Building a University or College Website with WordPress

WordPress is a popular content management system used by many top universities and colleges around the world. It is easy to set up and can be customized for educational websites.

-There are 2 versions of WordPress, WordPress.com and WordPress.org. -WordPress.com is a hosting solution, while WordPress.org is also known as self-hosted WordPress. -To learn more about the difference between the two versions, see our full comparison between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

To create a university website, you will need to use self-hosted WordPress.org. This will give you a lot of flexibility and make it easy to use. The core features are free, and you can use add-ons to extend the functionality of your website.

You will need a domain name to get started. Basically, this is your website’s address on the internet. So, for example, if you wanted to start a website called “WPBeginner,” your domain name would be “wpbeginner.com.”

Also, you will need a web host that can manage a WordPress site. Your web host will store your site’s content securely. The web host will also make your site available worldwide and 24/7 to anyone who wants to visit it.

We recommend usingalhost. They are one of the largest companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress provider.

1. It’s free! 2. It’s easy to use. 3. It’s versatile. 4. It’s user-friendly. 5. It has a ton of features. 6. It’s constantly improving. 7. It has strong security. 8. It’s expandable. 9. It has a huge community. 10. It’s available in many languages. Here are 10 great reasons to use WordPress for a university website: 1. It’s free! 2. It’s easy to use. 3. It’s versatile. 4. It’s user-friendly. 5. It has a ton of features. 6. It’s constantly improving. 7. It has strong security. 8. It’s expandable. 9. It has a huge community. 10. It’s available in many languages.

1. Ease of Use

If you’ve ever managed web content, you’ll notice how easy WordPress is to use. It’s natural, makes sense, and simply put: it just works. To create something, hit the Add New button, add a title, write your content, and hit Publish. To edit later, just click Edit and save your changes. WordPress is open-source, and despite what you might have heard about open-source software, all that really means is that lots of professional, highly-skilled people have helped build it. That makes it the best and most capable CMS in use today on the web.

2. Easy to Learn

Since WordPress is used by such a wide variety of people for so many different purposes, it’s relatively easy to find information on how to do anything you need to with WordPress by doing a quick search online.

The WordPress Support Forums (where you can get free support on just about anything) is one of the many resources available that makes it easy to use WordPress. You won’t ever feel lost or have to wait on hold for assistance because the WordPress community is open and inviting.

3. Roles, Capabilities, and Security

WordPress has a role system that allows you to have complete control. This can be helpful in university settings where multiple people are logging in and working on different parts of the website. With roles and capabilities for each user, you can make sure that there is no content chaos on your university website.

You can customize every aspect of what your users can control, and what they can’t.

4. Freedom and Customization

WordPress is designed to be highly customizable. You can use its hook and filter system to make WordPress (or any site built with it) change and do whatever you want, when and where you want it. And since you’re not restricted by proprietary NDAs or other company code, you can make changes whenever you want, done by whoever you want (like us), the way you want, and when you want it. (Oh yeah, and no waiting!) Since WordPress is the most popular open-source CMS, you’re also never limited or locked into any one company for hire.

5. Multisite

WordPress has a feature that allows you to run multiple sites on one installation, called multisite. This allows you to set up multiple departments and sites while having a single library of users. This also allows full customization on each site, if you want it, and even lets you control them all with administrative users.

Multisite can be used to reduce the amount of work needed to remove a user from an environment, as well as making code management easier.

6. School Directories, Profiles, and Groups

WordPress provides each user with a profile that can be edited. An advantage of WordPress is that it does not limit the number of custom fields that can be added in contrast to proprietary platforms. In addition, WordPress has roles and capabilities built in which allows the site owner to control who can edit which fields. Consequently, WordPress makes it easy to create a directory of users as all the users are in one place.

BuddyPress can be used to turn WordPress into a private or public social media platform with groups, discussion boards, private messaging, and more.

7. News and Social Media

As previously mentioned, WordPress was designed for blogging and news originally, so it has features like RSS feeds, post scheduling, and commenting built-in. WordPress has plenty of plugins you can use to share your content on social media. At WebDevStudios, we can even modify these tools and create custom plugins that communicate with social media APIs to do more.

8. Maintenance Is Easier

The main advantage of using WordPress for a university website is that it is easy to maintain. With features like Multisite, the time and resources you need to put into maintaining the site will be reduced. WordPress is continually releasing new updates with enhanced features and security fixes, and keeps users updated. Many administrators can perform updates themselves, but for those who need assistance, there is a WordPress maintenance company that can do it for you. So, instead of maintaining multiple CMS platforms (and even custom code), multiple hosting environments, and supporting multiple faculty and staff using different platforms (requiring many tiers of training and support), you can just use WordPress.

12 Best WordPress Themes for Universities

First up is the Education WordPress Theme. Now, we’ll examine some of the best WordPress themes to use for a university or college website. The Education WordPress Theme is a great choice for anyone looking for a simple, clean design.

1. Astra

Astra is a WordPress theme that can be used for any type of website. It comes with hundreds of different types of demos, including templates that can be used for colleges, universities, and educational institutions.

Astra has a fullscreen custom header image, a centered layout, and homepage sections, and is compatible with all popular WordPress plugins. This includes plugins that let students sign up on your website.

2. Ultra

The Ultra WordPress theme is very powerful and versatile. It comes with multiple pre-made websites that can be installed with just one click. Each design can be easily customized to your liking using the theme options panel.

It has all of the features that you would expect from a premium WordPress theme, such as an image slider, pricing tables, progress bar, animated counters, and more. It is WooCommerce ready and has countless combinations of different layout options, header styles, colors, and design choices.

3. Divi

The Divi WordPress theme is a versatile and stylish option that includes a built-in page builder. This allows you to customize your website without having to edit any code, making it a great choice for those who want an easy-to-use yet powerful option.

This text is discussing a website template that is designed for universities and colleges. The template is intended to make it easy for these schools to launch websites that offer online courses to students. In addition, the template is compatible with popular WordPress plugins, allowing schools to add additional features to their websites, such as a bbPress forum.

Adding elements like a contact form to your Divi site is simple and user-friendly. The theme’s admin panel lets you upload a custom header and logo, as well as add social media icons.

4. OceanWP

OceanWP is a WordPress theme that’s responsive and beautiful, making it a great choice for a college or university website or an education center. It comes with 1-click importable free and premium demo sites, so you can get your website up and running quickly.

This theme is designed to load quickly, which will help bring more visitors to your site. It is also translation-ready and supports right-to-left languages.

5. Hestia Pro

Hestia Pro is a WordPress one-page theme that is stunning and suitable for educational institutes. It is very flexible and easy to set up using your favorite drag and drop page builders like Beaver Builder.

This theme contains a few website templates, blog page layouts, custom landing pages, and more. It is integrated with WooCommerce and WooCommerce plugins to allow for online course sales.

6. Academy Pro

Academy Pro is a great option for building a university or educational institution website. It’s a powerful theme that is secure and reliable.

Academy Pro is a WordPress theme that enables you to create online courses using tools like LearnDash, memberships, digital downloads, and video content.

StudioPress has been acquired by WP Engine, the most popular managed WordPress hosting company. You can get this theme and all 35+ other StudioPress themes when you sign up for WP Engine hosting to build your website.

As a WPBeginner user, you can get an additional 20% off when you start with WP Engine today.

7. Academica Pro

Academica Pro is a top-notch education WordPress theme that comes complete with a widgetized 3-column homepage layout and event calendar integration.

There are four different layouts you can choose from to display your posts and pages, as well as multiple header styles. You can also customize the colors of the text widgets, upload a custom logo, and change the colors to unlimited possibilities. If you want to add an online store to your college website, this theme is WooCommerce ready.

8. EduPro

The EduPro WordPress theme is designed specifically for education websites. It contains a large slider on the homepage with a call-to-action button. Recent news, courses, and student testimonials are displayed in a grid layout.

This text contains instructions for setting up a custom WordPress site. It includes directions for adding custom widgets for recent posts and a newsletter signup form, as well as using a plugin like LearnPress to create courses for online learning.

9. Motive

The Motive WordPress theme can be used for a variety of different websites, including those for colleges and universities.

The text describes a website that comes in two different styles, with features including a premium slider plugin, post formats, sticky navigation, parallax effects, custom post types, and more.

Motive integrates with popular WordPress plugins to give you the functionality you need for your site. For example, you can use plugins to add an events calendar to your theme.

10. Presence

This theme is perfect for businesses, non-profits, universities, and training centers. It comes with 10 ready-made demo sites, including one for a university or college.

The WordPress live customizer allows for full editability of this website, including 6 pre-defined color schemes, 3 slider styles, 4 blog layouts, and full-width or boxed layouts.

11. Neve

The Neve theme is a great choice for anyone looking for a WordPress responsive theme that looks great and offers a variety of starter sites.

The theme is compatible with WordPress page builders like Elementor Pro, making it easy to customize. Other features include custom widgets, color schemes, and RTL language support.

Neve’s responsive design ensures that your website will look great on mobile devices used by students and parents, as well as on computers.

12. Blackboard

The Blackboard WordPress theme is perfect for schools, colleges, and universities. It includes a beautiful website header and multiple page templates, making it a great choice for an education-focused website.

This theme provides you with an unlimited number of color schemes to choose from, as well as the ability to customize many aspects of your website to match your specific needs. Additionally, you can install a page builder plugin like Visual Composer to make even more changes to the look and feel of your site.