My experience with WordPress is more in the world of the arts.
I think that people are almost using the public part of WordPress to push them through the task of creating things and disciplining themselves each day, as well as entertaining people or educating people or giving people pleasure through their poetry, art, writing, and whatever.
The way that WordPress is configured, they have it stripped down so much that the amount they put on for the week is of no use for all of the citizens and staff that we wanted to respond to. I don't know if that's because they're using WordPress, or instead, that they're going too much for a presence on the web, rather than seeing it as a business tool.
We talk about the citizens and staff being digitally illiterate, but it may be that we have digitally illiterate policymakers who don't realize fully how to use WordPress. They just see it as a way of having a presence on the web, rather than having every page help them to meet their outcomes.
I like how people are able to learn to tag.
It offers categories where you are able to search and go back.
I like how it gives the opportunity to have a discipline of input and discipline of letting people see how you're progressing and making things visible. The people that I follow on WordPress show their thinking and test it out.
I like how it integrates graphics and words, and more generally, the way people can develop the choices of spaces for different websites.
It creates beautiful spaces and some people are just great, in terms of being creative.
I think that WordPress is too cool in its contact. If somebody works well in that medium then it would be really helpful for a community and for themselves. I don't know how to plug them into using it well. I don't know where someone goes from zero to having something up, and then incrementally learning how to do it.
I think it would be good if WordPress maybe had a place where people could go to and say, "Hi, I'm an artist. I like writing poetry related to my art. Is there anyone who uses WordPress for this?" or "Hi, I'm working in the health sector, and I'm working on change and transformation work. I would like to talk about it, has anyone else done that?", or "Hello, I'm writing a book. I would like to use WordPress as a way of making sure that I get three hours work done every day and write 300 words". I think that's what people are using WordPress for in these situations.
I have been working with WordPress for perhaps five years.
This platform is too small for us.
We don't do the setup. Rather, we are involved in populating it.
I paid to have a WordPress site for two years and didn't just have a free one. Unfortunately, the site was awful and I never made good use of spending all that money.
Originally, I thought that we would be using SharePoint for this work. However, WordPress is the product that was ultimately chosen. At first, I wondered if I was missing something, not knowing how WordPress can be used as a business tool. It doesn't have the same things as SharePoint.
What we really need is a platform that enables citizens and staff to self-manage their health. It needs to have a range of things that can be used to help people. For example, people should be able to find out about their health and keep information about it. It should be able to support them. I think of WordPress more as an artistic place, or where people journal. It's good for blogs and it's good for a whole lot of things, but not necessarily the type of things that we would have expected. That said, they have selected WordPress and are 100% on it.
I have been trying to use Mural, and it's overwhelming in terms of what they offer you. It's too much, especially if you're working on a pandemic and you are trying to learn a new tool.
I'm one of these people that has not found a routine to use it, but I use it because I like to follow certain people. I learn by reading WordPress blogs. I appreciate the space and that we'd like to link to other people to use it, but I don't know how to do that. I feel it would be a good place for some people.
I work in the world of knowledge management and knowledge interaction. There are people who use WordPress that really create what they have to say and what they have to show, very well, and people like myself and others can go in. That creation of knowledge enables us to think about certain things or have discussions with other people.
Certainly, I'm not the only person that reads what is put up in WordPress. Therefore, if you end up with a group of people and eight of us read that blog, we have a common language, even if the person is in America or somewhere else. We can be involved in the seminar in Scotland, but because we all read that WordPress blog, we will have a common language and certain common concepts or ways of looking at something. That is knowledge into action and that is knowledge in the world taking things forward.
I've seen a seminar here of a guy who has a WordPress blog and he held a big international seminar with people from all over the world, hosted at one of our universities. He was also well-known for his books and there was a bookstall with his books and other books. This is a big four-day international event, and the person hosting it at the university wanted me to attend the three keynote speeches that opened every morning, and this guy did one of them. Since then, I've followed his blog. So, people are doing things like that.
My interest in that blog is how do you support very large organizations to change? Because, they're running huge systems, including hospitals. This is a very important thing and very important because of COVID-19. How does a children's hospital change how they run things when they're also having to look after ill children all the time? And that guy is about that. I follow all of his work in WordPress, as well as occasionally read his books, but it's much better to see his books as he's writing them. So, basically, he is sharing the eight chunks in a chapter on WordPress and sharing the illustrations. He's also a very good illustrator.
So sometimes you say, "Oh gosh, that's just great. I could use that as a slide when I'm talking about people doing things". He's a generous person because people, through WordPress, one can say one likes something, or one can go in and say, that completely makes sense to me, except that one bit.
As a consumer of WordPress, I would say it's been a good platform over the last five years for me. As a person who would like to use WordPress, but who hasn't been given enough time, I've not managed, so I'd rate it low. Without enough time on WordPress, it has not been a simple thing. I would like to use it as a creative space, where I was contributing.
As a person who has spent five years engaging in someone else's creativity and thoughts, I could rate WordPress and ten out of ten. This is because I've found some really good sites, and WordPress has facilitated that. However, when it is me wanting to be creative in WordPress, I have to rate it very low.
I do know that people can do well with it, and I have appreciated the people who use it. Some people use it with advertisements, so some people can use it for free. I like that they set up the possibility for people to do things.
I would rate this solution a one out of ten.
