The OSM president knew there had to be Joomla! powered government sites. “Absolutely,” he said. Later that night, he called in the help of the Joomla! community. “Guys, I could really use your help with finding some Government sites…”
Crawling the web
The introduction might be a product of my imagination, but what followed next is well documented. After Ryan Ozimek’s call for action, the community started to crawl the web. The goal was to collect as many sites as possible, so Ryan Ozimek had some hard evidence when returning to the geeks at NASA. This lead to an amazing list of websites, which were collected on a Wiki page.
Data is boring. Graphs aren't.
While the list itself was rather impressive, a few community members took a look at the data, and thought: “We should do something with this data.” After the initial buzz had calmed down, a handful of community members started to work out an idea. What’s better than a Wiki page, which is pretty static — and, let’s be honest, boring to read through? How about an entire website dedicated to these government websites?
The goal was to finish the site in time for JAB11. It was a tight deadline, but they managed to finish the website just in time, after a last-minute community effort.
The final result
The final result is this website, built in Joomla! 1.5 ,which gives everyone a perfect insight in just how many countries are using Joomla! for (some of) their government websites. I am not going to go into detail into how the website was made — that’s explained on the website itself. However, there are some interesting stats that should tempt you to visit the site.
Some stats
- Countries, states or organizations: On the website you’ll find the websites of over 2,600 government sites with even more being processed every week.
- Countries: These are spread across 206 countries.
- White House: Yes, Drupal might “own” the White House. But if you zoom in on Washington D.C, you’ll see that there’s quite a few Joomla! sites “in that area”. Surrounding the White House. Are they up to something?
- Sunny Spain: Check out Spain, in the south of Europe. See how it’s covered with Joomla! websites?
If there’s one thing the site will teach you, it’s that Joomla! doesn’t have to bow its head in shame when Drupal and the White House are mentioned in one breath.
There are two ways to “discover” the Joomla! Government sites across the world. You can use the world map to get a global impression. You’ll immediately notice how Joomla! government sites can be found all across the world! To get more information, you’ll have to zoom in. Clicking a blue “Joomla! flag” will show you the details of a specific site.
The alternative is picking a country from the country list. Be warned, it is a very long list! Once you’ve chosen a country, you’ll go to the map, which zooms in on the country.
What are you waiting for?
Unless you’ve got other articles in the JCM to read, what are you waiting for to go out and discover that website?
Visit the website: JoomlaGov.info
About the project and the people behind it: JoomlaGov.info/about
