Computing
and Information Services

WordPress is Vassar's digital publishing system. It allows the academic community to easily create dynamic websites, featuring multimedia elements such as images, audio and video. WordPress can be used to create blogs - online journals you can use to build an audience around a specific topic.

Committees, departments, work groups, clubs, teams and individual faculty members can have their own WordPress sites.

We can also create sites for courses with students as contributors. WordPress sites are usually viewable by anyone, although they can be limited to a group, such as a class. 

People often ask "Do I want a blog or a website?".   Well, a blog is a website. "Blogs" were originally called "web logs", referring to a journal-like website in which content is presented chronologically with the newest information being presented first.  The term "blog" was coined by blending the words "web" and "log".

Anyone can create a site with any number of blogging services available on the web, but to have a site at pages.vassar.edu, you must meet certain criteria. If you think you might be interested in starting a site at blogs.vassar.edu, you should first ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the information I want to publish directly related to Vassar business, community or academics?
2. Would the information I want to publish be better suited to a blog than my department website?
3. Does the dynamic journal format of a blog suit my content well?

If you've answered "YES" to all of these questions then you may want to request a blog.

There are a wide variety of resources available from Wordpress to help you through setting up and publishing your Wordpress site.