Comments on: Wordpress for Library Websites

By: Sharani Robins

Sharani Robins — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:22:01 +0000

The Dartmouth Public Libraries have a WordPress Library website using K2 as the theme – helpful for making it more of a CMS site. It was unveiled a few weeks ago.
http://www.dartmouthpubliclibraries.org

By: Donna

Donna — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:52:57 +0000

Oops, sorry I didn’t read the “wordpress” AS their website caveat … but I’m interested to see how many of you are using it this way.

By: Donna

Donna — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:45:14 +0000

Hi Meredith - I'm from Christchurch City Libraries in New Zealand and we've been blogging using Wordpress for just over a year. We've got a distinctive local look and feel that is unique to the blog and doesn't look the same as our website.

By: Karen

Karen — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:32:17 +0000

I’ve done quite a bit of research and testing on how to do this. I’ve got lots of notes and been looking for a library to work with to test this out. If you want some tips and tricks, I’d be happy to offer some help. Page templates can really change things up so that the site doesn’t have to look like a blog at all. Plus some custom widgets would enhance the site for sure.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:34:06 +0000

Very cool! Thanks for letting me know about it, John. I don’t know that they’d want to use it for this site, but I’d definitely like to be aware of it for future projects.

By: John Miedema

John Miedema — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:11:12 +0000

I didn’t know WordPress was so popular for library websites. I am just finishing a WordPress plugin that shows book data including covers from Open Library. When I mentioned it on Ning, one librarian thought it would be handy for library websites. The plugin should be out next week if you’re interested.

By: Geoffrey Kirkpatrick

Geoffrey Kirkpatrick — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:20:05 +0000

A couple of the libraries in my system are using wordpress, here’s one really nice example

http://www.thetroylibrary.org/

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 31 May 2008 21:20:39 +0000

I recently finished developing a beta site for the CSUEB library-- the main site is built based on a highly customized version of WordPress, and the librarian subject guides are built using multi-user WordPress. All pretty straightforward for library staff to update and manage. The catalog doesn't use WP.

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:58:41 +0000

I’m the person who runs the Park County Library System site so graciously referred to by Meredith. I did a lot of behind the scenes work to take out some of the bloggier aspects of the sites appearance (no dates appear on the static pages, and I hacked the heck out of the sidebar.php file). I think the result is pretty good. It still looks sort of like a blog, but I think on the whole it works pretty well. So it’s not a CMS. So I live in a town of 351 people and don’t have a separate teen room for my library. I try not to let these things stop me from having a good looking website or planning library events.

The biggest problem I’m having at the moment is that I’m not sure how to handle the upgrade to WP2.5. The back end has changed enough that it will be very confusing for many of the site’s contributors. I found a “classic look” plugin (okay, well, actually Steve Lawson found it), but I haven’t been able to get it to work yet. Of course, this may be a good excuse to learn some screencasting in order to make a tutorial.

Anyway, Meredith, thanks for putting this question out — now I’m excited all over again by all these great examples.

By: pollyalida

pollyalida — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:13:30 +0000

I’ve been looking at using a magazine style theme for a library website, Branford is the one I’ve been looking at: http://blog.pafa.net/archives/151

Also, I love what Troy Public Library has done with cusomizing their WP CSS to get an elegant, simple look: http://www.thetroylibrary.org/

What great suggestions in your comments here.