Why you need it?
You want to record procedures, you need multiple people to access one source, you are struggling with version control with your current sources, you need to be able to change it frequently, you would like to manage edits from multiple colleagues, you would like to keep a backup of that information and the information needs to be available across multiple devices from multiple locations, you would like the information to be searchable, you would like to restrict who has access to the information and finally you want to spend the least amount of money doing this as possible.
What is WordPress?
It is an application that consists of a database (mysql or mariadb usually) linked to a website served out on a web server that creates something similar to a wordprocessor which can be accessed through a single url. This type of application is sometimes called a content management system. It can be altered to form marketing sites / shopping sites or as I use it and what is most likely to be useful to town planners as a reference site. It is estimated 43% of all websites use wordpress.
How is Long term stability and maintenance?
I’ve been running my cloudydatablog.net site now for a decade. Updates are semi automated and take me about ten minutes a month. Estimates vary but WordPress is the framework behind in the region of 40% of online websites its not going anywhere anytime soon. The framework is constantly being updated.
What does it cost?
If you have an IT department and web servers chances are it will cost you nothing just request a blank wordpress installation with an administrative login. As its open source getting the program installed literally costs nothing so any costs will be associated with the maintenance of a server which if you already have a server will be covered already.
If you don’t have server I would recommend that you sign up for managed shared hosting its ridiculously cheap and will be anything between 2 to 10 dollars a month and depending on the hosting plan you may be able to host unlimited wordpress sites on the one plan not that most organisations need to host more than a handful of sites. Sometimes the difference between the cheapest and other plans is how many sites they will allow you to host … just watch that and choose according to your long term plans.
Some suggestions for Shared Hosting
More expensive – for particularly critical business critical sites
kinsta – business orientated premium wordpress hosting
What Security features does WordPress have?
There are plugins that will automate backup so that a copy of your site can be copied to a google account or other off site platform. If you need to restrict access there are two killer options that can be used independently or together. Firstly you can white list ip addresses so that you can restrict access to individual locations this works really really well and is completely bullet proof (although generally executed through access to the server so slightly advanced). Secondly another good one is to add password security so that anyone can get to a login screen but only those that have the password can progress further. You can action both features so that the site is restricted to an individual location and then only those with the password can progress further. There are further options but honestly I’ve never needed more than these two options. With regard to restoring a site – I’ll let you know when I have to do it ten years and counting and I’ve never had the requirement.
Can I get professional help with my WordPress Installation?
Yes – you can hire people or agencies to setup maintain or develop a site if you need. There are heavy duty agencies out there who have a lot of experience in making WordPress sites extremely slick – this is likely to cost money but even out of the box it is possible to get simpler sites up and running that look good and you should check out the following section that have a few such examples.
WordPress Planning Specific Example Sites
You can identify the technology behind websites using BuiltWith. Here I search out some planning related sites that I have put through BuiltWith to qualify the use of WordPress. Here I showcase an individual’s site, a council’s site and various professional consultancies involved in aspects of planning.
City of Edinburgh Council Planning – WordPress being used by Edinburgh to improve community engagement and participation by communicating important developments, specialist knowledge and local plan information.
Dentons Planning Law Blog – Dentons Lawyers if you need heavy duty (and expensive legal advice) they can help. Here they use WordPress for marketing through community engagement and discussion of specialist legal planning knowledge.
Decisions Decisions Decisions = ‘A blog about better decisions, better urban planning and better economics‘ using WordPress
Planning Portal – Blog by the organisation that manages the planning portal in England and Wales again being used for community, engagement participation and marketing.
Cratus Group – Private agency with specialist knowledge in Strategic Land to Reserved Matters / Public consultation and post submission engagement. A good example of a very modern implementation of WordPress for an agency heavily involved in planning development work.
Progressing Planning – ‘On trends impacting planning practice research and education‘ Has an interesting article on skateboarding and relevance to planning… WordPress site that is extremely pretty. WordPress being used by Higher Education in this case the London School of Economics.
Digital Town Planning dot net – I won’t link to it because you are already on it! If you were to put it through builtwith this is what you would see.. LINK
Summary
WordPress is an easy win that is cheap – its a heavy duty tool that excels for Documentation, Workplace Coordination, Community Engagement and Community Participation