How To: Creating Your Corporate Intranet Using WordPress by Dean Sabatino is a fascinating look at how to change WordPress from a personal blog to a corporate Intranet Content Management System (CMS) for communicating and exchanging information within a company.

This article explains the process I used to develop a corporate Intranet site using WordPress blogging software along with the Apache web server, PHP, MySQL database and administration tools.

Our corporate Intranet was several years old and the design was based on our old corporate website look and feel. With the launch of the company’s new public website in early 2005, we clearly needed an update. The thought was to keep our new branding consistent and take the look and feel of the new public corporate site and apply the colors and styles to a new private internal employee Intranet.

He lists the modifications and enhancements he made to the new company WordPress Intranet site and reports on the results:

Once I had the prototype working I presented the site to the HR department and the CEO and both loved the format. The flexibility to upload fresh information easily and post date sensitive topics right on the home page is a feature they were looking for but unavailable on our old static page intranet site.

I scheduled a day for transferring the setup to the actual Intranet machine and followed the detailed notes I had kept while building the prototype. All went smoothly and we had a new Intranet site up in about 2 hours! I was able to train an HR person on how to use the administration tool after creating a user account for her. Initial feedback from employees has been great. With the new system in place I’ve already added a section of downloadable logos and I’m planning to add a page on Safety Policies and expand the IT/Software development section. With WordPress in place it will be a breeze.