Introduction¶

This document describes how to create an instance of WordPress.

Refer to the diferent topics for a more detailed explanation about how to install and to configure a WordPress instance.

News¶

April 2024: The road to WordPress centrally managed at CERN 🎉¶

We write this news to share that the presentation at the Enlarged Directorate, on March 5th, on the topic of “Web presence, Governance and Drupal to WordPress migration” was very well-received. A decision to move have WordPress as the new CMS centrally provided at CERN has been approved. This decision implies as well a move from Drupal to WordPress, followed by a Drupal decommission at CERN. Given the additional resources needed for this project, in order to develop the infrastructure in house and support the migration for Drupal and WordPress websites, new resources will be requested (Q3/Q4 onwards). However, work is already starting on the preparations of the new infrastructure.

Some key takeaways to share:

Drupal users are asked to wait for concrete plans for an automated migration to WordPress and to refrain from attempting a migration on their own. We cannot offer support to such instances. See drupal.docs.cern.ch for details about the move from Drupal to WordPress.
The current version of WordPress, is not going to be the final, centrally-managed offering. Changes to the current offering are thus to be expected (including functionally, infrastructure, processes and look-and-feel). Websites on the current self-managed WordPress infrastructure will be moved to the central one, once available, in an effort to consolidate and offer the same level of support to all WordPress users. It is not an option to remain on the app-catalogue infrastructure indefinitely.
The final WordPress offering of plugins cannot be shared at this date. A dedicated CERN WordPress theme will be provided, as well as a CERN WordPress Distribution of curated and customised plugins.
A strategy for existing WordPress websites is still being defined. It will be shared as soon as decided, however the preliminary assessment shows the need to converge existing WordPress websites to the new infrastructure once available, in order to standardise the WordPress offering and optimise IT department resources.
Installing new customisation is therefore, and from now on, blocked on all WordPress websites. This comes aligned with the decision to move to WordPress in an uniform way. Work will be done to consolidate the custom plugins utilisation and support the most used ones centrally. However, preliminary analysis shows a wide-ranging distribution of custom plugins usage. Therefore, we recommended all WordPress users to assess and uninstall non-essential custom plugins from their websites, in order to prepare for the upcoming move to central WordPress.
Given that the current offering on WordPress comes with limited support, we recommend experienced Drupal users to keep using Drupal, if there’s a need for a new website.
The preliminary plan is to freeze the WordPress infrastructure as much as possible, in order to save resources for the upcoming migration (both for users and ourselves).

Thank you for all the input and support over this long process!

Disclaimer: WordPress usage recommendation

For the time being, all current users are asked to refrain from installing and using any plugins on WordPress, in order to facilitate an automated move to WordPress centrally managed, once available. Users who fail to follow this advice, are likely to be faced with a challenging migration and risk either partially or completely losing content, with no solution apart from recreating it manually.

Roadmap¶

WordPress centrally managed¶

The timeline for the availability of centrally managed WordPress is preliminary and subject to change, given the need for additional resources. The new infrastructure is expected to be available available in Q1 2025, with first pilot websites served already at the end of 2024.

Further details and news will be shared as soon as they are available.

The preliminary plan is to freeze the current WordPress infrastructure as much as possible, in order to save resources for the upcoming migration (both for users and ourselves), therefore no active development is planned.

App catalogue WordPress websites are expected to be migrated to the Central offering, however no plans are defined yet. Therefore, we recommend all users to uninstall non-essential plugins from their websites, in order to prepare for the upcoming move to central WordPress.

Drupal to WordPress¶

See drupal.docs.cern.ch for details about the move from Drupal to WordPress.

Service Level¶

A self-managed WordPress service is provided by the IT department to help CERN users quickly provisioning their own dedicated WordPress instances in central web servers. The IT department provides the infrastructure and a WordPress operator with support for SSO, but users are in charge of administering and maintaining their instance.

Info

No expertise is provided for WordPress configuration or development, and support is limited to the infrastructure.

For new releases, IT deploys the latest image from upstream with a semi-automated process. Versions of WordPress are centrally managed, so users should expect upgrades from time to time, with no action from their side. Note that, although we offer such possibility, it is unsupported to have WordPress instances frozen on a specific version.

The operator provisions by default CERN SSO authentication and provides instructions about how to configure access control with grappa groups.

The operator is maintained by the CERN community with best-effort support.

Disclaimer: Service level

The current offering of WordPress (self-managed) does not have the same level of support, performance, or scalability as other website solutions at CERN, which are centrally managed such as Drupal, WebEOS or GitLab Pages. For websites which require great performance or high availability please use one of the alternatives available.

To get started please follow our install documentation followed by the configuration docs.