Item: WordPress
Rating: 9
Author: Ashley Mumm

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use WordPress for our website content management. It is used only in our communications department. For our needs, it provides us a way to connect with our audience, share information that could be pertinent to them, and offer resources and solutions for clients. It's an easy-to-use tool that is universal, meaning new folks who join our team can quickly get up-to-speed and make edits to content on the site as needed. It also means that not just one person is responsible for making such edits, which allows flexibility and sharing of responsibilities.

Pros and Cons

Integration of plug-ins to create a custom user experience.
WYSIWYG editing options are great for less skilled folks
Cross-team collaboration is possible with varying levels of access to administrative or simply content-related editing.

Some plug-in integration could use improvement, though that is likely a concern external developers need to address.
Seeing past drafts of posts or overwriting a previous saved post can sometimes be cumbersome and nevre-wracking.
It can be extremely difficult to address problems, as there often can be, when updates are made automatically and access to the backend is gone.

Return on Investment

The speed at which we can publish content is often limited to our approval process. That has been a bonus.
While a larger budget would give us the opportunity to build a more personalized and functional site overall, WordPress is a great interim (or forever, for those with zero to small budgets) tool.
With some customization, WordPress has been an impactful tool for us to share our resources with the community.

Alternatives Considered

Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and Weebly

I am the biggest fan of WordPress compared to others I've tried because you can further customize and edit your site to your liking. The others feel less intuitive and more cumbersome to update. You need to know more CSS/HTML coding in order to make a change to the other sites. With WordPress, I feel you can make more changes with a simple plugin.

Key Insights

Do you think WordPress delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with WordPress's feature set?

Yes

Did WordPress live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of WordPress go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy WordPress again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Adobe InDesign, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator CC

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel like WordPress is great for a mix of experience levels. It does require some basic knowledge of management programs, but with some assistance in getting it set up and a tutorial of how to navigate it, I personally prefer WordPress over any of the other tools that limit your ability to customize and change things, like Squarespace or GoDaddy's builder. For folks without the ability to be trained, it might not make sense to use, as there could be a large learning curve. For us Millennials, blogging was our jam in the early 2000's with LiveJournal and Blogger. That prepared us well for a world where WordPress can do more than simply act as a blog.

WordPress: a versatile tool for all experience levels.

Overall Satisfaction with WordPress