Cera Intranet WordPress Theme

The intranet somebody will still be modifying two years from now

It is what separates an intranet from an ordinary website. A corporate site gets built, published and left. An intranet does not: the org chart changes, an expenses form has to be added, somebody asks for a holiday listing, the payroll system gets integrated. There is always something more.

Which is why, on this kind of project, how easy it is to extend matters as much as the design. Cera Intranet aims at that: code following WordPress standards and a good number of hooks so a developer can add things without fighting the theme.

What it brings

• Customisation from the customiser, with live preview: unlimited colours, fonts, spacing and buttons.
• Widgets and shortcodes for calendars, forums and polls.
• Developer hooks, which is what allows extending it without touching the theme.
• Fully translatable and WPML compatible, which in companies with offices in several countries is not an extra.
• Standards-compliant code, which is what makes updates predictable.

What actually gets it used

No intranet fails because of the design. They fail because there is no reason to open them on an ordinary Tuesday.

What gets people in every day is the boring things: the payslip, the holiday calendar and who has booked what, the canteen menu, the internal phone list, the expenses form. If those five things are there and only there, the intranet opens itself. If there is only corporate news, it does not compete with the chat app the staff already use.

What needs thinking through

Who sees what. An intranet holds staff data and not everybody should see everything. The permissions policy gets designed beforehand rather than improvised, and you have to check that restricted content does not appear in the search or the sitemap.

Keeping it inside. If the site is on the internet, you have to make sure nothing is visible without a session. And that includes the addresses of uploaded files, which in WordPress are reachable by default even when the post is private. It is the commonest failure and the quietest.

Requirements

It is a WordPress theme configured from the customiser. WPML compatible for multiple languages. The community, forum and poll features rest on plugins installed separately according to what you need.

Alternatives in the catalogue

The catalogue's other option for the same job is Micro Office, which arrives more loaded: a BuddyPress community, a file repository, projects and tasks, internal training and polls. It brings more solved out of the box and depends on more third-party plugins.

The choice between the two is the usual one: if you want to start with a lot already built, Micro Office. If you prefer a solid base and adding only what your team uses, this one.

And if what you are building is not a closed intranet but an open community with forums and courses, Ureg is designed for that, also on BuddyPress.

Frequently asked questions

Does it also work as an extranet with clients?
Yes, that is one of its intended uses, with areas restricted by user.

Can it be extended without touching the theme?
Yes, it brings developer hooks precisely for that.

Is it multilingual?
Yes, fully translatable and WPML compatible.

Does it need a visual builder?
No. It is configured from the WordPress customiser with live preview.

Does it bring forums and polls?
It brings the shortcodes and widgets for integrating them. The plugins making them work get installed separately.

Are private files protected?
That has to be configured. In WordPress uploaded files are reachable by address even when the post is private, and on an intranet that has to be closed off.