A few notes on the new whitehouse.gov website as I did for the campaign sites after about 5 minutes of sniffing around:
- Running Microsoft-IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET 2.0.50727. The Bush administration ran Apache on what I think was some sort of Unix. Data is gzip’d.
- Whitehouse.gov is using Akamai as a CDN and for DNS service.
- Using jQuery 1.2.6 (someone should let them know 1.3 is out). Also using several plugins including jQuery UI, jcarousel, Thickbox. Also using swfobject.
- Pages tentatively validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional! I’m shocked by this. I’ve checked several pages all with the same result.
- Using WebTrends for analytics. Bush Administration also did.
- IE Conditional Stylesheets and a print stylesheet.
- RSS feeds are actually Atom feeds.
- The website is setting two cookies that I can see
WT_FPCandASP.NET_SessionIdwhich expire at the end of the session which is not prohibited in federal government as per OMB Guidance for Implementing the Privacy Provisions of the E-Government Act of 2002 (using Google Cache for that link since I can’t find it anywhere else, our government should really keep those in a more permanent location).
I should note that this is quite different in architecture than the Obama campaign site which ran PWS/PHP, no notable JS library, feed, and Google Analytics.
Update [1/20/2009 @ 9:00 PM EST]:
- Jason Kottke points out that the new whitehouse.gov sports a much slimmer robots.txt file.
- Content is now under Creative Commons license. Way to go Lawrence Lessig.
5 replies on “Whitehouse.gov Analysis”
Err… I’m unclear on your last point.
“The website is setting two cookies that I can see which expire at the end of the session…”
That refers to a “session cookie”. Session cookies are allowed as per Attachment A, Section III(D)(2)(a)(v)(2) subsection (a) of the document you cite.
Technical details aside, the design of the site looks fantastic.
@Samuel Sidler: That’s why I said They are explicitly allowed despite common perception that government websites should not set cookies. It’s cookies beyond a session which can track a users behavior that are prohibited.
[…] site is running and content and as reported by many blogs and news outlets across the world (here, here and […]
Hi Robert,
Excellent round up of the technologies, I’ve compiled a similar list on the builtwith blog pre and post inauguration. You can view the technology round ups here. I’ve added a link back to your technology findings as well.
Thanks,
Gary