Onboarding with WordPress
Introducing the UVM Catamount WordPress theme
This theme is intentionally a light touch on the native WordPress 2024 Gutenberg editor. Rather than reinventing WordPress, we wanted to stay close to how it’s meant to work — so you can take advantage of built‑in features, ongoing platform improvements, and the huge ecosystem of training resources already out there.
At UVM, we don’t formally support WordPress as a platform — but we do want to give people a solid, branded starting point. With the Catamount theme, we’ve handled the UVM specifics for you, including a branded header, footer, and navigation, along with UVM typography, UI patterns, and style libraries.
Outside of that, we’re leaning into native WordPress as much as possible — so you can build confidently, learn easily, and use WordPress the way its creators intended.
The result is a theme that feels recognizably UVM, without getting in the way of how WordPress works.
FAQs
Who is UVM WordPress for?
This is a shared publishing environment for UVM affiliates and their collaborators. Affiliates can create any number of sites with names such as site.uvm.edu/mysite or blog.uvm.edu/mysite.
- Students wanting a web site
- Faculty needing a platform for featured research or creative works
- Small research initiatives needing a way to communicate with the public
Who manages UVM WordPress?
Enterprise Technology Services manages the software and keeps regular backups of your data.
How do I get support for my theme?
UVM does not provide support for WordPress. This theme is simply an alternative publishing option for people, groups, and teams whose website needs don’t fit within our Drupal or SharePoint frameworks.
The Catamount theme is intentionally kept close to native WordPress. We’ve added a light layer of UVM branding—header, footer, navigation, typography, and styles—while leaving the core WordPress features and block editor intact. This allows you to use WordPress the way it was designed to work.
While we don’t offer direct support, the WordPress user community is large, active, and well-documented. You can easily find how‑to guides, answers, and tutorials through a quick web search or on YouTube.
Should I install my own copy of WordPress instead?
People familiar with managing web software who are needing to heavily customize a theme or requiring plugins that cannot be offered in multisite WordPress might consider creating a site on the silk hosting service.
How do I make sure my WordPress site is accessible?
The UVM Catamount theme is skinned with accessibility web standards in mind, but it is up to site builders to ensure that their content is truly accessible to all. This is required work as part of a public university. UVM offers online web accessibility training.
Not sure if UVM WordPress is right for you?
If you have questions about whether this service can meet your needs, contact Systems Architecture & Administration.
Ready to create your own WordPress site?
You can create your own WordPress site with the UVM Catamount theme on our WordPress platform. It’s free! You will need your netID to get started.