The author describes the steps the Laurier Library followed in choosing blogging software for its web site

Sennema, Greg

Partnership The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research

English

Greg Sennema

Crossref

Using WordPress for our Library Blogs

Directory of Open Access Journals

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Wilfrid Laurier University 
Scholars Commons @ Laurier 
Library Publications Library 
2007 
Using WordPress for our Library Blogs 
Greg Sennema 
Wilfrid Laurier University, gsennema@wlu.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/lib_pub 
 Part of the Library and Information Science Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Sennema, Greg, "Using WordPress for our Library Blogs" (2007). Library Publications. 17. 
https://scholars.wlu.ca/lib_pub/17 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Library at Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been 
accepted for inclusion in Library Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For 
more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca. 
Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 2, no. 1 (2007) 
 
 1 
Using WordPress for our Library Blogs 
 
Greg Sennema 
Electronic Services Librarian 
Wilfrid Laurier University  
 
We are likely nearing the point where asking someone if they have a blog is like 
asking if they have ever used email. Even if a Web user has never contributed to 
a blog, they have certainly come across any number of blogs – even if they aren't 
aware they have done so. Assuming that we all understand the basic merits of 
blogs and why we need them (e.g., they offer an effective mechanism to 
organize, communicate, promote, and archive information, etc.), the main task is 
deciding which technology to use to create one.  
 
There is no shortage of options out there: a "start a blog" Google search retrieves 
enough information and ideas to keep you reading for weeks. Information geared 
to all levels of users is easily available, and with a little patience most Web users 
should be able to have a functioning blog within a short time.  Since there are so 
many possible solutions available, it is helpful to address key questions to narrow 
down the choice.  One of the first questions you might ask is whether you want to 
use a free Web-accessible blog that is hosted by another company, or if you 
want to install a blog on your own server space. 
 
Of the variety of hosted blogs available, two of the most popular are blogger.com 
(owned by Google) and wordpress.com.  Each of these sites allows you to create 
an identity, and to set up any number of blogs.  The catch, as with many free 
Web 2.0 solutions, is that there are functionality and storage limits.  Despite 
these limitations, a hosted blog is a great way to get started, and you may find 
that it offers all the functionality you will ever need to communicate yourself or 
your organization. 
 
If you already have access to a server, either at your institution or through your 
personal or organization Internet Service Provider (ISP), you may wish to install 
your own blog. Depending on your needs, the level of potential customization 
may be worth the amount of time and energy needed to install and modify a 
locally installed blog.  Installed blog software can be divided further into two 
categories: commercial and open source.  Many ISPs offer the ability to install 
either commercial or open source blog software at no additional cost above your 
monthly fees; however, if you install the software on your own institutional server 
the commercial software needs to be purchased. 
 
Understanding the basics as described above, we here at the Laurier Library 
began investigating possibilities to better communicate with our users through a 
blog.  With server space and programming expertise on hand, the options were 
easily narrowed down with a decision to install a blog instead of creating a 
hosted blog.  The next question – whether to use commercial or open source 
Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 2, no. 1 (2007) 
 
 2 
software – was also easily answered since we had no budget to purchase any 
software, thereby reducing our options even further. Answering these and a few 
other questions, the only option left was for us to use WordPress (see 
http://library.wlu.ca/blogs/lib/) 
 
Having worked with it for the past year, it is hard to imagine that WordPress 
wouldn't have been our choice even if we had a budget for commercial software.  
After installing WordPress on our server, we quickly adjusted a few colours, 
images, and fonts, and started to add entries using the Web-based 
administration dashboard. "Author" accounts were created for a few library staff, 
who could login and immediately create a post consisting of a title and text. With 
the category function of WordPress, each entry was labeled as "Spotlight," 
"What's New," and "Library News."  Using the blog's RSS feature (all blog 
software has the ability to display entries as RSS), we pushed the last three 
entries of each category into the appropriate sections on our library Web pages. 
 
When a user clicked on a "What's New" item displayed on the library Web site, 
the link took them to the full entry within the blog, a visibly different site.  To make 
this linkage more seamless, we set about to change the display of the blog so 
that it looked like any other library Web page, complete with header, footer, and 
left side navigation.  The open source WordPress community has created 
thousands of themes that, with a click of the mouse, can be applied to a 
WordPress blog (http://themes.wordpress.net/). Each theme is created with page 
files using a combination of html, css, and php, and is editable from within the 
dashboard.  The integration of our blog within the library Web site was mostly 
accomplished by duplicating the contents of our Web site's style sheet (.css file) 
onto the theme's style sheet, with a few other changes made on other theme 
pages. 
 
WordPress software comes with a certain amount of built-in functionality, but 
there are many plugins that can be, well, plugged in to allow more options.  As 
with themes, there are thousands of plugins created by the community that can 
be downloaded and turned on with just a click.  The types of plugins available 
include spam guards, integration with other web 2.0 tools such as Flickr or 
del.icio.us, and statistical tools (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/). Although 
we took advantage of a few plugins to allow us to slightly alter the display of our 
items, it was not necessary to the functioning of our WordPress blog. 
 
The Laurier Library has installed several blogs in addition to the one multi-
category blog mentioned above.  These include a blog that displays new items 
added to our catalogue listed by subject (http://library.wlu.ca/blogs/newitems/), 
and a blog advertising our Professional Development sessions 
(http://library.wlu.ca/blogs/pd/). With an almost legendary open source 
community, WordPress has allowed us to do whatever we have thought up for it 
to do, and we continue to imagine different uses for WordPress to help us 
communicate with our users. 


Wilfrid Laurier University

Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Library Publications Library 2007 Using WordPress for our Library Blogs Greg Sennema Wilfrid Laurier University, gsennema@wlu.ca Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/lib_pub  Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Sennema, Greg, "Using WordPress for our Library Blogs" (2007). Library Publications. 17. https://scholars.wlu.ca/lib_pub/17 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Library at Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Library Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca. Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 2, no. 1 (2007)   1 Using WordPress for our Library Blogs  Greg Sennema Electronic Services Librarian Wilfrid Laurier University   We are likely nearing the point where asking someone if they have a blog is like asking if they have ever used email. Even if a Web user has never contributed to a blog, they have certainly come across any number of blogs – even if they aren't aware they have done so. Assuming that we all understand the basic merits of blogs and why we need them (e.g., they offer an effective mechanism to organize, communicate, promote, and archive information, etc.), the main task is deciding which technology to use to create one.   There is no shortage of options out there: a "start a blog" Google search retrieves enough information and ideas to keep you reading for weeks. Information geared to all levels of users is easily available, and with a little patience most Web users should be able to have a functioning blog within a short time.  Since there are so many possible solutions available, it is helpful to address key questions to narrow down the choice.  One of the first questions you might ask is whether you want to use a free Web-accessible blog that is hosted by another company, or if you want to install a blog on your own server space.  Of the variety of hosted blogs available, two of the most popular are blogger.com (owned by Google) and wordpress.com.  Each of these sites allows you to create an identity, and to set up any number of blogs.  The catch, as with many free Web 2.0 solutions, is that there are functionality and storage limits.  Despite these limitations, a hosted blog is a great way to get started, and you may find that it offers all the functionality you will ever need to communicate yourself or your organization.  If you already have access to a server, either at your institution or through your personal or organization Internet Service Provider (ISP), you may wish to install your own blog. Depending on your needs, the level of potential customization may be worth the amount of time and energy needed to install and modify a locally installed blog.  Installed blog software can be divided further into two categories: commercial and open source.  Many ISPs offer the ability to install either commercial or open source blog software at no additional cost above your monthly fees; however, if you install the software on your own institutional server the commercial software needs to be purchased.  Understanding the basics as described above, we here at the Laurier Library began investigating possibilities to better communicate with our users through a blog.  With server space and programming expertise on hand, the options were easily narrowed down with a decision to install a blog instead of creating a hosted blog.  The next question – whether to use commercial or open source Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 2, no. 1 (2007)   2 software – was also easily answered since we had no budget to purchase any software, thereby reducing our options even further. Answering these and a few other questions, the only option left was for us to use WordPress (see http://library.wlu.ca/blogs/lib/)  Having worked with it for the past year, it is hard to imagine that WordPress wouldn't have been our choice even if we had a budget for commercial software.  After installing WordPress on our server, we quickly adjusted a few colours, images, and fonts, and started to add entries using the Web-based administration dashboard. "Author" accounts were created for a few library staff, who could login and immediately create a post consisting of a title and text. With the category function of WordPress, each entry was labeled as "Spotlight," "What's New," and "Library News."  Using the blog's RSS feature (all blog software has the ability to display entries as RSS), we pushed the last three entries of each category into the appropriate sections on our library Web pages.  When a user clicked on a "What's New" item displayed on the library Web site, the link took them to the full entry within the blog, a visibly different site.  To make this linkage more seamless, we set about to change the display of the blog so that it looked like any other library Web page, complete with header, footer, and left side navigation.  The open source WordPress community has created thousands of themes that, with a click of the mouse, can be applied to a WordPress blog (http://themes.wordpress.net/). Each theme is created with page files using a combination of html, css, and php, and is editable from within the dashboard.  The integration of our blog within the library Web site was mostly accomplished by duplicating the contents of our Web site's style sheet (.css file) onto the theme's style sheet, with a few other changes made on other theme pages.  WordPress software comes with a certain amount of built-in functionality, but there are many plugins that can be, well, plugged in to allow more options.  As with themes, there are thousands of plugins created by the community that can be downloaded and turned on with just a click.  The types of plugins available include spam guards, integration with other web 2.0 tools such as Flickr or del.icio.us, and statistical tools (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/). Although we took advantage of a few plugins to allow us to slightly alter the display of our items, it was not necessary to the functioning of our WordPress blog.  The Laurier Library has installed several blogs in addition to the one multi-category blog mentioned above.  These include a blog that displays new items added to our catalogue listed by subject (http://library.wlu.ca/blogs/newitems/), and a blog advertising our Professional Development sessions (http://library.wlu.ca/blogs/pd/). With an almost legendary open source community, WordPress has allowed us to do whatever we have thought up for it to do, and we continue to imagine different uses for WordPress to help us communicate with our users. 

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Using WordPress for our Library Blogs

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