Cooperative Extension IT

Did you know that Cooperative Extension has three installations of WordPress? Which one do you or should you use?  That depends…

1. FYI – http://fyi.uwex.edu is a publicly accessible installation of WordPress whose purpose is to provide web space for educational programming content.  This is not for our business/administrative content (for example, you won’t find the Dean’s blog or agenda/minutes on FYI).
2. Counties – http://counties.uwex.edu is a publicly accessible installation of WordPress whose purpose is to provide web space for the county offices. Each county also has a corresponding URL of http://countyname.uwex.edu which “points” to its directory, http://counties.uwex.edu/countyname, with preference given to the former as the URL each county should advertise.
3. Coop Connection – http://blogs.ces.uwex.edu provides web space in 2 different ways. First, it may serve as an internal, password protected site for purposes of communicating with our colleagues, e.g. The Dean’s blog.  The second service it may provide is web space for administrative activities that do not contain educational programming content, but still need to be accessible to the public.  A good example of this is a conference site, e.g. WACEC or the Connections & Engagements Conference.  In cases such as these, the password protection is removed from the specific site so it is accessible to the public.

CE Tech Services recognizes that even with these definitions there may be questions as to which installation is the best one to use to meet your specific needs.  If you have questions about which one to use contact the CE Tech Services Help Desk (800.760.7610, 265-3895).

Update 3/31/2011: Lisa Linfield has created this nice chart to help explain which installation of WordPress should be used.