Save The Bay Moves To Drupal

By Eric Broder, Online Outreach Specialist

Hello world, my name is Eric Broder and I'm the new Online Outreach Specialist at Save The Bay. I'm excited to be using my web skills to promote a clean and healthy San Francisco Bay. For the last four months I've been working with the communications team and a great technology consulting firm, Jackson River, to upgrade Save The Bay's website, and the new site just launched! Please check it out at saveSFbay.org.

Our website is powered by Drupal - a free and open source content management system and the hottest website framework in the world today. Drupal provides a cutting-edge foundation for a broad range of online activities, and it allows us to easily update and manage our website.

My favorite thing about Drupal is that it's open source. That means the source code on which Drupal runs is essentially in the public domain, giving us much more freedom than a closed proprietary system. This openness leads to remarkable levels of collaboration and innovation. Developers all around the world build new features that anyone can use. Google has a great blog post about openness that sums it up well - "open systems win". At the same time, Drupal provides a highly secure website and has a long history of strong and stable protection against security threats. And the Drupal community stops new threats as they arise.

Which brings me to my second favorite thing about Drupal. Barack Obama uses Drupal for the official website of the U.S. government, whitehouse.gov. (Those of you who know me, know that I'm a big Obama fan). Dries Buytaert, the original creator of Drupal, puts this into context:

First of all, I think Drupal is a perfect match for President Barack Obama's push for an open and transparent government -- Drupal provides a great mix of traditional web content management features and social features that enable open communication and participation…....Second, this is a clear sign that governments realize that Open Source does not pose additional risks compared to proprietary software, and furthermore, that by moving away from proprietary software, they are not being locked into a particular technology, and that they can benefit from the innovation that is the result of thousands of developers collaborating on Drupal.

In addition to using Drupal to manage our web content, we also started using the Salesforce relationship management system for nonprofits for our back-end database needs. Salesforce and Drupal integrate with each other, helping us run our organization more efficiently behind the scenes.

The bottom line is that this major technology upgrade allows us to put more of our time and resources towards our important work to protect and restore San Francisco Bay. Hands down our website is the best place for you to learn about our priority work, get important Bay updates, connect with our community of 25,000 Bay lovers, and support us through giving, volunteering and advocacy.

Please check out the site today and let us know what you think in the comments section below!