WordPress (OpenETC, iWeb, & CourseWeb)

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WordPress Sites on OpenETC

OpenETC (or opened.ca) is a shared platform for WordPress available to BC educators and students. Sign-up and site creation is quick and easy. You can also export your existing sites from iWeb and import them to your new site on opened.ca.

Note: Theme and plugin availability will differ on opened.ca, and depending on your site, you may need to re-upload and re-link media files.

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CourseWeb

Note: CourseWeb will no longer be available as of March 2026. Instead, OpenETC is recommended for course-related WordPress site creation.

Courseweb (https://courseweb.langara.ca) is for anyone, including students, to create websites, typically for course based activities.

All users of the Langara College iWeb and CourseWeb sites must agree to the terms and will be compliant with the Computer and Computing System Use Policy B5002. View Policy

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iWeb

iWeb (https://iweb.langara.ca) is for Langara Faculty and employees “to publish information pages, course materials, and research.” One of the purposes of iWeb is to provide a home for Instructional and Department Pages that does not belong/cannot be hosted on the main College web site.

A small number of iWeb sites were migrated to a new server in February 2026, and all other sites have been retired. No new iWeb sites will be created. For most future WordPress projects (for your own sites or for student projects), we recommend creating an OpenETC WordPress site. If you have a WordPress use-case that you don’t think can work on OpenETC, please contact EdTech.

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What is WordPress?

WordPress is a popular Blogging/Content Management System, widely used throughout the Internet, that lets you create a web presence without knowing HTML.

WordPress has two main content types – Posts and Pages – and many other features such as commenting, links, tagging & RSS feeds which make it a powerful tool. Each of these features is described below. Most Blogs have a primary “author” or owner, but many (such as Langara’s CourseWeb) allow for multiple editors and contributors to the site.For a more detailed explanation of blogging, check out the WordPress site.

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Characteristics of WordPress Sites

Themes

When creating an iWeb or Course web site in WordPress, you can select from a variety of “templates” to set up a look and feel for your site.

Posts

The post is the main content type of WordPress. They are generally “articles” presented in reverse chronological order on a page and may contain images or links to other content such as web sites, video, other postings, etc. They may be commented on by others and “tagged” or categorized so that like posts can be displayed together. Postings are usually shorter articles intended to be added to frequently.

Pages

Pages are the second type of content provided for in WordPress. They are for content that tends to be more stable in nature and of longer term interest. They “stand alone” and are not listed chronologically like posts, but like a web site, pages can have “subpages”. Depending on how the site owner has set up the pages, they may also be tagged and allow for commenting.

Comments

A site’s owner can choose to allow comments on pages and posts. Encouraging commenting is one easy way of gathering feedback from your site’s viewers.

Categories & Tags

Categories are subject areas that you predefine, and which you can assign to posts. Tags are informal “keywords” that you can freely add to your page and posts to help your site’s users find content on the site. WordPress can create a web page “on the fly” of all content on your site containing certain tags or assigned to a category. You can also allow the tags & categories you use to be prominently displayed on your site.

RSS Feeds

One of the strengths of using WordPress for your web site is that you can add content quickly and easily. Anyone who is interested in your site or your postings can “subscribe” to your site through “RSS Feeds” in order to be alerted when new material is posted.

The links feature allows you to easily create a set of links to other sites or blogs relevant to your site.

Widgets & Plugins

Widgets are specialized tools that the user can add to WordPress sites, depending on what template is being used. Examples of standard widgets include header editing, adding links (sometimes called blogrolls), page lists, tag lists, etc. to the site’s template.

Plugins are small software applications that the blog administrator can add to extend the capabilities of the site. Once they have been added, it is up to the user to activate them.

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Accessibility

Building an accessible WordPress site

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