Wordpress as a Knowledge Base Repository or CMS
(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Over the past couple years I tested more Open Source solutions than I can remember. I was looking for an Ultimate Super Open Source tool that could do everything I imagined (Blog, Forum, Page Collaboration, Content Management, Wiki, etc..) While I couldn’t find such a perfect tool, I came across wonderful Open Source solutions that I became a fan of, such as phpBB, WordPress, MediaWiki, Moodle, and Drupal.
Right now, I have a couple projects I’ve been researching, one of these is a Knowledge Base that we urgently need at my workplace, the other is a personal project that would serve as a community website where collaboration on authoring documents is crucial. In essence I am looking for something similar to: Knowledge Base, a Wiki, a Content Management tool, a Discussion platform and a Blog.
As I searched literally hundreds of wikis, content management systems (CMS) and other solutions in quest for the best, I neglected to notice how powerful WordPress was. Could WordPress be The solution I’ve been looking for that’s been staring me in the face for years?
Today, I had an idea that blossomed into an exciting question. What if I used WordPress (WP) as a Knowledge Base (KB) and as my Community Document Collaborative Authoring tool?
What is a knowledge base anyway?
Based on Wikipedia, a KB is:
Human-readable knowledge bases are designed to allow people to retrieve and use the knowledge they contain, primarily for training purposes. They are commonly used to capture explicit knowledge of an organization, including troubleshooting, articles, white papers, user manuals and others. A primary benefit of such a knowledge base is that it can help a user to find an existing solution to his or her current problem (thus avoiding having to ‘re-invent the wheel’).
Dictionary.com defines a Knowledge Base as:
1. The part of an expert system that contains the facts and rules needed to solve problems.
2. A collection of facts and rules for problem solving.
Ultimately, a software tool is what it sounds like, it’s a tool, and a solution to one’s needs. So, what are my needs? Both my projects require that multiple users be able to do all the following:
- Be anonymous users or log in to contribute.
- Have an Avatar and other Social Networking tools available.
- Collaboratively create content. Content is:
- Documents (employer’s policies, processes, instructions, FAQ’s, tutorials)
- Files, images, videos.
- Leave comments when editing the main document is unnecessary.
- Use a wysiwyg editor.
- Categorize contents easily.
- Link to other documents easily.
- Upload and share files.
- Search for content easily.
- Access content easily.
- Be managed by an admin/moderator.
- Be authenticated against LDAP.
- Using a solution that is easy to setup and use.
I think that Wordpres has CMS abilities that could be used for much more than just blogging.
I believe that Word Press’ power lies in its simplicity, clean design and extensibility.
I see these positive aspects of Word Press, besides the above points. WordPress is:
- Easy to setup.
- Designed for the non-technically inclined (i.e. Easy to use).
- Easy to integrate various plug-ins for tagging, navigation, sharing media, social networking, and search.
- Easy to publish using Word 2007. This is especially important since many knowledge documents exist now if the form of Word documents scattered across multiple directories (shared folders).
- Open Source. Free. No licensing costs. Can be hosted locally literally at no additional hosting costs.
- Fully Customizable, freely available customizable themes. Our developers could develop plug-ins when they are not available.
- Easily made into SEO friendly, Advanced Caching + much more.
Things I have to research:
- Encryption.
- How are documents stored? in a database or in a file structure?
- Can users edit any document/post, can certain users be restricted from creating or editing documents in certain categories?
- … Still thinking of more …
I plan on discussing the possibility of using Wordpress as a Knowledge Base repository with my coworkers. What’s the down side? I don’t see one yet. Do you?
Your comments are appreciated.
Thanks
May 28th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Have you done this yet? I’ve just started implementing a similar concept and was wondering if you had gone ahead with your idea already.
June 12th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Paul, I decided to use Drupal instead. Drupal offered everything that WordPress has (including simplicity and modularity) along with many powerful modules I could add as needed.
If you are looking for a CMS or a knowledge base I suggest Drupal, my installation has been in production for 5 weeks now and is used by 20+ people.. and I continue to add on more features.
WordPress is meant to be a blogging solution mostly, Drupal is meant to be a CMS, you don’t need to hack it to get it to work.. Drupal is more similar to the MU (multi user) word press but much easier to set up than MU word press. There will be a learning curve initially with Druapl but it’s worth it.
October 5th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I was looking for similar solution. I’ll try drupal now.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:55 am
I love Drupal and highly recommend it. The support community is, well, very supportive. If it’s hard at first give it a chance, once you learn Drupal you can build any website you want pretty simply. Drupal is very powerful and flexible.. this can scare some, don’t let that scare ya.