As many of you know that follow me and my WordPress exploits, I can honestly say that I have not found any website/blogging platform that is easier to use and yet offers, nearly, endless flexibility for creation and implementation. I have recently finished the framework and template for a wonderful non-profit music honorary known as Phi Beta Mu, the Nu Chapter (PBM-Nu). Phi Beta Mu is the International Bandmasters’ Honary and I’m proud to be an inducted member of the organization.
Anyone who has “mad computer skills” can relate to my plight… I’m constantly asked to perform magic with regard to anything electronic, whether computers, telephones, televisions, websites, building wiring, and just about everything and everything related. So and thus… I found my leading the “team” to create a website for PBM-Nu.
In my quest for everyone to develop these “mad technological skills”, I may be often found pontificating to my college students the benefits of learning how to become faster typers. Let me type you a picture…
I’m in class telling my students the obvious: We are in a computer dominated world…You are the generation that is expected to utilize these technologies from before graduation throughout the end of your careers…The importance of gaining speed in your typing/keyboarding skills cannot be underestimated…Mr. Internet is your friend…Really the proxy DOES work…etc.
ENTER the SCENARIO: I submit to them that it would not be uncommon, if not underestimating, that they will spend a minimum of one hour a day performing some sort of typing for at least 5 days of the week. This amounts to 5 hours a week of typing time…times (x) 52 weeks a year for a total of (=) 260 hours of typing or… 6.5, 40-hour weeks of constant typing.
If they were to type at the very poor and common recreational typing speed of 20 words per minute they would type approximately 312,000 words over the course of that time frame. In the end, they’ve written enough “words” to fill up about four standard length novels (Given 75,000 avg. words per novel). Now, to tie this into something more useful (or not..stay with me here)…
Since we’re dealing with averages… know that the average college student can read about 300 words per minute. Let’s store that little bit of information for a minute and abruptly go back to our typing scenario (it’s getting wilder)…
I further submit to the students in my class that if they would take the time to simply learn how to double their typing speed to a slightly-speedy 40 words per minute (easily attainable by any person in a relatively short period of time), they would cut their time spent typing in half to a dazzling and super-reduced 3.25, 40-hour weeks of typing… thus, freeing up, literally, 130 hours for them to… say… read a book! ( Now, recall that stored little bit of information about reading speeds) In the130 hours they saved by their speediness on the board, the average collge student can read 2,340,000 words or approximately 31 average sized novels! (… Ta-Da!)
OR… They could simply be more efficient at their jobs, get more work done in less time and have more time to do anything else that they could or would choose to do! ALL because they took the time to learn how to type an extra 20 Words Per Minute Faster! Personally, I type 100+ words per minute fairly accurately…and now you know why I can get soooo much done! ;) … it’s both a blessing and a curse!
But, I TOTALLY DIGRESSED from the point and topic of this post (but it sure was fun!)…
Please join me back in WordPress world for the rest of this post. The acronym, CMS, is used for a whole lot different things, but in this post context, in relation to WordPress, it is used for, Content Management System(s). Many organizations (read music related organizations here, among others) are in dire need of an easy to use, EASY TO IMPLEMENT, user-friendly CMS that can be “up-and-running” in no time. WordPress fits this bill, perfectly.
I’ve stated, and I’ll state it again, WordPress is unparalleled (not to mention FREE), and perhaps peerless, with regard to the easy customization of its engine for any type of application. By implementing a few plugins and, possibly, a few slight code modifications, anyone can make a CMS WordPress solution like I was able to for the PBM-Nu folks; a solution that provides for almost every aspect that you could want or anyone could ask for.
The CMS solution included many aspects:
- Easily updated
- Members Only Pages
- Online Forms
- Online Document Repository
- Subscription ability (email and RSS)
- Multi-user administration
- Beautiful Graphics
- Easily Backed Up
- Low to No Cost
- Calendar Support
- Link Support
- Widget Support
- and on and on and on…
In case you are wanting to try this, here is a list of a few very useful CMS related WordPress plugins that were especially helpful for securing the site, dealing with content, and making a members and public section (these we’re all free):
- cforms
http://www.deliciousdays.com/ - FeedSmith
http://www.feedburner.com/ - Hide Pages
http://www.instinct.co.nz/hide-pages-plugin/ - Page Restrict
http://sivel.net/category/wordpress/plugins/ - Robots Meta
http://yoast.com/ - WP-Sticky
http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/ - Events Calendar
http://www.lukehowell.com/events-calendar/
The most updated versions of these plugins may be found at the WordPress plugin repository:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins. It is important to note that WordPress.com users are not able to take advantage of the plethora and power of the majority of the freely available WordPress plugins. You’ll need a website host and your own domain to make this kind of magic (only about $50-$80 USD per year).
I would encourage anyone with minimal web experience to consider giving up their old web building programs and consider WordPress for their next web project. You would be surprised at how simple, powerful, useful, and fast your web projects become and are completed once you’ve made the switch to a 2.0 solution like WordPress.
While, the member side of my latest project is unavailable to the “public”, an idea of how this all works may be seen by visiting the public side of the Phi Beta Mu Nu’s WordPress site here:
http://pbmpa.org. Visiting the site will provide you with a “real feel” for what can be done using a WordPress CMS solution.
Hmm….new post at Mustech.net, let’s see….
“Many organizations (read music related organizations here, among others) are in dire need of an easy to use, EASY TO IMPLEMENT, user-friendly CMS that can be “up-and-running” in no time…WordPress is unparalleled (not to mention FREE), and perhaps peerless, with regard to the easy customization of its engine for any type of application.”
This is such a no-brainer Joe. I am now using WordPress as a website for our band program at Mercer. We have made several items available for parents to download as a pdf thereby making it easier for parents to know what is going on! Updating it is very easy, and just today I added a Widget to allow band parents to subscribe through Feedburner. My next goal is to get some of the images of the group performing uploaded.
Since I started it using it, the site has been visited well over 2000 times. WordPress has allowed me to make better use of my administrative time for the program. For example, in the time it takes me to type up a memo to pass out to students and copy it, I simply do it in WordPress then copy-and-paste it into a Word document. The hardcopy is out there, but parents are able to access information so they know what is going on just in case the memo about the spahgetti dinner in September doesn’t come with their music folder until March.
I am really enjoying having the ease of control in using this CMS as a serious administrative tool for the Bands at Mercer. Great “visionary” article!!!
Travis,
I’m glad to hear that my advice about adding the feedburner feed widget went well and was easily implemented… Did you have any problems with the process? Or was it as “painless” as I led you to believe?
Joe,
I’ve also found wordpress to be an excellent CMS system as an alternative to commercial systems like Blackboard. The flexibility is fantastic and as far as the blogging goes students seem to find it fairly easy to set up and and start using the blog system right away. I can see eventually moving to a system like Joomla or Drupal but for now wordpress is excellent.
The nice thing about having college students use WordPress as an alternative or addition to Blackboard, I think, is that they can then build the skills and experiences to use it after graduating when they have their own programs.
I can also see how the inability for people to use plugins based on where their systems are hosted can be frustrating. Ted Love and I have been running WordPress Multiuser on our server at http://musiced.net for a couple of years and find the feedback from users great so far. We can also add plugins at will which is helpful in adapting it toward the needs of the community.
Thanks for the post and example with the Phi Mu site you started. – Evan T.
Evan,
Glad to see you back from the “realm of the missing”. I know you’ve been busy finishing your doctorate. Great to hear from you and thank you for your site musiced.net where any music educator can have a wordpress site for free!
Hope to be reading your many forthcoming posts soon!
Joe
Joe,
I recently discovered your site and I’m really finding it interesting.
I agree with you that students should work on improving typing speed. The computer is one of their instruments, just like guitar or keyboard or whatever, and they need to develop chops.
I haven’t had time yet to search your Best Music Freeware columns to see if you’ve mentioned freeware instructional software for learning touch typing and developing speed. If you haven’t done that, it might be a good idea.
Also, you might want to mention InstantText (www.textware.com), a text expansion program. [disclaimer: I worked as a software developer on InstantText, but I do not receive compensation as cheerleader for the product]. This program allows you to enter long words and phrases with just a few key strokes, and can improve typing output significantly.
Your comments on typing have inspired me to write about that subject on my own blog.
Steve
Steve,
Thanks for taking an interest in my posts and mustech.net. Do you know of any great freeware for typing? I know that there are some really good software programs that are shareware or cost, but not any really good ones for typing that are open-source or freeware.
I wish you luck on you blog endeavour! I know it will be worthwhile!
Joe,
No, I’m not up on typing programs at this point. I got my first computer in 1984 and even back then I was able to find a free touch-typing drill on the WWW (the web was all plain text back then!), so I’m sure there is good freeware out there somewhere.
Steve
[…] The following is a list of current, useful, and hand-picked plugins that I’ve worked with at some point that allow for musicians to begin using their WordPress sites better, more efficiently, and more importantly- what they are looking for in a music specific WordPress Site (see my article about WordPress as a Music CMS): […]
Hey Joe,
Welcome back to the land of warmth and sunshine! ;)
FYI – We are extending the rehearsal hall this week as students complete their first quarter self-evaluations in the academic concert bands. For example, bump on over to http://mercerbands.wordpress.com/high-school-wind-ensemble/ and check out the student work. Thanks for a great idea!
Travis
Thank you for this information. :)
thank for this information. very usefull