White House New Media & Open Source Software Macon Phillips White House New Media
Mar 28, 2015
White House New Media& Open Source Software
Macon Phillips
White House New Media
Advantages of Open Source Software
• One code base, many use cases, flexibility and agility in the modular code architecture
• Built-in security and feature updates
• Extend value of investment through public release of code
• No vendor lock-in, shift from procuring products to services
WhiteHouse.gov Runs on Open Source
• Open source Drupal running on LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
• High profile, high security, high traffic implementation of open source technologies
WhiteHouse.gov Contributes to Drupal
Four White House developed modules contributed back to the community address common issues:
• Scalability – two modules to help websites interface with content delivery networks
• Communications – module contributed to connect Drupal with our broadcast email provider
• Accessibility – module created to provide robust metadata for videos and photos, enhancing 508 compliance
Accessibility Through “Node Embed”
Weekly installs of the White House developed “Node Embed” module
• Allows embedding of media with associated meta data
• Enhances viewing experience for screen readers
• Most popular of the modules created by the White House thus far, used by close to 1,000 websites
WhiteHouse.gov & Web Standards
HTML5 video player available, negating need for closed source video player software
Open Source Internally
• Updated intranet from a collection of flat HTML files to Drupal
• Integrated collaboration tools into intranet
• Re-used much of WhiteHouse.gov code, e.g. using Solr module for search
Our Second Code Contribution to the Drupal Community:
Today:
•Releasing a suite of modules to upgrade the IMCE file manager (search, user permissions, link manager)
•We sponsored upgrades to the modules used in the OpenAtrium collaboration software package
Coming soon:
•Update of our content delivery network module, merging with a module already in the community
•Utility bar module for site administration
Open Source as a Philosophy
• The SAVE Award
• Open for Questions with the President
• Advise the Advisor
Thank you.