A presentation for the steering committee of the NCI Public Affairs Network about the NCI's use of WordPress to develop http://benchmarks.cancer.gov.

1. National Cancer Institute
Benchmarks:
Powered by WordPress
Brooke Hardison Wang
NCI-PAN Steering Committee
U. S. DEPARTMENT
OF HEALTH AND
HUMAN SERVICES
January 11, 2010
National Institutes of
Health

2. National Cancer Institute
An online
‘webzine’
Since 2001, the NCI
media relations team
has been publishing
articles for reporters
about the research at
the NCI
 Volumes and issues
 Paired articles
 Text-only article
pages
 Internally hosted
videos
 Separate pages for
multimedia files
 Keyword-based and
date range search
options
Average hits/month: 800

3. National Cancer Institute
Time for Change
• The webzine concept was antiquated and
we felt the site needed a fresh new look
• Being locked into a two-article per issue
format was limiting
• Any time we wanted to make a significant
change, it required a lot of time on the part
of the web team and their programmers
• There is an increasing need for more blog-
friendly content

4. National Cancer Institute
We needed to utilize web 2.0
• 70% of journalist use social networks
to assist in reporting
– 69% go to company/org websites
– 66% use blogs
– 51% use Wikipedia
– 48% use online videos
– 47% use Twitter & other microblog sites
• 92%believe that social media is
enhancing journalism
Source: Middleberg Communications and the Society for New
Communications Research (SNCR), "Survey of Media in the Wired World."

5. National Cancer Institute Top Information Sources
64% of Journalists use Google or Yahoo! to get news
information
Search types journalists Social Media Tools
used most often: used
– Standard Search 91% – Social Networks (64%)
– News Search 27% – Blogs (55%)
– Social Search 27% – Wikis (50%)
– Image Search 18% – Micro-blogging (36%)
– Blog Search 14%
Source: TopRank Online Marketing Survey on Journalists Use of
Search, www.toprankmarketing.com

6. National Cancer Institute
A new format
In 2009, in an effort to
modernize the site and
serve a broader audience,
the Office of Media
Relations redesigned the
site, inspired by news
blogs and social media
http://benchmarks.cancer.gov
 Multiple images per
article
 Embedded videos
(now discoverable on
Youtube.com)
 Twitter and YouTube
and Flickr integration
 Easier search (text-
based), utilizing
categories, a tag
cloud, and archive
Hits in December: 2,452

7. National Cancer Institute
Website Development
• We needed a format that would allow us to
make changes and add content easily,
without a lot of web coding
• We wanted more flexibility in terms of
format and content
• We wanted a solution that would be cost
effective.
• We wanted a format that would allow us to
incorporate web 2.0 components

8. National Cancer Institute
Our Solution:

9. National Cancer Institute
What is WordPress?
• WordPress is an open-source, blog
publishing platform
• Available in two formats:
– Free, downloadable software package
used for self-hosting
(www.wordpress.org)
– Free, blog hosting service with the
software installed and maintained by the
company (www.wordpress.com)
• More info: http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

10. National Cancer Institute
WordPress details
• Content management system (CMS)
– PHP and MySQL (code and database)
• Secure log-in (SSL)
• Customizable using Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS)
• Can create regular pages, in addition
to blog-style ones

11. National Cancer Institute
The Dashboard

12. National Cancer Institute
Instant
Web
Statistics
View visitors by
day, week and
month
See the most
popular posts and
pages for each
day
See what pages
are referring
people to your
site
Change views to
see summaries:
 7 days
 30 days
 Quarter
 Year
 History of
the site

13. National Cancer Institute
Instant
Web
Statistics
(cont.)
See the search
engine terms that
are driving people
to your site
See to which
other sites your
site is driving
traffic
Get info on other
blogs that link to
your site
See counts of
overall visits to
your site, and
summary tables.

14. National Cancer Institute
If you have your own host
Pros of self-hosting WP:
• Can upload themes (many free) from
hundreds of sources
• Plug-ins allowed (third party software
that adds features to your site)
• Completely customizable
• Complete control over your site,
including the ability to put your own
ads on the page

15. National Cancer Institute
If you have your own host
Cons of self-hosting WP:
• You need your own web host ($540
per year)
• Requires more technical know-how
• You are on your own for back-ups
(many hosts will do this)
• When there are updates to the
software, you must do them manually
• To start, all you get is this:

16. National Cancer Institute
WordPress Start page
When you first install WordPress, this is what you get.

17. National Cancer Institute
Examples of Self-hosted Sites

18. National Cancer Institute
More examples

19. National Cancer Institute
More examples

20. National Cancer Institute
If you don’t want to self-host
Pros of WordPress.com:
• Set-up, updates, spam, back-ups and
security are handled by
WordPress.com
• Free (except for upgrades)
• WordPress.com will occasionally
promote your blog for you
• Requires NO knowledge of CSS,
(x)HTML, PHP, etc.

21. National Cancer Institute
If you don’t want to self-host
Cons of WordPress.com:
• Limited to the 70+ themes available
on their site (can alter for a fee)
• Cannot edit the PHP code
• Can not add plug-ins
• May end up with ads on your site
(unless you pay the extra fee)
• Some limitations on the type of items
you can add (certain types of code)

22. National Cancer Institute
Upgrades for Wordpress.com
• Custom CSS: $14.97 per year
• Domain mapping (so address isn’t
wordpress.com): $9.97 per year
• No ads: $29.97
• Space upgrades (3GB included):
– 5 GB $19.97 / 15 GB $49.97 / 25 GB
$89.97
• VIP hosting available: $500/month +
$1500 set up

23. National Cancer Institute
Examples of WP-hosted Sites

24. National Cancer Institute
Examples of free hosted sites

25. National Cancer Institute
Cost for the new site
Contractor-created WP Theme: $7,900
Labor hours to transfer old articles: $750
Web-hosting for one year: $540
HTML Class: $800
WordPress Class: $800
CSS Class: $800
Total Cost: $11,590