Ask Slashdot: What Web Platform For a Small Municipality? 161
First time accepted submitter r3dR0v3r writes "I have the opportunity to help improve / replace the website of my small U.S. town (~6000 people). The town leaders are open to most any suggestions, and are open to the idea of having the website facilitate a more open government — by being a place at which town documents, meeting agendas, meeting minutes, legal forms, ordinances, etc. can be found in an organized way and downloaded. And of course the site should provide general info about the town, it's services, recreation opportunities, etc.. Now, we have no budget, so we'll be looking at free/open software. I've considered options such as Drupal, but I'm doing this as volunteer work so I don't want to start from scratch and spend overly much time. Thus, I'm looking for advice about any existing platforms made specifically for municipalities as a great way to get a jump start. I'm guessing there are other slashdotters that have helped their communities in this way. Your suggestions please?"
Code for America (Score:5, Interesting)
This is where I pitch www.codeforamerica.org and see what it may offer!
1. Create a simple static html page (Score:5, Interesting)
with info about the town that does not change (name, location info, some pictures, etc)
2. Create the town's Facebook page, populate it with dynamic data, and hand over control of the account to the town manager (or whoever)
3. Embed Facebook data into your static html page
You can go Drupal or Joomla but do you really want to be responsible for security and upkeep? Joomla in particular gets hacked a LOT. Drupal is a nightmare to train newbs how to use.
CiviCRM and whatever CMS you feel best with (Score:4, Interesting)
I would use CiviCRM [1] and WordPress if there were no other constraints. I am of course assuming that your town wants to be able to do email outreach, has events, and likely could use case management to handle citizen requests. If not, then there is little point in using CiviCRM or anything besides a plain CMS.
I personally would prefer seeing town meeting summaries as blog posts then PDFs (which is what most towns seem to do currently).
Although if you really have NO budget, then I guess WordPress.com hosted or Google Sites.
[1] http://civicrm.org/ [civicrm.org]
Re:Go with Drupal (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, unlike Wordpress, Drupal does a pretty good job keeping up security.
Evidence/proof please? I don't really see them as being significantly better:
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=joomla [mitre.org]
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=drupal [mitre.org]
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=wordpress [mitre.org]
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=plone [mitre.org]
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=django [mitre.org]
OK they only had 5 sql injection CVEs in 2012 while Wordpress had 6. But "pretty good job" doesn't seem to spring to mind when I look at the Drupal CVEs.