Enlisting Joomla! ━━

Using the Joomla CMS in the Army Hosting Environment

by Kane McLean Military Open Source Working Group

OSFA | MIL-OSS WG2 | 03 AUG 2010

Why Joomla!● Immensely popular● Strong, Well Organized Community● Thoughtful, forward-thinking leadership● Easy to Deploy, Use and Train Users● Easily Repeatable = Cost Efficient

Why Not Something Else● Why Not Drupal?

○ Strong CMS, but very complex○ Designed for high number of back-end users○ Not yet in use in the Army○ Smaller, less active community

● Why Not Wordpress?○ Great, User-Friendly CMS, but very simple○ Designed for limited back-end users○ Conditionally CoN'd in the Army○ Very active community built around blogging paradigm

● Why Not Movable Type?○ Strong in high-traffic○ Poor Documentation○ Not at use in the Army○ Very Weak community

● Why Not SharePoint?○ Wrong Tool for the Job. Collaboration is NOT Publishing○ Potential of Mixing public information with private collaboration information○ SP is slow, unwieldy and unfriendly

● Why Not Use PowerPoint?○ BECAUSE POWERPOINT'S "PUBLISH TO WEB" ISN'T EVEN GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOUR

KID'S KINDERGARTEN CLASS PAGE NOW ADAYS.○ Need Clarification? Re-Read the above statement.

What is Joomla!● One of the most popular Content Management Systems in the World.● Downloaded over 15 million times (now averaging 20,000 per day).● Approx 2 million sites openly using Joomla.● Used more often than Drupal (which runs whitehouse.gov) and Movable Type● Garden industry built around theming -- The Template Club● Over 200,000 contributors at joomla.org

Project has been around over a decade

OSFA | MIL-OSS WG2 | 03 AUG 2010

Considerations for Using Joomla● DoD Security

○ Approval to Use Joomla○ Waiver? (CIO-G6 has assumed initial risk for running Joomla, so in some hosting environments

a waiver is all that is needed.)○ CoN? (Certificate of Networthiness)

● Staffing and Training○ Do you have Administrators?○ Do you have Editors?○ Do you have Content Contributors?○ Are you prepared to train, support, and trust them.

Enlisting Joomla! in the Army● Is Joomla Right for the Job?

○ Need for true timely publishing?○ Need for non-technical administration○ Need to manage a lot of content

● What Environment○ Open environment or behind AKO?○ Completely public (Open-Gov or CAC protected?)

* Milforge - currently working to get Joomla checked into milforge so that all of DoD can use it.

Rolling-Out an Army Joomla! Site● Getting Started:

○ Right Environment = LAMP ○ Get appropriate approval (CoN, Waiver, etc.)○ Information Architecture (Organize your site’s content and menus WELL)

● Security○ Security: FOLLOW THE JOOMLA SEC CHECKLIST (docs.joomla.org/

Category:Security_Checklist). ○ Never Use the Default Database Prefix○ You will NOT be able to install all the latest patches as they come out

● Templating○ Templating should be well written and cross-browser comlpiant (yes, IE6 too). ○ Handle All Presentation Layer Items IN THE TEMPLATE. (Use template overrides)○ Validate you theme (CSS, XHTML, etc.) to verify that you’re 508 compliant. ○ Train admins, authors, etc. on 508 issues they WILL encounter. THEY CAN RUIN 508

compliance.

OSFA | MIL-OSS WG2 | 03 AUG 2010