After you’ve watched the amazing poem from Amanda Gorman, check out the new WhiteHouse.gov that re-launched today using WordPress & Gutenberg with a number of cool features including dark mode, text zoom, a totally responsive layout, and a Spanish version of the site. The site is clean, fast, and accessible. It’s exciting and an honor that the online home for the Executive branch is on Open Source software, and I’m proud WordPress can carry the torch that Drupal lit in 2009.
Besides Gutenberg, poking around I noticed a HTTP header and HTML comment encouraging people to join USDS, and this great #46 easter egg in the theme file:
Anyone notice any other plugins? I haven’t spoken to him directly but I’d be shocked if Nacin wasn’t involved with this one. I’m also curious if any of the WP agencies were involved, it has touches of 10up but I don’t see any mention of it on their site or Twitter. Hoefler&Co credits Wide Eye Creative with the design.
I noticed a few people happy that some previous pages and files on the old site were returning 404 errors, like the controversial 1776 report, but on this I think the webmasters of the United States of America should demand better, since Cool URIs Don’t Change. Previous websites are all saved by the National Archives, but there doesn’t appear to be any sort of norm for automatically redirecting links that went to any subdirectories or addresses under WhiteHouse.gov.
There are WP plugins that could help, like Redirection, but also perhaps the root domain itself could always redirect to a subdomain, like 46.whitehouse.gov, so we’d have a consistent domain and permalinks for everything, and then each new administration would get a new subdomain.
A White House website we can finally be proud of. And this whole President taking accessibility seriously thing isn’t going to stop being weird for a long time. Thanks for sharing this.
Looks like it’s using YoastSEO to generate the sitemap!
I appreciate that you investigated this the same way any of us regular folk would, rather than just, you know, asking your people for the info.
It was definitely created by WideEye, as the screenshot.png shows: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/themes/whitehouse/screenshot.png
I really enjoyed watching the inauguration on my TV, with time.is open in a tab, and refreshing @POTUS on Twitter and whitehouse.gov to see the switch at 5:00 (GMT +0000 / UK)! Thank God Trump’s gone, and the Democrats can (have the ability to) fix the US.
I just check the website and it’s super cool!
I like when things are clean, decluttered, and fast
Here’s to more, Matt!
I ran a Builtwith test and it showed Drupal and WordPress how is that possible?
Not sure, maybe they’re picking up something on a different part of the site?
Builtwith keeps data cached for too long. It also keeps data for historical purposes, so you’ll see all tech ever used there.
Looks like confirmed WideEye with 10up backup: https://www.fastcompany.com/90596638/under-trump-whitehouse-gov-was-a-disaster-bidens-team-revamped-it-in-6-weeks