Drupal

If you are in D.C. and interested in the open government directive President Obama has put forward, as well as one of the key technologies pushing it, Drupal (same technology powering IntoxiNation), then this might be of interest to you:

How to Achieve the Open Government Directive Requirements Using Open Source Drupal

Willard Intercontinental Washington
1401 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20004
January 12, 2010 | 8:30 - 11:00 AM

Abstract

The explicit purpose of the Open Government Directive (OGD) is to improve citizen interaction and engagement. Realizing the intentions behind the Directive will require significant web site innovation for many departments and agencies. Join us for this comprehensive workshop that showcases how and why Open Source content management tools such as Drupal are being quickly adopted across U.S. federal, state and local governments to meet rapidly expanding requirements and expectations of Open Government. Also, learn "how to" get started with Drupal, and how to achieve a fast track to success for implementing Open Government Directive requirements such as establishing an Open Government portal located at http://www.[agency].gov/open to serve as the gateway for agency activities related to the Open Government Directive including FOIA disclosures, open data initiatives, and citizen collaboration efforts around your agency's published open government plan.

I know a couple of the speakers and they have a real insight into technology and ways to make the government more open. If you are in the area and want to check it out then you can register here.

Image via Wikipedia

Last month the White House, under the direct instructions of President Obama, scrapped the old, expensive system the White House’s website ran on and moved towards the freely available open source platform Drupal, which also powers this site. In a Drupal meet up in D.C. last night, the White House tech team broke their silence on the move:

The biggest news from the night was a few announcements about the White House's plans for engaging with open source development communities. Dave Cole, the White House Deputy Director for Technology, said that the White House New Media team has been working with the White House legal council to figure out how to participate and contribute code back into the Drupal community. They can't promise a timeline for when that'll happen since it's pretty unprecedented for the Executive Branch to be participating in an open source project and to be directly engaging the Drupal community.

They also want to start holding "Development Challenges" for the international Drupal community in order to help figure out some ways to take the best ideas that are already out there, and see how they can be used for the public good.

This is very welcoming news. Open source software is the future of computing, and now that the United States government is so openly embracing it and willing to contribute back, it will only get better.

When I first posted the news about the White House’s move to my favorite content management system I also said that it will provide a great tool to allow more user interactivity, and that appears to be exactly what the White House has in mind:

They have about a list of at least 60 feature requests for the project, but the number one issue is user account management and figuring out a user authentication system. This issue happens to have a lot of privacy implications, and it's not just matter of the technological implementation of user account management, but they're also considering the social media best practices of single sign-on and OpenID. They have to thinking about dealing with the range of users from skeptical to technologically immersive users.

Another feature is a way to save a search, and then send out e-mail alerts whenever new information appears containing that keyword search.

Imagine that. If you are interested in executive orders then you will be able to create an email alert about “executive orders” and get an email anytime one is added to the website. This is like Google Alerts, only on the White House. It will provide an extremely valuable tool for the media and blogosphere, as well as normal citizens.

I just got done reading this article on Slate, which argues that whitehouse.gov moving to Drupal is a “political disaster waiting to happen”. Let me take some time to address each of these lies.

Drupal knows best. It's not that Drupal thinks you're evil. It just thinks you're ignorant. In a basic setup, the software is suspicious of everything you try to do. Should you, say, go completely rogue and try to add some Javascript in the body of a page—a 14-year-old technology that controls interactive components like buttons—the platform will have none of it. The message: "That's dangerous stuff, and you probably don't know what you're doing." Better to outlaw something altogether, Drupal figures, than simply ask you if you really want to use it. If Drupal ran the Food and Drug Administration, it would ban high-fructose corn syrup. This is just the sort of straitjacketed paternalism that half the country is convinced the Democrats are hell-bent on imposing on us all.

Javascript is dangerous stuff. Ever try putting it in on Wordpress? You can’t. That’s not the case with Drupal, and it exemplifies that the author of this article has no idea what he is talking about.

XSS, that acronym for “cross-site scripting” is a huge security risk, accounting for 80% of all vulnerabilities in 2007. For example, when you login to a Drupal site there are cookies stored on your computer. Those cookies are what lets Drupal know that you are that logged in user. By placing a simple line of javascript inside of content posted on a Drupal site that allowed it, I could easily have your session cookie sent to some server I run and then put that cookie into my browser and now I am logged in as you and you would never know I got it. This isn’t limited to Drupal, but to any system that allows logging in.

So does that mean I can’t use Javascript in Drupal? Absolutely not. Let’s look at the code to embed a CNN video:

Know what that is? It’s Javascript and you can see that exact video on this site by clicking here.

Wow that must be some kind of voodoo, but it isn’t. It didn’t even require any programming. It was a simple option inside of Drupal where I can change my “input format” to allow it. Not only that but I can limit what users can enter Javascript and not (try doing this on something like Wordpress – you need a plugin or to code it yourself). That’s the power of Drupal, and the piece of mind any website owner can have with it.

Let’s move on

Following up on yesterday’s news of the White House now using the open source content management software Drupal to power their site I decided I needed to expand on it a bit more for my less tech savvy readers.

First an explanation of open source software is in order before an understanding of what it means to the citizens and taxpayers of our country.

The open source model is very powerful and starting to dominate the computing world. Approximately 75% of the websites on the internet are powered by software developed as open source. Apache is the most popular web server software and is open source. Linux is the most popular operating system for servers and is open source. Even MySQL, the database which powers most sites including Google is open source.

Open source software can be freely obtained. Any of the examples I gave above you can go and download right now and even download the underlying code that makes the software run. You are free to modify it however you like, given you follow the very lenient licensing requirements, and run those changes openly.

Making this software free doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made. Drupal is a perfect example of this. The software is so powerful and robust that it ends up with a very steep learning curve. That’s not by design, but rather because of what the software has to offer.

The home page of 1600 Pennsylvania avenue did a relaunch over the weekend. The most exciting part is that its now running on Drupal, the same software that powers IntoxiNation and Crooksandliars. 

The day after Obama was inaugurated as our 44th President I did a post about having a more tech savvy commander in chief, and in it talked about how the government should really embrace and move towards open source software like Drupal. It’s great to see that they are doing this.

Given the extensibility of Drupal and existing modules that can provide anything from a full social network site to a major campaign site, including email letters, I say we can expect to see a much more user oriented whitehouse.gov.

I know first hand that one of the biggest costs associated with the traditional media and their online presence is the platform they currently have their websites in. These are high dollar systems that require countless hours developing.

One way the media can curb some costs, yet keep up with an ever changing world in online presence is to drop these old systems. Instead they should look at open source platforms, and the one I highly recommend is Drupal. That’s what powers this blog, as well as Crooks and Liars. You can also add the biggest name in satire news to the list of Drupal powered sites – The Onion.

Recently one of Europe’s largest media organizations just made the switch:

Pierre-Jean Duvivier, Head of WebFactory at Edipresse, shared some remarkable data points with me. Edipresse is one of Europe's biggest media and communications companies. It is a traditional print company that publishes more than 200 titles, including some leading European newspapers (i.e. Le Matin, Le Temps, and 24 heures).

Pierre-Jean told me that they converted 11 newspaper and magazine websites to Drupal in 18 months. The reason for adopting Drupal was that it is cheaper, faster, and more stable than their old content management system.

Today, some of Edipresse's biggest media properties are on a shared Drupal platform that delivers 30 million pages a month. Since they switched to Drupal, they cut their global IT cost by 75% and grew their online traffic by 220%. On average, it takes their internal Drupal team 40 days to migrate an existing newspaper site to Drupal, so I think we can expect to see more Edipress sites moving to Drupal.

With a minimal amount of work and hardly no programming one can transform a vanilla Drupal install into a robust community oriented site offering things like comments, user ratings, post sharing, image galleries, blogs and video sharing.  And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Given the power and extreme effectiveness in which Drupal operates, these companies would end up saving tons in terms of staff and infrastructure. They would also benefit from the much desired features of user interaction that the web is built on today.

It makes good business sense for these companies to look at such a switch. In turn they could contribute back some work to the project(s) they are using and then everyone benefits. Think of it as a partnership for the future.

The New York Times has a really nice write-up about Drupal today. Drupal is the engine that drives this site and many others. As matter of fact one of my goals for 2009 is to talk more progressive blogs into giving Drupal a go, as it has most of the features available we are all looking for.