WordPress for Government Websites?!

Jase Wilson, Luminopolis Presented at WordCamp KC 2011

Jase Wilson

Whats this about?

A. Managing local gov websites B. Time & money

Gov. Websites?
Towns Counties Small Cities Neighborhoods Special Area / Project Sites

So whats 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 CMS
Hand 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 CMS

Similar 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 CMS

Already 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 CMS

Already 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

Open Source CMS choices for government

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

extremely competent powerful 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...

Textpattern
Cushy
Frog
etc., etc...

Joomla
Silverstripe

Open Source CMS choices for government

vs.

Theres been some talk lately...

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294

Theres been some talk lately...

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294

Theres been some talk lately...

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294

Theres been a lot of talk lately...

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294

Theres been a lot of talk lately...

http://groups.drupal.org/node/136294

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

Drupal 7:

267

WordPress 3.1:

1469

http://bit.ly/dIPaBFg

http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks

WordPress exposed hooks from v 1.2.1 to v 3.1:

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

By the numbers: installations

(excludes WP.com)

Graph Source: Jen Lampton, Why WordPress is Better Than Drupal, Developers Take Note (July, 2010) http://slidesha.re/917HF0

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

# of people in the community

Graph Source: Jen Lampton, Why WordPress is Better Than Drupal, Developers Take Note (July, 2010) http://slidesha.re/917HF0

Still a kitten?

Its true:

More != Better
But 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)

From humble beginnings...

Post Editor - WP 0.7.1 (2003)

WordPress continues to evolve...

Dashboard - WP 3.2 (2011)

Does WP scale?

Is WP powerful?

Is WP flexible?
http://broadbandmap.gov http://d.pr/NZec

The structure of the WordPress API allows us to develop much faster than any other CMS weve tried.
Ivan Djordjevic, National Broadband Map

Is WP flexible?
http://broadbandmap.gov http://d.pr/NZec

"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

Is WP flexible?
http://broadbandmap.gov http://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.

coming soon

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

So, Why WP?

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?

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