You've got a little Intranet on your shirt

Just some guy sharing his story of how he built a corporate intranet site using WordPress.

Transcript

1. You’ve got a little Intranet on your shirt Daniel Bishop | @bishless or How I built an Intranet site with WordPress
2. Who am I? I’m Daniel Bishop. I have no certifications. I have no degree. I’m an IT guy that built a fully armed and operational battle station Intranet for BFCO with WordPress.
3. Who’s BFCO A great group of people. BeachFleischman PC is one of the largest locally-owned public accounting firms in Arizona. I joined their IT dept. in 2010 as a Network Administrator.
4. What’s an Intranet google:// ‘define intranet’ noun [COMPUTING] “a local or restricted communications network, esp. a private network created using World Wide Web software.”
5. Requirements
6. Historically: • 1.0 was static HTML (no CSS?!) • 2.0 was someone’s first attempt at using WordPress. It ended up being a huge mess. Requirements Boss’ boss’ wishlist: • fresh look/feel • some personality / less formality • actually find things! • blog posts for news and podcasts
7. BFCO Intranet 1.0
8. BFCO Intranet 2.0
9. Solutions
10. 2.0: So much disarray • Couldn’t just slap a new theme on top. • Page/Post identity crisis • Required a complete content build-out in order to make sense of it all. Content Reorganization Necessary Evil • I’m not a tax/audit pro. • OMG. This sucked. • Value = people can actually find things!
11. Active Directory / SSO Active Directory Integration by Christoph Steindorff “Allows WordPress to authenticate, authorize, create and update users against Active Directory.”
12. Security Members by Justin Tadlock “A user, role, and content management plugin that makes WordPress a more powerful CMS.”
13. Firm-wide Calendar All-in-One Event Calendar by Time.ly “A calendar system with month, week, day, agenda views; upcoming events widget, color- coded categories, recurrence, and import/export of .ics feeds.”
14. Forms & Workflows Gravity Forms by rocketgenius Game changer for existing info workflows and processes.
16. “You’re here for the phone list, right?”
17. Employee Directory* Gravity Forms Directory by Katz Web Services, Inc. Searchable, sortable, up-to-date contact info Bonus! Add New Employee form output generates server scripts we use to create the new employee, their home folder, and mailbox.
18. Documents? default Media • Great for photos & single-use items • Can cause a confusion when used for a oft- updating file or group of files. WP Document Revisions by Benjamin J. Balter Used for centralized, revisioned, access- controlled, audit-trailed repository for policies, procedures, guides, and yet- to-be-converted forms.
19. Transparency Post Revision Display by D’Arcy Norman, Scott Carpenter, and forked by me (Had to, was 3 years old and broken) Displays post-publication revisions along with differences/changes from current revision on single post views … on the front end.
20. Fresh look/feel I thought about going the scratch-built route. Opted for something that’d be a good starting point. Ageless by Damojo
21. Personality Less Formal? • Random/Unexpected header text. • Content easter eggs
22. Lessons Learned
23. The ‘if only’s Employee Directory Should have just used WP Users + custom meta. Roles Users can only have one role. D’oh! Tools Varying Vagrant Vagrants as your dev environment = winning [FREE!] Grunt.js tasks : build process in your repo [FREE!] Trello : Kanban boards for project/task mgmt [FREE!]
24. Outstanding Issues & Upcoming Features
25. Issues • User training • Replace Directory w/ native WP Users
26. Features • CPE Materials Library • BuddyPress integration? • BadgeOS?