WordPress for Government Websites
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
As of release 3.0, WordPress is ready to serve small government websites. Communities could save thousands of dollars per year opting for WordPress over other choices for their site's content management system.
Citation preview
- 1. WordPress for Government Websites?!
- 2.
Jase Wilson
- 3. Whats this about?
- A. Managing small gov. websites
- 4. The Problem
- Govs. need more web services
- 5. Options for maintaining small gov. websites
-
- Can be useful for very small, simple sites
*(content management system)
- 6. Options for maintaining small gov. websites
-
- Custom CRUD (& possibly GUI)
-
- Made in-house or by contractor
-
- Useful in very unique situations
-
- Unwise for most: abundant simpler options
- 7. Options for maintaining small gov. websites
-
- 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
- 8. Options for maintaining small gov. websites
-
- Already built, ready to tailor
-
- (Ektron, CivicPlus, etc.)
-
- Sometimes slow innovation pace
- 9. Options for maintaining small gov. websites
-
- Already built, ready to tailor
-
- (Drupal, WordPress, etc.)
-
- Extensible (large communities of contributors)
-
- Increasingly wise choice for small & mid gov. orgs
-
- Of the people, by the people, for the people
- 10. Drupal
- de facto OS CMS for federal government
- (whitehouse.gov, SBA, many others)
- powerful when used correctly
Open Source CMS choices for government
- 11. WordPress?
- Started as blogging engine
- As of latest major release (Feb 23, 2011), Full blown CMS
Open Source CMS choices for government
- 12. Joomla Textpattern Cushy Silverstripe Frog etc., etc...
etc., etc... etc., etc... etc., etc... etc., etc... etc., etc...
Open Source CMS choices for government
- 13. Open Source CMS choices for government Sometimes, you just
need a kitten. vs.
- 14. By the numbers: market share
- 15. By the numbers: usable 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: 1469
http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks http://bit.ly/dIPaBFg Graph
Source: http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks
- 16. 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)
- 17. By the numbers: registered extensions Graph Source: Jen
Lampton, Why WordPress is Better Than Drupal, Developers Take Note
(July, 2010) http://slidesha.re/917HF0
- 18. By the numbers: registered themes Graph Source: Jen
Lampton, Why WordPress is Better Than Drupal, Developers Take Note
(July, 2010) http://slidesha.re/917HF0
- 19. 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
- 20. Still a kitten?
- 21. More != Better
- Although 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)
Its true:
- 22.
- Simpler setup & maintenance = less $
- Big community = more managers in labor pool
- Less moving parts = less things that can go wrong
- Intuitive workflow = increased productivity
- Platform agnostic = runs anywhere (even IIS!)
- Tons of hooks = integration with other services
- Perhaps most significant of all...
So, Why WP?
- 23. So, Why WP?
- Its made for communities!!!
- - powerful threaded commenting engine in core
- - multiuser, multisite out of the box
- - user levels, from superadmin to subscriber
- - dozens of forks & plugins for forums (bbPress,
buddyPress, p2, etc.)
- 24. When WP?
- * Local gov. sites for populations < ~50,000
- * Special neighborhood / community sites
- 25. Resources
- Download core, plugins, themes http://wordpress.org
- Extend http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API
- Hooks database (by Adam Brown)
http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks
- Help from advanced users
http://wordpress.stackexchange.com
- 26. Thanks