White House delivers Drupal a stimulus

Drupal and its commercial arm, Acquia, got a big boost last year when it was announced the White House would be using the software.

Now it's getting a second stimulus, this time in the form of code. Yesterday, as DrupalCon was winding down in San Francisco, the White House announced it had added the following enhancements to Drupal:

• Context HTTP Headers supports new types of metadata and helps in managing cache scheduling.
• Akamai allows sites to integrate with the content delivery system of the same name, and handle increased loads when necessary.
• GovDelivery helps customize e-mails sent from a Drupal site.
• Node Embed not only improves the handling of large photo files and video content, but helps sites meet government standards on accessibility.

All these features are designed for sites that are highly scaled, in terms of both traffic and content. They help a large Drupal installation manage its content and serve users better.

They appear to be of most interest to media companies, especially scaled media companies. We here at ZDNet use WordPress, and I have no insights into what the technical people are thinking. But my guess is the tech people at many media companies are going to look more closely at Drupal with these new features.

Even Republicans. Now that the code is contributed you might just find it at a tea party near you.