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I got introduced to WordPress about three weeks ago. It was Paolo Gillego, Web Designer of Summit Media, who introduced me to it. Paolo was commissioned by his boss, Lisa Gokongwei, to design Star Teacher Online, the Web version of Star Teacher Magazine, a quarterly publication of Sa Aklat Sisikat Foundation (SAS) and Summit Media.
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Poalo is going to use WordPress as the Content Management System (CMS) engine for Star Teacher Online.
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My involvement in Star Teacher Online is through Ms. Margarita L. Delgado (MLD), who is the President of SAS. MLD also happens to be a Vice President (and wife of the President and owner) of Delbros, Inc. where I am currently employed as Chief Information Officer (CIO). I was tasked by MLD to oversee the Star Teacher Online project.
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The moment I learned of WordPress my tehno-instinct told me that it has practical applications for business apart from its primary purpose as a rapid blogging tool.
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My gut feel was reinforced when I visited www.wordpress.org and saw that it is being used by e-bay, yahoo, and several big online newspapers to power their hugely popular Websites.
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I have to intimately know WordPress if I am to understand how I can use it where I work so I decided to adopt it as the CMS engine for my own blog. Previous to knowing about WordPress I was writing my blog entries on a Word document while waiting for my ìblog siteî to be completed by a Web desinger-developer.
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After deciding to use WordPress my blog went online within 24 hours. For now I have chosen from WordPress templates for the general layout and look-and-feel of my blog site. Slowly I am now customizing it to reflect my personal touch and preferences.
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Even the Web designer-developer helping me with my blog site, Sherwin De Jesus, is excited about the potential of WordPress. Sherwin also happens to be doing some Web application development projects for me in Delbros/Delwater so we started discussing which projects we can start using WordPress on.
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Meanwhile, also with Sherwin’s help, within one week my blog is now in full swing. I am able to post a blog entry in an almost daily basis without much difficulty. The show stoppers are usually just the quality of Internet connection and my own always busy schedule.
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Sherwin and I now know enough of WordPress to start considering its possibilities and potential for business applications. We have actually started using it as the CMS engine for the Delwater Intranet Website we are launching. I am now posting contents for it while Sherwin is customizing the template we have chosen to adopt for the Website.
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So far I can see that WordPress is very ideal for Websites that require frequent posting of contents such as blogs, News Websites, E-zines, and social networking sites. Whether it can also power transactional Websites such as e-commerce sites, or even e-business Websites, still remains to be seen.
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I’ll definitely squeeze the juice out of WordPress. It is my job to figure out what it is capable of, and I will. #
