Getting Started with WordPress

WordPress is a leading industry-standard website creation platform. We have two custom instances at Evergreen - wordpress.evergreen.edu and sites.evergreen.edu - for use by students, faculty, and staff for creating a site, blog, journal, research presentation, and more! Questions? Please contact Academic Technologies staff via help.evergreen.edu.

Who is using it?

• WordPress is utilized by individuals, groups, colleges/universities, non-profits, businesses and companies of different scale, and more users.
• As of 2024, over 810 million websites use WordPress, which is about 43.6% of all websites on the internet. (source: Google browser search, A.I.-generated result)

Why use WordPress?

• Easy to use
• Quickly create presentable websites that adhere to web standards design- and Accessibility-wise
• Easily integrates with rich media and many 3rd-party web tools such as YouTube, Flickr image galleries, RSS feeds, Google Maps, etc.
• Students - you can take your sites with you when graduating or taking a break - see guide, Exporting and importing your site
• WordPress is open source and is actively contributed to by a large community of developers and designers

How can I access WordPress at Evergreen?

Evergreen offers community members two custom instances:

• wordpress.evergreen.edu - allows site creation by students and anyone with an active Evergreen account
• sites.evergreen.edu - for use by faculty/program/course and institution - available by request submitted at help.evergreen.edu

To access either instance:

1. Go to wordpress.evergreen.edu or sites.evergreen.edu
2. Log in (using the same username and password you use to access My Evergreen and Canvas)
3. Once you are logged in, there should be a “My Sites” link at the upper left-corner of the WordPress page
4. Hover your cursor over or click directly on “My Sites” to access the list of sites associated with your account*

• At wordpress.evergreen.edu, the page which lists your sites will also have an "Add new" button to create a new or additional site.
• You can create as many sites as you like, though please note - individual sites allow 250 MB storage space - instead of uploading video and audio content to your site, post the video/audio file to an online platform (e.g., YouTube, SoundCloud) and link that into your site.

Evergreen's WordPress vs WordPress.com

• Evergreen's instances are not connected with or available through WordPress.com or the WordPress app.
• Evergreen WordPress can be accessed and managed via mobile web browsers.