October 23, 2015

WPCampus: Higher Education and WordPress

42 minutes

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Rachel Carden is a web developer & designer within the student affairs division at the University of Alabama. Carden is also the driving force behind the latest WordPress conference, WPCampus. In today’s episode, we discuss the different challenges of managing web projects at large universities and the challenges that come with starting a new community movement. The insights shared in this episode will help WordPress consultants and community organizers alike.

It’s common for the average WordPress consultant to stick with small business websites as their core competency. Clients aside, these types of projects aren’t very complex and they don’t require over-the-top deliverables. It’s familiar territory: a responsive theme, traditional navigation, and a standard content layout. Apply the talents to build websites like that on repeat, coupled with great customer service, and you’ve created a strong business model for yourself.

Moving up market to service higher education and offer premium WordPress services takes a different route, however. Deliverables become more robust and often need to scale well beyond a shared hosting account of your normal mom-and-pop shop. Moreover, fully understanding how these organizations function becomes more important than how well you can write scalable code.

When folks wonder why they can’t write proper estimates or lose out on project bids, it’s often because they don’t fully understand their customer’s market. This goes further than just your customer’s customer. The more you know about how these organizations move and decide on web projects, the better prepared you will be for the next big sales call. If you’re looking to service more higher-ed clients, Rachel dives really deep in this episode.

Listen to the episode

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WPCampus

Where WordPress meets higher education

From a one-page website and slack account, to a global movement of over 300 members in a matter of months. If you’re in higher-ed as a WordPress user, consultant or job-seeker this is going to be an amazing community to stay-tuned to. If you want to have your hand in deciding the direction of topics and the first meetup location, I strongly suggest that you join their slack channel and get to know everyone. This is one event that I’m eagerly watching and excited to see succeed.

Important links mentioned:

Rachel Carden @bamadesigner

http://bamadesigner.com/

University of Alabama

WPCampus

http://wpcampus.org/data

A WordPress conference for higher education: coming to a campus near you?

Using WordPress in the World of Higher Education

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