Wordpress for Government Websites

WordPress for Government Websites?!

Jase Wilson, LuminopolisPresented at WordCamp KC 2011

Jase Wilson

What’s this about?A. Managing local gov websites

B. Time & money

Gov. Websites?Towns

Counties

Small Cities

Neighborhoods

Special Area / Project Sites

So what’s the problem?

Govs. in need of web services

More info needs to be managed

Citizens need accessible info

Dwindling budgets

What CMS options do

small governments have for

managing their websites?

What options to small govs have for their sites?

No CMSHand code all content

Can be useful for very small, simple sites

Impractical @ 10+ pages

What options to small govs have for their sites?

One-off CMS“roll your own”

Custom CRUD (& possibly GUI)

Made in-house or by contractor

Useful in very unique situations

Unwise for most: abundant simpler options

What options to small govs have for their sites?

Language Framework CMSSimilar to one-off

Begins with a broadly distributed skeleton system (Rails, Django, CakePHP, etc. etc.)

Good choice for enormous entities / complex sites

Impractical for all but largest gov. organizations

What options to small govs have for their sites?

Proprietary / Vendor CMSAlready built, ready to tailor

(Ektron, CivicPlus, etc.)

Purchased or SaaS

Can be extremely costly

Sometimes slow innovation pace

High risk of vendor lock-in

What options to small govs have for their sites?

Open Source CMSAlready built, ready to tailor

(Drupal, WordPress, etc.)

Core is usually free

Extensible (large communities of contributors)

Increasingly wise choice for small & mid gov. orgs

Of the people, by the people, for the people

Drupalde facto OS CMS for federal government(whitehouse.gov, SBA, many others)

extremely competentpowerful when used correctly

Open Source CMS choices for government

WordPress?Started as blogging system

As of 3.1 (Feb 23, 2011): CMS

Open Source CMS choices for government

There are other options...

JoomlaTextpattern

CushySilverstripe

Frogetc., etc...

Open Source CMS choices for government

Open Source CMS choices for government

vs.

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294There’s been some talk lately...

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294There’s been some talk lately...

There’s been some talk lately...http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294There’s been a lot of talk lately...

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294There’s been a lot of talk lately...

By the numbers: market share - 07 April 2011

By the numbers: market share - 11 June 2011

By the numbers: registered hooks*

*hook = function endpoint for integrating extensions

WordPress exposed hooks from v 1.2.1 to v 3.1:

Drupal 7: 267 WordPress 3.1:1469http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hookshttp://bit.ly/dIPaBFg

Graph Source: http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks

By the numbers: installations

Graph Source: Jen Lampton, “Why WordPress is Better Than Drupal, Developers Take Note” (July, 2010)

http://slidesha.re/917HF0

(excludes WP.com)

By the numbers: registered extensions

Graph Source: Jen Lampton, “Why WordPress is Better Than Drupal, Developers Take Note” (July, 2010)

http://slidesha.re/917HF0

By the numbers: registered themes

Graph Source: Jen Lampton, “Why WordPress is Better Than Drupal, Developers Take Note” (July, 2010)

http://slidesha.re/917HF0

By the numbers: community size

Graph Source: Jen Lampton, “Why WordPress is Better Than Drupal, Developers Take Note” (July, 2010)

http://slidesha.re/917HF0

# of people in the community

Still a kitten?

More != BetterBut there are some advantages to scale:

More members = more knowledge & support

More users = easier to hire maintainer

More hooks = greater flexibility (in the long run)

More eyes = tighter security (in the long run)

It’s true:

Post Editor - WP 0.7.1 (2003)

From humble beginnings...

Dashboard - WP 3.2 (2011)

WordPress continues to evolve...

Does WP scale?

Is WP powerful?

Is WP flexible?http://broadbandmap.gov

http://d.pr/NZec

Is WP flexible?

“The structure of the WordPress API allows us to develop much faster than

any other CMS we’ve tried.” —Ivan Djordjevic, National Broadband Map

http://broadbandmap.govhttp://d.pr/NZec

Is WP flexible?

"They chose WordPress to power this colossal project for several reasons: they

wanted a platform that could support +25 million data records without

sacrificing performance and scalability..."

- Paul Maiorana, WordPress Publisher Blog

http://broadbandmap.govhttp://d.pr/NZec

If WordPress can power these incredible

projects, it can and should be adapted

to the needs of local governments.

We can do this.

Want to be notified? http://civicms.com

coming soon

1. Simpler setup & maintenance = less $

2. Big community = more managers in labor pool

3. Less moving parts = less things that can go wrong

4. Intuitive workflow = increased productivity

5. Tons of hooks = integration with other services

So, Why WP?

So, Why WP?

6. It was built for communities!!!

- powerful threaded commenting engine in core

- multiuser, multisite out of the box

- user levels, from superadmin to subscriber

- forks & plugins for forums(bbPress, buddyPress, p2, etc.)

Thank You? & !

jase@luminopolis.com

@luminopolis

jasewilson