NASA’s Glenn Research Center reveals benefits of WordPress

NASA
Photo Courtesy: Nasa

No doubt our beloved CMS “WordPress” is used by renowned Brands and Celebrities, Addition to this Government Agencies like NASA’s Glenn Research Center revealed the benefits of using WordPress.

“The following are the main benefits we’ve found in using our implementation of WordPress as a content management system for the NASA Glenn Research Center web sites we maintain.” – Richard Kurak – Nasa Official

Benefits

Only Basic HTML Experience Required: If you have a knowledge of how to use Microsoft Word, then you can add, update and manage your site’s web pages, as well as add photos and other media. And if you do have an advanced knowledge of HTML, you’ll appreciate how our implementation of WordPress greatly simplifies your regular site update and maintenance tasks.

No Additional Software Necessary: To update a site, a site curator only needs the latest version of their favorite browser (recommended: Chrome, Firefox or Safari/Webkit; Internet Explorer 11 or higher). (We do recommend the free Picasa from Google (Windows) or iPhoto (Macintosh) for more detailed photo editing; and a common HTML authoring tool (such as Dreamweaver) for converting complex data tables from Excel or Word into WordPress pages.)

Built-in Section 508 Compliant: Our NASA Affinity WordPress theme (the HTML/CSS design, structure and programming) is already Section 508 compliant, and new Section 508 issues are addressed as the overall theme is upgraded. Essentially, only the content (text, photos, videos) that a site curator adds will need to be verified for Section 508 compliance by the curator.

Search Engine Friendly: The basics of search engine optimization are built into using the system, including automatic generation of page Title and Description meta tags as well as the quick ability to enhance Description meta tags for any page without having to open up the HTML.

Search Engine Notification: When a site curator posts a news-related item, the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN/Bing) are automatically notified to catalog the new content; additionally, the system automatically builds XML sitemaps to help search engines correctly catalog and prioritize your content in their databases.

Built-in Search Engine: Your site users can use the built-in search engine to search for content specific to your site (the “Search This Site” search form found under the left-hand navigation). This search function is distinct from the search box found at the top of any NASA page.

Content Separate from Design: As the overall look and feel of the NASA theme changes, your content (text, photos and documents) remains the same. There’s no need for wholesale, time-consuming revisions of your entire site if and when the design changes.

Automatic RSS Feeds: Updates to news-related postings create automatic RSS feeds, which can be used in other NASA sites to automatically notify their visitors of new activities on your site. Or you can easily add another site’s RSS feed to your site.

Low Cost, Lower Maintenance and Widely Supported: WordPress is a widely used and supported open-source system, and we’ve found it takes less time to maintain it and show users how to use it than other open-source content management systems.

Track Actual Site Usage: To track site visitor patterns on your site, we use the open source Piwik Analytics, which is currently an appropriate method of viewing how users actually browse your site (user data is not transmitted to a third party).

Other Automatic Features:

  • A dynamic site map updates with every change you make to your site, making tracking content easier for both curators and site viewers.
  • Automatic checking and easy repair of broken links.
  • Automatic, dynamic identification of non-NASA.gov domain “external links.” Like this link to Google. No need for extra hand coding.
  • Automatic image resizing of uploaded images for simple thumbnail creation, better photo presentation, and easier image archiving.
  • News/announcement content is automatically archived by the categories and tags that you assign it.

Source: NASA Glenn Research Center

2 thoughts on “NASA’s Glenn Research Center reveals benefits of WordPress”

  1. NASA GRC WordPress (@NASAGRCWP)

    WordPress is supported at NASA’s Glenn Research Center by the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) for use on particular websites.

    Also: WordPress as a CMS is used differently at other NASA centers and NASA Headquarters. For the main nasa.gov website, Drupal is used, but for the NASA blogs, blogs.nasa.gov, WordPress is used.

    Also see: “According to a WordPress.com VIP case study*, the NASA Open Government Initiative team picked WordPress as its open source CMS of choice to host some of its websites that aim to help federal agencies generate more transparency, participation and collaboration. These include sites like open.nasa.gov, data.nasa.gov and code.nasa.gov.”

    *vip.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/nasas-open-government-initiatives/

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