White House New Media& Open Source Software

Macon Phillips

White House New Media

Advantages of Open Source Software

• One code base, many use cases, flexibility and agility in the modular code architecture

• Built-in security and feature updates

• Extend value of investment through public release of code

• No vendor lock-in, shift from procuring products to services

WhiteHouse.gov Runs on Open Source

• Open source Drupal running on LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

• High profile, high security, high traffic implementation of open source technologies

WhiteHouse.gov Contributes to Drupal

Four White House developed modules contributed back to the community address common issues:

• Scalability – two modules to help websites interface with content delivery networks

• Communications – module contributed to connect Drupal with our broadcast email provider

• Accessibility – module created to provide robust metadata for videos and photos, enhancing 508 compliance

Accessibility Through “Node Embed”

Weekly installs of the White House developed “Node Embed” module

• Allows embedding of media with associated meta data

• Enhances viewing experience for screen readers

• Most popular of the modules created by the White House thus far, used by close to 1,000 websites

WhiteHouse.gov & Web Standards

HTML5 video player available, negating need for closed source video player software

Open Source Internally

• Updated intranet from a collection of flat HTML files to Drupal

• Integrated collaboration tools into intranet

• Re-used much of WhiteHouse.gov code, e.g. using Solr module for search

Our Second Code Contribution to the Drupal Community:

Today:

•Releasing a suite of modules to upgrade the IMCE file manager (search, user permissions, link manager)

•We sponsored upgrades to the modules used in the OpenAtrium collaboration software package

Coming soon:

•Update of our content delivery network module, merging with a module already in the community

•Utility bar module for site administration

Open Source as a Philosophy

• The SAVE Award

• Open for Questions with the President

• Advise the Advisor

Thank you.