Matt Mullenwegg’s State of the Word address this weekend at WordCamp San Francisco shared some impressive numbers about WordPress. For instance, 14.7 percent of the top million websites in the world use WordPress.
Matt’s presentation also revealed numbers from a survey of 18,000 WP users, including that 92 percent of those surveyed use WordPress as a CMS.
It turns out presidential candidates use WordPress as a CMS too.
While browsing the 2012 Republican candidates, I noticed WordPress is the CMS of choice for presidential campaign websites (six out of the 10 declared Republican candidates) and every single candidate is using an open source content management system (Drupal powers the rest).
Maybe there is hope for us after all…
Michele Bachmann – WordPress
The U.S. Representative from Minnesota and winner of the Ames Straw Poll sports a rather garish WordPress-powered site.
Herman Cain – WordPress
The former CEO of Godfather’s simple but elegant website is powered by WordPress.
Gary Johnson – WordPress
The former governor of New Mexico’s presidential campaign website and blog is powered by WordPress. Interestingly enough, net neutrality is a prominent and important issue to Gary Johnson.
Ron Paul – WordPress
Ron Paul is back again, and his classy campaign site stands out in a good way from his rivals’ websites.
Rick Perry – WordPress
Rick Perry is almost as good-looking as his WordPress campaign website.
Buddy Roemer – WordPress
Buddy Roemer’s campaign website is powered by WordPress and focuses on conversation with users via its “Talk to Buddy” Q&A section.
Mitt Romney – Drupal
Drupal is the platform of choice for Mitt Romney’s sharp website.
Rick Santorum – Drupal
Rick Santorum’s Drupal site has a unique right-side vertical navigation and full-width layout.
Newt Gingrich – Drupal
Newt.org is built on Drupal.
Jon Huntsman – Drupal
Jon Huntsman’s Drupal campaign website is notable for its poor quality and amateurish design in comparison to the other candidates.
White House – Drupal
Alright, it’s not a campaign website (though at the moment its homepage content resembles one), but its worth noting Barack Obama’s technology team brought open source to whitehouse.gov.
Meanwhile, I must admit I’m not sure what Obama’s barackobama.com uses for content management. At one time, his site used Movable Type, but I don’t think that is the case anymore. If you know, please do tell!
According to the BuiltWith extension in Chrome, Barack Obama's campaign site is powered by Expression Engine.
I second the suggestion of frankiegerschwin– we would benefit from a complementary review of blogs and CMS applications used by candidates more in touch with reality than the TP/GOP front ten.
Having latest technology is not an argument of policy, but of sufficient resources to bring technology on-board. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, all the latest weapons were used by well-funded fascists who realized they could make a decisive difference.
In the election of 2012, advanced techniques of opinion-shaping and access to mass audiences will dominate available channels of public discourse. Likewise, it is in the interest of the American people not only to have wider dissemination and more rapid transfer of this technology, but urgent development of critical countermeasures to blunt the inevitable website and blogsite attacks.
The election of 2012 will catch all but the most vigilant by surprise, asleep at the comfortable positions they assumed at the last dismal electoral contest. That surely includes Obama and the DNC.
I didn't cover any other candidates because Barack Obama will have the Democratic nomination (only other Democrat to declare yet is Randall Terry. FWIW, I can't tell what he's using as a CMS.), and none of the independents stand a chance.
This post was meant to highlight the success of open source software. I hope what CMS a candidate uses doesn't carry weight in what candidate they vote for
Also, here's what the other parties' candidates are using:
Green Party
Kent Mesplay, http://www.mesplay.org/ is running Drupal
Libertarian
Lee Wrights, http://wrights2012.com/ is running WordPress
Prohibition Party
Jack Fellure, http://swordof1611.webs.com/jackfellure2012.htm is hosted and powered by Webs
Jim Hedges, not sure he has a website
Socialist
Stewart Alexander, http://www.stewartalexandercares.com/ is static HTML made by Intuit SiteBuilder by Homestead
Independents
Roseanne Bar, not sure she has a campaign site but http://www.roseanneworld.com/ is hers. It uses Movable Type 5
The Naked Cowboy, http://www.nakedcowboy.com/ is Flash based
Joe Schriner, http://www.voteforjoe.com/ is hosted and powered by Wix
Thanks– that is what we needed to see. The field of candidates for 2012 is vast , and– as you point out– well represented by NON-commercial software. All power to the people and open source!
Thank you.
A member of Merlin Miller's campaign wrote me to share their website also runs on WordPress. It's http://merlinmiller2012.com/.
Haven't had a close look at this site, but I do know that his initial online campaign in 2008 was done by a company called "Blue State Digital" in Boston, using their own in-house CMS. In some of their marketing material they claim that they custom developed some of their toolset for this site.
They claim <abbr title="Obama for America">OFA</abbr> as one of their case-studies on their home page.
See their website here: http://www.bluestatedigital.com/
Interesting. Wouldn't have know.
Great information! I work with GOP candidates/groups/organizations on mobile strategy and long to see the GOP keep pace with the DNC/Obama re-election campaign.
I think that American candidates websites are really funny, they always have big cheesy smiles as if that wins the votes.
The Jon Huntsman website it pretty boring actually, there is nothing there that would make me back him.
Yes I think WordPress is doing really good and I loved Ron Paul's website.
It’s nice to see that organizations that can afford to go in any direction are choosing Open Source programs.
Somehow I keep coming back to WordPress. It isn’t perfect but it seems to be a lot better than most other systems I have come across. I find it really easy to add hooks into it too, which is ironic because it isn’t even considered a framework.