As frequent visitors of our site may have noticed, we are undergoing a major overhaul.  In line with the club’s direction for the 2014 year, we are adapting the site to include things such as the Hire an Eagle page.  The goal was to leverage LinkedIn’s API to embed profile cards directly from LinkedIn.  In fact, it turns out that LinkedIn provides a WordPress plugin that would make the process that much easier.  Despite my best efforts, however, I could not figure out how to add this plugin and ultimately became frustrated.  I had no problem doing this on past WP sites that I work on so what was I missing?

With a bit of research I learned that WordPress is actually two sites, WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG.  Our site is currently hosted on WordPress.COM which provides hosting and easy tools but also limits the flexibility to customize.  Conversely, WordPress.ORG provides the WordPress site management tools but the site itself is hosted elsewhere.  This allows for much greater customization and the installation of plugins.  In order to install the LinkedIn plugin, therefore, we will need to buy hosting space on another service and migrate the site over.  Thankfully there are are lots of great tutorials online to help us through the process.

A key part of the Tech Club’s mission is to provide our members with meaningful skills based on real, hands-on experience.  Let the learning begin!

For a full comparison of WordPress.com and WordPress.org check out the site.

-David LoVerme is a 2nd Year MBA at Boston College and the President of the Grad Tech Club