5 Reasons To Use WordPress For Your Intranet Or Extranet
Posted in Corporate Blogging on September 21st, 2009 by admin – Be the first to comment
WordPress is not only the world’s leading open source blog software among personal bloggers, but is also the most used open source blog software among Fortune 500 companies. It offers numerous user privilege options for setting up a private and secure intranet or extranet site where administrators can control access to viewing and modifying content, submitting new posts as well as commenting. There are also hundreds of free themes to allow you to match your corporate branding look and feel. There are thousands of plug-ins (software add-ons) to enhance or add functionality for internal employee surveys, 5 star ratings on posts, submitting suggestions, collecting participant information for committes/boards and much more. Here are 5 reasons why WordPress should be your first choice for internal blog software for setting up an intranet or extranet;
1. Fast To Get Started
You can download a free version of WordPress from WordPress.org, or sign up for a free account at WordPress.com. Downloading and installing your own version of WordPress gives you by far the most flexibility for customization for your internal blog, extranet or intranet. If you want to customize your theme to better match your corporate look and feel or colours, you may need to have your in-house IT folks do that. WordPress is built on the most widely used programming language (PHP and MySQL) and is easy to install on any server in less than 5 minutes.
2. Cheap For A Customized Theme
If you want enhanced options such as a more highly customized and optimized theme or design, you could hire a specialist (like us!) for a small fee. A developer who is a WordPress expert will be more well versed in any coding customizations and plug-ins to apply to get you the features/functions you want. I may also recommend buying a custom theme with more additional features (such as a Flash slide show on the home page), will cost you generally under $100 US, and provide even more out of the box functionality and fantastic design. StudioPress.com and ThemeForest.com are 2 of my favourite WordPress theme sites.
3. Private and Secure
There are many ways to ensure your intranet (or extranet) is kept secure and private from competitors. The first and easiest way is to install it within your corporate firewall. You can also place it in an internal directory and use an .htaccess file that secure it via username and password. Other options that enable a secure and private intranet (extranet really) outside your firewall include plugins that require a user register prior to posting or commenting.
4. Easy To Control Content
Your blog administrator can easily setup permissions to allow your company to keep tight controls on published content. As a administrator, you can setup a user account for employees which is specific to their content publishing abilities. You may choose to allow one department to post content which is then approved by you the administrator or editor (in WordPress, this is called a “contributor”. You may also choose to restrict posting ability to those who are set as “subscribers”. When you log-in to your WordPress Dashboard, user permissions are found in the “Users” menu on the left hand side. After clicking on “Add Users”, you then assign a username, password, and other details for that new user. At the bottom of the new user setttings, there is a pull-down menu for setting the “Role” of your users (administrator, editor, author, contributor or subscriber).
5. Leverages Social Networking
If you are looking for some honest (and even anonymous) feedback for human resource issues, your corporate retreat or even your website – then WordPress plug-ins can help. Implementing an internal survey such as SurveyGizmo can allow you to create a customized contact us page, survey and even connect those results into SalesForce.com or othe CRM software. You may also want to allow your employees to follow your blog on Twitter or Facebook, and so can download a plug-in that instantly posts your company content to Twitter.com so employees on the road (e.g. sales staff) can pickup secure and private updates which on the road.