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WhiteHouse.gov Switches To Open Source CMS - Drupal
By John Vinson
Expert Author
Article Date: 2009-11-03
If you've been keeping up with technology under the Obama administration, you'd notice hints at looking more into open source technology. The US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra has been making pushes to greater open source adoption. The latest news, while small by itself could be the precursor for more change. The site WhiteHouse.gov has switched their CMS to Drupal.
Upon taking office, Obama made a request that the White House website be updated with new, and expanding programs. This led to the adoption of Drupal. The CMS has been criticized but there's no arguing it's expansive nature which the White House hopes to capitalize with.
Drupal is a CMS programmed in PHP, which was released under the protection of GNU (public licensing). As the program has grown, so has the number of websites that utilize. Currently, there are around 500,000 websites using the Drupal CMS. The most prominent sites being Yahoo, Warner Bros., and now WhiteHouse.gov.
Depending on your thoughts concerning Drupal, this can be seen a positive or negative. While there have been many to utilize Drupal, and over 2000 have signed up for developer accounts, the system isn't without faults.
The White House has signed on IT engineers to maintain the site, which shows the learning curve and usability of the CMS. Many have criticized the CMS for being difficult and having a low usability factor.
With all of these negatives, what would lead the White House to use the CMS for it's website. The CMS has a steep learning curve because of all the options available to use. Here's a list of sites that the CMS can be used for:
Ecommerce Apps
Social Networking Sites
Blogs
Corporate sites
Intranet Apps
Due to the open source nature of Drupal, there is a slew of add-ons that can be downloaded along with the Drupal core. Thus, allowing many additions to WhiteHouse.gov. Here's some options to look out for:
Podcasting
Image Galleries
P2P Networking
Forums
This decision has left some wondering if WhiteHouse.gov has integrated Drupal, how long before other government sites and systems follow suit?
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for WebProNews.
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