Tom Sommerville

I have been designing, building and running intranets and other web stuff since 1997. Currently I head the team responsible for OPSpedia, the Government of Ontario’s WordPress-based, employee-facing professional networking platform and intranet hosting solution.

Speaking Sessions

1000 sites: MultiSite as an intranet hosting platform in the Beginner Developer track

Your Presentation

Case study of OPSpedia, which uses WordPress MultiSite as a hosting platform for numerous Ministry and enterprise intranets, as well as a blogging platform and professional networking site for Government of Ontario employees.

What do you want people to learn from your presentation?

  • How a large enterprise can use WordPress as a hosting platform for multiple intranets
  • Techniques used to juggle the demands of multiple stakeholders in a complex enterprise environment
  • Integrating open source and custom plug-ins into the WordPress MultiSite platform
  • How our Scrum-based (agile) development methodology supports numerous theme developers across the enterprise
  • Supporting multiple content contribution models among multiple stakeholder groups

Why did you decide to speak?

Speaking at a conference jump-starts networking opportunities. Also, I like to share my knowledge and experience.

What attracted you to WordPress in the first place?

  • It’s open source
  • It’s the platform used by ~20% of all web sites
  • It has an immense ecosystem of themes and plug-ins

What is your favourite plugin or theme, and why?

We have built a plug-in that integrates the Lucene/Solr serch platform with WordPress, providing a search management console, real-time indexing of all published content, and a growing number of search functions that our community uses to solve a host of business challenges.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

Networking with other WordPress users and fans.