University Websites Score Well with WordPress

WordPress has long been a tool for higher education and university websites. However, its latest major release (6.7) gives even more reasons for educational institutions to incorporate its use with performance, scalability, and security enhancements. Not only can using WordPress result in a quickly built website, but its rapid adoption rate (over 835 million websites or 43.6% of the internet) and the community of professionals who use WordPress make it a stable choice for years to come. Plus, as a no or low-code solution, its general ease of use, flexibility for customization, ability to integrate with other educational tools, scalability to accommodate growing needs, and robust security features continue to make it the perfect answer for university websites where multiple departments need to publish an assortment of information.

Why Do Universities Choose WordPress?

• University websites require many access points and multiple user roles and permissions, allowing students, professors, administrators, marketers, and technical staff to operate at their skill level with their customized permissions.
• WordPress’ full site editing (FSE) using a block theme (like WDS BT) makes customizing a page efficient and straightforward. WordPress users can easily manage website content and update content without a staff developer. When the need to launch a course landing page arises, predetermined styles in the theme result in a task that takes minutes, not weeks! The website styling presets remove the design guesswork from color, font, heading size, and image choice, which keeps branding standards in check.
• Additionally, educators find the idea of an open-source solution where brainstorming and problem-solving are native to the platform very appealing. Open-source options also make WordPress more affordable and flexible for future development needs.
• WordPress offers multi-site capabilities permitting different departments and offices to own and manage their website installs.
• WordPress is multilingual, offering translation options for viewers and content creators in various ways.
• Managing the admin dashboard from a mobile device is another plus for many educational professionals.

WordPress Plays Nicely with Existing University Website Tech

You can incorporate other systems into WordPress, like:

• Existing or new learning management systems (LMS)
• Newsletter and social posting features
• Payment centers
• Student information systems (SIS)
• Data analytics tracking
• Faculty directory and intranets or internal portals
• Event calendar management
• Discussion boards
• Career centers
• E-commerce stores
• Campus maps
• RSS feeds
• Advertising campaigns

WordPress scales as enrollment and programs grow, efficiently handling traffic spikes and millions of page views. Additionally, security measures keep sensitive student and faculty information safe and allow data exchange while complying with GDPR, FERPA, and HIPAA regulations, as required and needed. As a bonus, SEO is naturally built into the native WordPress block structure, allowing search engines to find and promote educational institutions as authoritative websites. WordPress also has many built-in localization tools, which appeal to academic institutions with a solid commuter percentage and provide an easy way to reach potential students who live nearby organically. Lastly, though many university pages will contain static content, the ability to customize is endless and extensible with code, plugins, and automation integrations. These customization options can be helpful for features like contact forms, chatbots, virtual tours, cost estimators, and other interactive elements an educational institution may choose to use.

Who Benefits from the Use of WordPress

• Developers can easily modify code and integrate complementary solutions. Plus, since WordPress is widely used, quality assurance, testing, documentation, and experimentation are reduced. Often, this means another developer has already implemented the feature elsewhere and written about it before a university employs a new feature.
• Technical administrators responsible for internet and intranet environments appreciate WordPress’s hosting options. WordPress-managed hosting is widely available, cost-sensitive, and easy to manage, maintain, and update.
• Content creators may save drafts, send posts for review, schedule posts for specific dates, and access previous drafts.
• Website visitors experience a fast, streamlined, easy-to-follow website journey. They find the pages they desire, take action, and have a clear path (via breadcrumbs) to navigate the website.

While other website solutions have many benefits, educational administrators must consider the trade-offs of using a different solution. Unlike WordPress, often non-WordPress solutions result in increased costs as the audience base and website grows. Plus, if the system is proprietary and not built on code you own (like WordPress is), the platform could disappear in several years, taking the school’s content and code files. Plus, it’s easier to find experts who specialize in future website needs, such as WordPress SEO professionals, WordPress designers, WordPress developers, WordPress accessibility specialists, and more, than on other platforms since WordPress powers nearly half of the internet.

WordPress Remains a Solid Choice for University Websites

Some of the most trafficked university websites in the United States utilize WordPress because it makes website management and engagement easy for users, affordable for educational budget planning, and has a depth of community and knowledge not found in other CMS and LMS platforms. When a website platform has a reputation for attracting new students while meeting the needs of existing students, faculty, staff, donors, alums, and the community, it gains popularity.

Even educational institutions like to be in good company. Universities such as Harvard and clients of ours, like the Wharton School of Business at UPenn, South College, and Boise State University, all utilize WordPress as their platform of choice for design and development. WordPress, like these institutions, sets a standard to follow. If you’d like to learn how your education institution can benefit from WordPress on your university website, please contact us at WebDevStudios. We’d love to work with you to meet the needs of your school community.