Why invest large sums of money on a website when you are going to use photos taken with a $200 camera? 2 days ago — @3PointRoss
Wordpress has become a great platform for a wide range of website needs. Originally designed for blogging it is now a common package for full fledged content management systems and even complete web based applications.
Now we even have great opportunities to use Wordpress as an internal communication and back office tool. With these assortments of plug-ins we can use our favorite open source software to improve our businesses, efficiency and offer more solutions to our clients.
If you are a freelancer or a small company you know how much time can be sucked up by managing your billing. This is a bit of a shame because the billing part of the job should be the most fun, it's how you get paid! There are a lot of available paid solutions for billing, but they are all hosted on different websites and applications and are not as nice and neatly integrated as doing it through Wordpress. Luckily we have WP-Invoice, a full invoice creation and tracking system that integrates with Wordpress directly.
It features:
As your business grows the amount of clients, leads and strategic partners you have will also grow. It is time to throw out the Rolodex, get rid of your piles of business cards, there are better ways to manage your contacts. The newest solution would be using a Contact Relationship Management system or CRM. There are a wide range of different CRM solutions available (salesforce.com, highrise, etc...) however Wordpress can function as one with the simple installation of a plug-in!
WP-CRM features:
Still using a pen and paper to manage your projects? You might as well be using a sundial to check the time! Using software to manage and track your projects is a lot easier and more sophisticated. While there are plenty of good commercial solutions available, why not integrate it into Wordpress? That way it is easy to use, customizable and open source. With the simple installation of a plug-in you can:
Sometimes proper and adequate communication is the most important and most difficult aspects of running a larger company. There are all sorts of tools that attempt to correct and fix this problem, some of them more effective than others. The Wordpress team themselves encountered this issue and sought to find a solution that integrated into their beautiful piece of software. Hence Prologue was born - a twitter like tool that can run off of your web server.
Need to send news and updates to your employees? Maybe you want to do some e-mail marketing for your company? Rather than pay monthly or per e-mail using an overpriced and underachieving e-mail marketing solution just integrate it with Wordpress. There is a simple, effective and easy to use newsletter tool that will do everything you need and more.
Keep track of all the events and important milestones going on with your business by using a simple and easy to use calendar system. There are a handful of Wordpress plug-ins that let you create and manage calendars, I have had the best luck with WP-Calendar. If you want to get very fancy you could also have a members only calendar so that only employees and those with a login can see it.
Have some feedback? Leave a commentThis is a great summary – I didn’t consider the CRM and Prologue plugins. I’ve just completed an intranet for a client on WordPress – and summarized the 8 plugins I used here;
http://www.charlwood.com/create_an_intranet_with_wordpress_custom_theme_and_plugins.html
Thank you for this post Ross, fantastic read – I didn’t know the PM and CRM plugins existed.
Declan
*bookmarked*
Thanks for the post, it was an interesting read.
I hadn’t heard of the newsletter plugin either
Thanks Jack, glad to hear your freelancing business has been doing so well. Keep up the good work!
Very nice list, I think I can use the WP-invoice plugin for sure as my freelance has skyrocketed this year.
nice list! i never heard some of them before
thanks admin..
Thanks for the great info! I love Wordpress and was just trying to see if I could turn it into an intranet. This lest was perfect!
Excellent selection. I have to admit, since Wordpress has been on the scene, it never seems to lack on its expandable uses. Another great idea. Brilliant!
thank you for the post
Some great plugins there. Do you have any thoughts on integrating Wordpress with Exchange Web Services in order to personalise the experience for users? That way they can glance at their intranet page and see they have x unread emails and their next couple of appointments.
- paul
Excellent selection. I have to admit, since Wordpress has been on the scene, it never seems to lack on its expandable uses. Another great idea. Brilliant!
What a great selection of plugins. I agree with Johnathan, that by integrating these plugins in to Wordpress you can create an impressive system that would be easy to use.
Excellent selection of plugins, which even as standalones are impressively powerful.
By intergrating all of these onto one platform you could develop a pretty impressive system with minimal effort.
Nice!
on January 25, 2010
Sagol Paşam