At the Center of It All

I finally got around to install WordPress for the School of Business to replace the good old handcrafted newsletter. I no longer have to spend time hand-coding each newsletter. My colleague who writes the content of the newsletter could just post as she go along. One of the advantages is that we don’t have to wait for two weeks to send out the hot news. It will be more immediate. I also don’t have to feel guilty spamming 25,000 people every two weeks. They can just subscribe to our RSS feed and read as they pleased.

I installed the latest version of WordPress, which is 3.0, and tried to theme it based on Twenty Ten, the new default template for WordPress, but the new theme is way too complicated. Furthermore, the new template from GW isn’t so simple either. To get the two to work together will take tremendous amount of time or at a week straight to breakdown the PHP. So I went back to the classic theme, which is the most straightforward out of the box. Even with the classic theme, I had to strip the code down to its core for my needs and trim away the extras. Twenty Ten has 26 files and two folders. My theme only has three files (index, comment and css).

What is up with the long URL? When I thought about the project, I couldn’t find an appropriate name for it. I brought it up at our communication meeting and asked my colleague to help come up with a name. We tossed out a few ideas, but then it hit me: atthecenterofitall.business.gwu.edu. My boss was immediately sold on it even though it’s damn long address. She defended the idea by retelling the story about one of our alumni. In an executive meeting somewhere in another country (I can’t remember the name), he introduced himself as a graduate from GW School of Business and one of the directors at the table complimented, “At the center of it all.” Furthermore, We had done quite a bit of promotion on that catchy phrase. So I thought it’s a great marketing strategy and I was so glad that my boss was with it. I still love saying it: at the center of it all dot business dot gwu dot edu. How awesome is that?