Overview–ExploreStLouis.com

•About •Goals of Site•Decision to use WordPress•Features and Plug-Ins•Lessons Learned

–Questions & Answers

2

Nice to Meet You

–Partner/CCO with Integrity–Been here since the beginning–Rode the dot com craze–Early adopter of open source

3

EMorrissey

Ed Morrisseyed@integritystl.com

About the St. Louis CVC

–Founded in 1909 –Mission = Sell St. Louis–Operates the America’s Center

•502K sq feet, 80 meeting rooms •Edward Jones Dome •Ferrara Theatre•Ballroom

4

ExploreStLouis.com

–Increase visitor demand & spending of visitors, meeting planners, travel professionals, media & local citizens•5M annual visits – 3M uniques•200+ pages plus directories•Online bookings•Multiple databases•Legacy systems

5

Previous Site

6

Goals of Redesign

–Develop a site that appeals to visitors, meeting planners, travel professionals, media and local citizens

•Build on the brand•Overhaul user flows •Enhance/improve SEO•Modern conventions•Integrate social media•Ability to self publish•Inexpensive

•Secure, scalable, code-friendly, extendable

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What to Do?

–Build?–Buy?

–Borrow?

8

Open source…

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…A religion

That’s ridiculous.

We geeks just want to write

good code & we all know open

source is nothing more than…

There are discussions

whether open source is political.

Quick ComparisonFeature

Ease of Hosting and Installation

Ease of Setup: Simple Site

Ease of Setup: Complex Site

Ease of Use: Content Editors

Ease of Use: Site Administrator

Graphical Flexibility

Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization

Structural Flexibility

User Roles and Workflow

Community/Web 2.0 Functionality

Extending and Integrating

Security

Support/Community Strength

10

Quick ComparisonFeature

Ease of Hosting and Installation

Ease of Setup: Simple Site

Ease of Setup: Complex Site

Ease of Use: Content Editors

Ease of Use: Site Administrator

Graphical Flexibility

Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization

Structural Flexibility

User Roles and Workflow

Community/Web 2.0 Functionality

Extending and Integrating

Security

Support/Community Strength

11

Why WordPress?

–Free is good

12

Plug-Ins

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Dashboard

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Large site

Large site

Lots of content groups

Lots of content groups

Custom Fields

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Fine control

of layout

Fine control

of layout

Custom Post

16

Custom taxonomies

Custom taxonomies

Widgets

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Grouping - modularity of widgets

Grouping - modularity of widgets

Results

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Lessons Learned

–WordPress/PHP does not run well on Windows Server 2003 edition with IIS 6– Be open to using 3rd party host

– Content is King– There’s no need to reinvent the wheel

– Most plug-ins require customization– Self-publishing is a cultural shift

– Whoever inputs content must have understanding of how the system works

– Hidden cost– Evolution not a revolution– The right team can execute within WordPress

whatever functionality we dream up

19

Thank You

20

Ed Morrisseyed@integritystl.com

Extra Slides

21

Mobile Pages

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WordPress and SEO

– For beginners, it works out-of-the-box– Advanced plug-ins allow fine-tuning of

everything– Automatically optimizes your titles for search

engines–Generates META tags automatically–Override title and set META description– Support for Custom Post Types– Advanced Canonical URLs

• the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices

– Fine tune Page Navigational Links– Built-in API so plugins/themes can access and

extend functionality– SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites– Avoid duplicate content found on blogs 23