Using WordPress software as a content management solution for your website has many advantages and can give your library or information center a professional appearance.
Reading: How to create a library website with wordpress
It provides all the tools you need to manage and publish your own content online. It also gives you a great platform to keep your visitors informed of what’s new from your library or information center.
You can also give your staff detailed administrative access to help you maintain and update your library content to support. Maybe only give them editor or author roles and keep full control of admin access.
Tip: Do not give out your credentials, give each user their own username and be own password. You can then revoke access at any time for the future!
Getting Started
There are two versions of WordPress. One version is a WordPress self-hosted solution, the other is downloaded and hosted by you.
WordPress Hosted
The fastest way to build a WordPress site for your library is to visit www.wordpress.com, create an account and within minutes you can start creating websites and uploading images to a portal you can call your own. Although this is the simplest of the two versions, it has some limitations.
The hosted version has:
- Limited functionality
- No plugins available
- Restrictions on design, layout and available themes
- Footer will show “Powered by WordPress” unless you update
- Restrictions on website optimization for search engines (SEO )
WordPress – Self Hosted
With this version of WordPress you download the WordPress files and then load them up to a web hosting account. While you can visit www.wordpress.org and get the files for free, you will need to purchase a hosting service. There are many hosting providers available and costs can vary from a few pounds per month and increase with each additional service you add, such as email and domain name management.
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Some hosting providers going a step further and setting up WordPress for you and providing a managed environment to help you keep it up to date and secure.
The self-hosted version offers:
- Hundreds of free and commercial themes are available
- WordPress repository with plugins available to provide additional functionality for your website
- You can customize the appearance of your website pages
- More search engine optimized features to index your library website
- The tools to create a truly unique and customized library website
Tip: We recommend the self-hosted version of WordPress. There is a monthly cost for hosting, but it gives you many more tools and options for creating a professional library website.
Create web pages for your library web site
Once your web site is created, you can immediately start adding new pages. Most formatting options are similar to desktop word processing applications such as Microsoft Office.
By using WordPress for your library or information center website, you can provide a wealth of information to website visitors.
Typically:
- What services you provide to visitors or employees of your organization
- Links to additional resources or your library management system
- Help and general library information
- Contact pages, information request forms and opening hours
- Direct links to popular titles, journals from your library management system
- Links to your online archive if required
- Digital content (audioorg version, then it is important that you ensure the following:
- You make regular backups of your website files, theme and plugins
- You make a daily backup of the WordPress Database
- That all plugins are updated every few weeks as soon as new updated versions are available
- That all themes used are also kept up to date
- That the Core WordPress software is kept up to date
If that seems like too much for you, there are third parties that can help secure your site and keep the software updated automatically. There are also simple plugins that are capable of running regular backups for you. As mentioned, some hosting providers also offer managed WordPress hosting. This is something to consider if you don’t want to deal with the maintenance side of your library website.
Keep your library website secure!
Keeping WordPress software up to date is important to help you maintain a healthy library operate the site. As with your mobile apps and computer software, you should always make sure they have the latest patches and updates applied. Your library website is no different. All of this helps prevent malicious programs, malware and trojans from gaining unauthorized access to your website!As the most basic level of security, you must always ensure that you are using website login passwords that are not easily cracked are guessed. Common sense in today’s world. Of course, make sure all staff adhere to this.
Various plugins are also available to help you keep your library website secure.
Connect a library management system to WordPress
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If you already have a library management system or resource sharing portal in place, it makes sense to connect both your main library website and these applications. It might be a simple case to provide text/image links to your LMS from the home page or footer.
To take it a step further, why not embed your library management system’s search function in the header of your LMS a WordPress library site? Something we here at Soutron can provide for users of our library and archive management systems.
This will provide your library website visitors with a great user experience and easy search functionality.
The Soutron system also includes a customized library search portal. A great home page for users to gain access to the library catalogue.
What’s stopping you?
If you’re not using WordPress to power your library website along with your library management system, Why not – what’s stopping you?
WordPress is very inexpensive and offers many options to help you promote your library.
Library management systems that use the latest technology, are now more affordable than ever and offer time-saving tools that are essential to running a modern and efficient library.
When you bring the two together, you truly get a 21st century library website and a fantastic end-user experience!
If you have any questions about creating a website for your library using WordPress and the Soutron library management solution, do not hesitate to contact us. Perhaps you’re already using WordPress for your library, if so, let us know what you think about it in the comments below.
We’d love to show you what some of our existing clients have done to promote their libraries internally within their organization and also externally to their user community.
See also: How to Create a Website Easy Free Guide for Beginners
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