I’ve been using WordPress now since the inception of this blog and used it for several other blogs as well. I haven’t been recommending WordPress mainly because it has needed a lot of care and loving from an administrator. No longer. WordPress can now update itself with the click of a button by its administrator. This totally changes the game and gets us closer to a Web publishing model that more or less removes the need for a techie on a daily or weekly basis.
If you’re a nonprofit that has less than 5 people on their Web team, I suggest you consider WordPress 2.7. It has an all-new administrator UI to boot. There are so many things you can do with WordPress it would be a shame not to use it.
Here’s a quick list:
- Killer SEO strategy with All-in-One SEO plugin. I was brought in to help with asianamericansforobama.com and they had a lousy pagerank (big fat zero) being hosted on Typepad. I told all the posters to start filling in the necessary SEO fields on All-in-One SEO and to start adding tags. Their pagerank now is (5/10). Traffic hit nearly 40,000 viewers in November and holding steady at around 20k viewers this month. You can check out our stats at Quantcast.
- Easy to add Google ads. It’s as easy as pie to add Google ads. This means you can get a decent job of monetizing your traffic when you’ve got a little bit of traffic going.
- Remarkably easy to train people how to post. The only major problem is when people try to cut and paste Word documents into WordPress but you’ll see this problem from everyone who is a Word user. They just have to be taught to use the special Word to WordPress button on the WordPress editor to remove the extra HTML fluff that Word adds.
- Tons of WordPress themes out there and I mean a TON. You can pay or not pay. You can go halfsies on the customization and pick an existing theme and alter it.
- Support for all the latest standards. If you pick the right theme, it can be all tricked out with SEO goodness as well as with the latest semantic Web standards.
- Runs in PHP and is easy to code. If anything, WordPress is still kind of the Wild West in the way it’s programmed. It’s not particularly object-oriented in its thinking so it can lend itself to spaghetti code. On the other hand, even programming novices can kick ass in WordPress.
- You can create pages instead of posts. Pages are how you make a WordPress site look like any other site. A page is basically a post that shows up on your menu and never is subject to being shown in chronological order on the front page of your site.
- Long, long lists of plugins that work with everything. WordPress is pretty much the standard for first-cut attempts at a plugin with whatever new standard comes along. Those of you trying to integrate fundraising with a WordPress plugin will find it ridiculously easy to find a plugin that works with your payment processor and your e-mail list software.
Totally excited, now? You can download WordPress for free at http://wordpress.org/download/. Be aware that you should probably have an ISP. I heartily recommend Nexcess.net. I use them for this blog and for asianamericansforobama.com. For most small orgs, the mini-me package is great. However, asianamericansforobama.com is running the Gettin’ Hits service plan and running over 35 GB a month. I assume that if your nonprofit is getting that much traffic that you’ll be more than happy to pay 
.
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Allan:
Thanks for this post.
I’ve been encouraging a few small non-profits to consider WordPress for their sites, and I’ve been met with some skepticism. (I think there’s still a negative perception when I use the phrase “blog platform.”)
I’m a big WP fan and user, and your points are right on target. I’ll have to share this with my clients.
Interesting points there, Brett. Any chance you could elaborate on the skepticism of non-profits? I’m thinking that they’ve been told they need a big CMS. I guess my point is no, you don’t need a big CMS. You need to post and to post often in order to get your Google Pagerank up. Having a big CMS isn’t going to help you with your SEO efforts.
[...] WordPress Now Recommended for Small Nonprofits | Non-Profit Tech Blog This is about my new recommendation of WordPress as a CMS for small nonprofits with a Web staff of less than five people. [...]
Allen,
Excellent post! Thanks so much for writing about WordPress. I actual do social media consulting and blog implementations for small non-profits.
For months I’ve been writing about the business value of having a blog instead of a website. I’ve even gone so far as to publish a video series called “Blog vs. Website” and even did an interview with Chris Garrett, who wrote ProBlogger with Darren Rowse.
Allen – you are way ahead of the curve on this!
Thank you.
John Haydon
Thanks for your kind comments, John. I don’t think I’m especially “way ahead of the curve” as you say. I think people have always used WordPress as a lightweight CMS but it’s taken quite some time for WordPress to have a deep enough feature set for me to recommend for nonprofits that don’t have much in the way of IT staff. WordPress 2.7 obviously breaks the mold though.
Allen, thank you for this post. Have you ever thought about compiling a list of designers and developers that (1) use wordpress/develop for wordpress and (2) are willing to design for non profits? If you have this list or decide to put together a list such as this, please let me know. I would like to be added to the list. I am a designer/developer that designs exclusively in WordPress and Joomla, two open source blogging/CMS applications. I also know of a few other people that do the same. Thanks for a great article!
L. Danielle Baldwin, thank you for your kind comments. Unfortunately, I don't have lists of developers and I don't plan on having one. I've found that those kinds of lists become rapidly out of date anyway. However, I think nonprofit managers should have guiding principles on choosing developers for your nonprofit above and beyond that of WordPress and Joomla.
You've got me thinking about how I've chosen developers in the past. My guess is that IT directors choose developers much like themselves. I tend to be process-oriented, features-driven and transparent and I think I prefer my developers that way. I'm also not a big believer in face to face communication. I think that style can be jarring to many nonprofit managers who tend to be ad hoc and don't have experience in project management and software development.
Once my mind is clear about these issues I'll see if I can post a series of guidelines. Hopefully, you'll fall well under these guidelines.
Hey, Danielle – just wanted to mention that we (at Idealware) *are* putting together a directory of consultants who help nonprofits with open source CMSs – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Plone. It's fee based (the fees are funding our detailed comparison of those four systems), but intended to be very affordable – listings start at $45. More here: <ahref="http://www.idealware.org/os_cms_report_sponsors.p...
It'll be interesting to see how good the listings will be. I will see about putting up a blog post on how to qualify developers for your nonprofit based on those listings. Be prepared for an insistence on transparency and accountability for your vendors.
Larger organisations might require Drupal or another CMS, but WordPress can fulfill most small nonprofits' website needs. Just don't refer to it as a blogging tool, these days it's got enough features to rank as a perfectly good CMS.
I've put together dozens of nonprofits' websites using WordPress and only one or two of them are traditional blogs. Content editors like using it because it's simple to publish pages and news items. And version 2.7 looks so much more professional.
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Thanks for the great info…
Karan
http://karangoel.in
Almost a year later WP has millions of users and is proving to be the next gen system. I'm truly shocked that not even a powerful CMS like Joomla and even Drupal has managed to come even close to WP's stats. Well your review is awesome, now there are much more points that can be added to the pros of the mighty ever-growing WordPress.
I'm a blogger and I've been using WordPress in the past years where I publish my blogs and articles. I am currently administrating three sites. I also tried using other blogsites but I must say that WordPress is more user-friendly. Nice article!
I'm a blogger and I've been using WordPress fro the past years to publish my blogs and articles. I'm currently administering three blogsites, all WordPress. I've tried other blogsites but I must say that I am most satisfied with WordPress.
thumbs up!