WordPress Makes a Bid to Bring Open Source CMS To Cities around the World

From the ‘Fiscal Restraint’ files:

Every city in the world needs to have a website. The good people at open source CMS vendor WordPress think that CMS should be free too.

So WordPress is now offering a WordPress.com/cities setup and account for any city for free. This is the hosted version of the open source WordPress code that powers more blogs than any other software on Earth.

The Cities service goes beyond the basic free version that WordPress has offered for years – with templates set up for common city content.

“While millions of users turn to WordPress.com to build their blogs, organizations like yours can also take advantage of our platform to build a non-blog site too,” WordPress developer Chris Finke wrote.

Open Source is of course no stranger to supporting government websites. The open source Drupal CMS is the engine behind the Whitehouse, the FCC and the U.S. Congress.

While the hosted side of WordPress is moving to support city governments, work continues in the core open source project on version 3.5 WordPress 3.5 is currently at the Beta 3 stage with a final release due out before Christmas.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.