Armstrong is an

abandonware Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available. Within an intellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the g ...

open source news publishing platform jointly developed by nonprofit online news organizations ''

The Texas Tribune ''The Texas Tribune'' is a news website headquartered in Austin, Texas. It aims to promote civic engagement through original, explanatory journalism and public events. Its website and content in various delivery platforms serve as an alternativ ...

'' and ''

The Bay Citizen The Bay Citizen was a non-profit news organization covering the San Francisco Bay Area. It was founded as the Bay Area News Project in January 2010 with money provided by Warren Hellman's Hellman Family Foundation. On May 26, 2010 the organizatio ...

'' with the assistance of a grant by the

Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts. The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...

. The core of the content management system's functionality was used by The Texas Tribune and The Bay Citizen since 2009, and it was released to the public in 2011. The

Nieman Journalism Lab The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University is the primary journalism institution at Harvard. It was founded in February 1938 as the result of a $1.4 million bequest by Agnes Wahl Nieman, the widow of Lucius W. Nieman, founder of ' ...

has described the project as "A Wordpress for news orgs." The grant for Armstrong's development expired in 2012, and by 2017 the software's homepage had not been updated since 2014; the website was parked and the most recent commits to its

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

repository had been made in 2013. Armstrong was designed primarily to simplify the publishing process for other nonprofit news organizations by giving them the option of a CMS specifically created for news. Focuses of the system include media management,

search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "Organ ...

, integration with social media, and development of revenue streams. Higinio Maycotte, CTO of The Texas Tribune, said that "literally hundreds of media companies around the globe have expressed interest in moving to Armstrong." The project to release Armstrong as an open source CMS was fueled by a $975,000 grant from the

, which is devoted to media innovation, to ''

'' and ''

''. The grant was announced at SXSW Interactive in March 2011. Armstrong is written in Django, an open source framework for web applications in the

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

programming language.

External links

*
''Armstrong's GitHub page''

''Armstrong's GoogleGroups discussion page''

References

{{reflist Content management systems