• Read more about Growing WordPress In The Federal Government

It is safe to say that at the moment, WordPress does not have the largest presence in the federal government. By large, Drupal is the preferred CMS in the federal government.

Recently, we spoke at WordCamp DC where we were able to outline some reasons as to why and how we can help WordPress grow throughout the federal government.

First, lets identify some of the problems keeping WordPress less popular. There are three main reasons that Drupal appears to be the popular CMS over WordPress.

WordPress developers frequently hear a lot of these arguments and concerns about WordPress.

Drupal is more flexible and complex because:“Drupal contains taxonomies, content types, blocks, views, and user/role management”

We hear this a lot, but it’s misleading to say because WordPress also offers the following:

Drupal handles large volumes of content much better than WordPress

Often times, this seems like a moot argument. Whenever we hear people arguing about X framework versus Y framework it usually boils down to scalability.  But are you ever going to reach those upper limits you are arguing for? And if so, why can’t WordPress handle “large volumes of content”? We developers have seen plenty of sites with thousands of pages and posts.

Drupal can support thousands of pages and thousands of users

So can WordPress! WordPress.com is a single instance of the WordPress  Multisite codebase and serves millions of websites and users.Edublogs.org hosts millions of sites on one WordPress Multisite installation with over 3 million users. 

Drupal is more secure than WordPress - WordPress is plagued with vulnerabilities

It’s true that over the years, there have a been a number of high profile vulnerabilities, but these vulnerabilities are almost always a result of using a poorly built plugin, or out of date plugin.  WordPress itself is very quick to fix any discovered vulnerabilities. So installing free, low quality plugins or just the first plugin you see is not WordPress’s fault.

That’s a managerial decision, and that that needs to change. Same goes for not staying on top of your plugin updates. If you choose not to update your plugins, or you choose to keep a plugin that hasn’t been updated in years, then you take the risk of running something with security vulnerabilities.

Personally I think this is a perspective people have about websites in general.  That once you build it the first time, you can just walk away from it and not think about it again and we wish that were the case.  But like your cars, you need to maintain it to keep it running smoothly.

WordPress was originally built as a blogging platform

Yes that’s true, but WordPress, just like everything else has grown and changed.  WordPress hasn’t been a “blogging” platform for years.  Our WordPress engineer Kyle Jennings uses WordPress as an application framework to build user centric web apps.

WordPress goes the extra mile

A lot of these arguments above seem to be related to WordPress’s approach to addressing the same issues that Drupal has addressed,but at the end of the day these discrepancies don’t actually exist. And because WordPress also offers user friendliness and intuitive design, that have in our opinion blown Drupal out of the water, we think the real discrepancies lay with Drupal.

Extra Incentives Supporting WordPress

In 2015, the U.S. Digital Services teamed up with 18f to create an official front-end framework for government websites called U.S. Web Design Standards (USWDS). It is basically Twitter’s Bootstrap but built for the federal government and focuses on accessibility compliances, making it easy and affordable for agencies to build or rebuild their websites.

Our WordPress developer, Kyle Jennings built a WordPress theme named Benjamin with these standards. Benjamin makes extensive use of the awesome WordPress Customizer to provide a ton of flexible and thoughtful settings as well as a live preview of your changes. Here is a quick overview of settings:

So by using Benjamin and Franklin, agencies can quickly and easily spin up their own websites, that are branded with federally ordained style guidelines as well as easily customize their sites to meet their needs at any given time.

In case you missed the top reasons why the federal government is moving to Drupal be sure to read and let us know which content management system you prefer!

• Read more about Mobomo Partners with Drupal

Mobomo believes in partnering. Over the years we have partnered with Amazon, IBM, Tracx, and a number of other companies and organizations. We are pleased to announce our recent partnership with the Drupal Association (https://assoc.drupal.org), Drupal has been a major contributor in the community for many years. 

Drupal is an open-source content management system framework used to make many of the websites and applications that you use every day. Drupal has great standard features like easy content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security. But what sets Drupal apart from other solutions is its flexibility and extensibility; modularity is one of its core principles. Drupal allows you to build the versatile, structured content that is needed for engaging and dynamic web experiences.

We are very pleased to be a part of the Drupal community, since we have developed Drupal solutions for major Federal Government websites in the past this partnership only makes sense. We are excited about our partnerships and look forward to building bigger and better things as a supporting partner of Drupal.org. Be sure to visit our Drupal page.

• Read more about Mobomo Announces Management Changes

We are excited to announce expansion and growth of Mobomo's executive team:

Ken Fang, formerly CEO, will now serve as President of the company. Since joining in 2010, Ken has led Mobomo from a small startup to a company with over $5M in annual revenue, a more than tripled staff, consecutively high rankings by Inc. 5000, over 120 product launches, and an increasingly glowing client roster. In Ken's new role, he will be focused on high-level company strategy, corporate partnerships, and sales.

Brian Lacey will be assuming Ken's responsibilities as CEO. Brian joined Mobomo in 2011 as a Project Manager, and because of his passion for UX design, was quickly promoted to Creative Director. Within a short period of time, Brian was soon appointed COO, and under his tenure, Mobomo successfully built out well-defined design, development, and quality assurance capabilities. He also spearheaded the founding of the Buenos Aires office and helped acquire Exceptual Technologies, among other operational expansions.

Jesse Vizcaino will be assuming Brian's responsibilities as COO. In 2012, Jesse launched his Mobomo career as a Project Manager and quickly rose to Director. In his various roles, he has been instrumental in guiding Mobomo’s strategic direction, streamlining operations, and signing flagship customers such as the District of Columbia Retirement Board and the National Library of Medicine.

Please join us in congratulating Ken, Brian, and Jesse: we’re excited to see the great things they’ll accomplish in their new roles, and wish them all the best.

• Read more about Federal Mobile Computing Summit 2014: Government in the Future

We were particularly proud to see one of our favorite clients, Peter Dewar, Chief Technology Officer at the District of Columbia Retirement Board (DCRB), participate in a thought-provoking panel on Wearables and the Internet of Things. The session's description as a “visionary panel” proved to be true, as all of the participants outlined the groundbreaking mobile capabilities they foresaw as feasible within the next five years.

Mr. Dewar described his vision for implementing Google Glass in the office, at conferences—even for pension fund participants, staff, and Board members. Taking the idea of “smart rooms” even further, he also described a futuristic conference room, which would be able to set up a meeting’s required media (think dial-ins, projectors, etc.) upon the meeting organizer’s entrance or (biometric) authentication.

We from Mobomo were on the edge of our seats thinking about the possibilities, and excited about building them—especially for our government clients. Congrats to Peter Dewar for a great panel session, and thanks to Tom Suder for hosting yet another fantastic summit. We’re looking forward to next year’s—and to the future of mobile (in the government!).