How Government Agencies Reduce Risk and Spend with WordPress VIP & Parse.ly 

Security to support, content creation and AI to analytics, infrastructure to development—a closer look at why our website infrastructure, platform, and analytics are the right—and affordable choice—for the public sector.

Tablet on a warm-toned surface displaying the cover of an ebook titled “How Government Agencies Reduce Risk and Spend with WordPress VIP & Parse.ly,” featuring coin illustrations with WordPress and Parse.ly logos on a dark background.

Difficult-to-use, vulnerable, and unreliable content management systems hamstring communications teams, burden IT, require agencies to hire additional consultants and developers, and leave government entities in the dark when measuring their work’s impact.

Website infrastructure and publishing platforms should drive business growth—not create a costly burden for government organizations. ​​Enter WordPress VIP, the technical foundation and publishing system for many of the world’s largest government agencies, media companies, and enterprise brands, including The White House, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA, Al Jazeera, News Corp, and Salesforce.

We help lower their risk and spend across the board, driving savings by boosting developer efficiency, streamlining publishing workflows, helping communication teams make smarter, data-driven content decisions, and so much more. You’ll read how in detail below. 

Looking for the WordPress VIP ROI?

A Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact (TEI) study commissioned by Automattic says organizations that use WordPress VIP can increase efficiency and accelerate their mission.  

Here’s why:

  • Ease of use and maintenance
  • Faster, less expensive development
  • Utilize the WordPress ecosystem to accelerate feature development
  • Better reliability and security
  • Improved mission reporting from analytics

Sca​​lable, secure infrastructure for high-demand websites

We purpose-built our WordPress VIP platform to easily handle even the most demanding and security-conscious websites, especially large federal agencies. Whether it’s a big event or just a regular day, our sites deliver unmatched reliability and speed to users around the globe. Credit our FedRAMP-compliant infrastructure, built and maintained by top WordPress experts, to meet the needs of large government entities.

Our platform provides access to a highly scalable, secure, and high-performance WordPress setup. With our containerized environment, your site’s performance won’t be affected by others.

Our global infrastructure, with 28 points of presence, ensures high performance worldwide. Our dynamic autoscaling feature automatically adds resources as needed, keeping your site running smoothly on the busiest days.

Our integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN) also speeds up content delivery, ensuring quick load times.For those with Enhanced packages and above, we offer geographical redundancy for disaster recovery with a backup database in a different location. This ensures your site stays up and running, keeping your data safe and secure even in a disaster.

“Everything from understanding how your edge servers and your CDN work to how your security teams work and how your pen testing works—all of it gave me a sense of calmness to say, ‘Okay. We have a partner who can just go handle this.”

— Andrew Binns, COO, 2020 Democratic National Convention

The impact on risk and spend

WordPress VIP allows you to focus on your core business while enjoying reduced operational and ownership costs. Here’s why and how. 

  • Scalability and performance: Our platform’s scalability ensures you only pay for the resources you need, eliminating additional hardware investments.
  • Managed services: With fully managed maintenance, updates, and security, you save on in-house IT staff and third-party service costs.
  • Reliability and redundancy: Built-in geographical redundancy and disaster recovery minimize downtime, reducing potential outages and emergency fix costs.
  • Integrated tools: Features like a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and dynamic autoscaling are included, simplifying the tech stack and reducing expenses.
  • Expert support: Access to WordPress experts eliminates the need for costly consultants, lowering operational spend.
  • Learning resources: With access to our free learning materials, we help your team build the skills they need. 
  • Security: Government-grade security helps avoid the high costs of data breaches and associated legal and reputational expenses.

Unmatched security and reliability for WordPress sites

WordPress VIP offers top-notch security for WordPress sites operated by government agencies, with multiple layers of protection, including secure networking, robust access controls, continuous monitoring, and code scanning. 

That’s why we’ve earned the trust of organizations across government, media and publishing, financial services, and pharmaceuticals. We’re also the only WordPress platform with FedRAMP Authority to Operate (ATO), highlighting our commitment to the highest levels of security.

Our security features are designed to protect your organization’s online reputation, shielding you from malicious actors who might try to deface your site or cause downtime. 

We offer a multifaceted security approach that covers every level, including the edge, network, data, and application layers, to meet demanding security standards. With advanced access controls, you can set permissions so only authorized employees or contractors can access necessary resources, reducing potential security risks.

We also integrate with single sign-on (SSO) providers, making it easy to incorporate with your existing SSO setup and enhance security while simplifying user access. Our built-in DDoS mitigation technology identifies and stops distributed denial of service attacks before they can affect your site’s performance, ensuring it stays up and running smoothly.

Additionally, WordPress VIP uses proprietary WPScan technology to automate vulnerability scanning for plugins and themes, both at deployment and continuously. This proactive approach spots potential vulnerabilities and automates plugin upgrades, keeping your site secure and up-to-date. 

“We needed agility, we needed stability, and we needed security. We’ve got all three of those now with WordPress VIP, so now we can focus on the business part of our business instead of the infrastructure.”

—Grant Cerny, Chief Product Officer, iOne Digital 

The impact on risk and spend

WordPress VIP allows you to focus on your core business while enjoying reduced operational and ownership costs. Here’s why and how. 

  • Comprehensive protection: With multiple layers of security, WordPress VIP minimizes the risk of breaches, reducing costs associated with such incidents‌, like legal fees and reputational damage.
  • Automated vulnerability management: Automated scanning and updates for plugins and themes find, address, and prevent vulnerabilities faster, saving time and resources by reducing the need for manual security checks.
  • DDoS mitigation: Built-in technology prevents costly downtime and service disruptions, reducing the cost of potential damages and ensuring agencies don’t lose constituent trust due to attacks.
  • Advanced access controls: Granular access controls limit permissions to necessary personnel, reducing the risk and cost of managing unauthorized access.
  • Integration with existing systems: Compatibility with single sign-on (SSO) systems streamlines user management, increasing operational cost efficiency through easy integration with the technology you already own.

Streamlined application management 

For government agencies, WordPress VIP offers robust application management capabilities, ensuring client websites and applications are secure, flexible, and reliable. By optimizing software controls, our platform simplifies scaling WordPress deployments, reducing the workload for IT teams and allowing them to focus on your mission.

The platform features a management dashboard designed for scale, allowing centralized control over sites, domains, user access, security, and more. Integrated certificate management automates renewals, while a command-line interface (CLI) facilitates large-scale system management and task automation.

WordPress VIP includes managed updates for WordPress, PHP, and other components to keep software secure and current.

For customers with Enhanced and Signature packages, additional Application Performance Management (APM) functionality provides deeper insights into site performance, enabling IT teams to enhance constituent experience. 

Efficient multisite management tools offer visibility and control over WordPress multisites, with hourly backups ensuring data safety. APM includes browser monitoring to assess site speed across various devices and networks, and synthetics monitoring to simulate global traffic and resolve availability issues before they affect users and constituents. Application downtime monitoring alerts teams to issues, supporting timely responses to maintain site uptime.

“It’s like we hired another engineer… an extra set of eyes. We have an extra level of QA on our code now by people who actually know what they’re looking at, which helps a great deal.”

—Steve Tidwell, Director of Technology, VentureBeat

The impact on risk and spend

With WordPress VIP, you’ll streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and reduce the need for additional resources with comprehensive application management. Here’s how and why. 

  • Streamlined management and reduced IT workload: By optimizing software controls and providing efficient management tools, WordPress VIP simplifies WordPress deployments and decreases the workload on IT teams, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives and increasing efficiency.
  • Automated updates and certificate management: Regular updates for WordPress, PHP, and other components, along with automated certificate management and renewal, ensure that software remains secure and up-to-date without manual intervention, reducing the risk of security breaches and associated costs.
  • Centralized management dashboard and Command-line interface (CLI): Whether you use our VIP Dashboard or the VIP-CLI, managing sites, domains, and security configuration from a single place streamlines administrative tasks, reducing the time and effort required for site management.
  • Multisite management: Tools for managing WordPress multisites provide visibility and control, reducing complexity and associated management costs.
  • Application Performance Management (APM): APM tools offer insights into site performance, enabling proactive optimization and reducing downtime, which saves on support costs.

Boosted developer efficiency with agile code management

WordPress VIP makes it easier for developers within government agencies to deliver high-quality code quickly by boosting operational agility and allowing tech teams to focus on creating amazing user experiences. 

With seamless GitHub integration, easy access to logs and data, and a user-friendly command line interface (CLI), developers can efficiently build, debug, test, and deploy their code. For those with Enhanced and Signature packages, there’s even more flexibility and expert support from WordPress specialists to help you get the most out of the platform.

Our platform includes an integrated code repository that simplifies the entire development process from start to finish. Developers can access production and staging environments to test and ensure quality thoroughly. Local sandbox environments let developers test with the latest updates by pulling in production content, ensuring everything works perfectly before going live.

WordPress VIP supports various architecture options, including single-stack, headless, and hybrid setups, all from one solution, allowing developers to choose what works best for their projects. Logs are automatically saved to an AWS S3 bucket every five minutes, making them easy to store, process, or analyze, which helps keep everything transparent and accountable.

Extra non-production environments are available for even more development and testing space for those with Enhanced and Signature packages. These packages also offer debugging support to quickly resolve issues and database backup shipping to AWS S3 for added security. 

Additionally, if your agency allows, GitHub codespaces provide cloud development environments, allowing developers to code from any device without needing to install or configure software, making the process more flexible and efficient.

“​​Our shift to WordPress VIP has helped our editors produce content faster, reduced our development costs, allowed us to re-allocate money to hiring more editors, and opened up new opportunities to improve our experience.”

—Stephen Merrill, Chief Content and Product Officer, Edutopia

The impact on risk and spend

With WordPress VIP, you’ll increase spending efficiency on website infrastructure and decrease the need for additional development resources. Here’s why and how.

  • Efficient development workflow: Integration with GitHub and a centralized code repository speeds up development, reducing time and labor costs and enabling faster project delivery.
  • Reduced infrastructure costs: Providing production and staging environments eliminates the need for separate infrastructure, cutting IT overhead and maintenance expenses.
  • Flexible architecture: Support for single-stack, headless, and hybrid architectures allows companies to choose cost-effective solutions and avoid unnecessary infrastructure expenses.
  • Automated management: Automatic log shipping and database backups reduce manual intervention and storage costs, saving time and minimizing data loss risks.
  • Enhanced support and debugging: Built-in debugging and expert access help quickly resolve issues, reducing downtime and costs from lost productivity.
  • Cloud-based development: GitHub codespaces enable development from any device without extensive software installations, lowering costs for maintaining and updating tools.

Expert support and services

With top WordPress experts at your side, we ensure you’re ready for your digital journey and help you create amazing digital experiences for users and constituents. Our team helps you unblock obstacles around custom code, server infrastructure, plugin choices, and security so you have more time to focus on your mission.

Concierge Onboarding sets you up for success from the start, and our 24/7 support provides global assistance. Enhanced packages even include debugging support to keep everything running smoothly.

For Signature package customers, we offer Launch Day Services—guidance and live support to ensure every launch is seamless and stress-free.

Our support team handles your daily needs while our Professional Services unlock new avenues of growth on your site.

Migration services make moving your WordPress sites to WordPress VIP easy and efficient. Plus, our Performance Service offers testing and improvement plans to keep your site running at its best.

Architectural consulting services provide tailored technology recommendations, reports, and action plans. We also offer training workshops to boost your team’s WordPress skills. 

High-traffic event planning prepares your applications for traffic surges, and content consulting analyzes performance to offer strategic recommendations, ensuring your content strategy is effective.

“Some of our goals with the migration were to improve workflow efficiencies, empower site producers to make changes with a full preview of their impact, and cut the time it takes to build out a section of the site from days to hours.”

—Weston Ruter, CTO, News Corp Australia

The impact on risk and spend

With WordPress VIP, you can focus on streamlining and enhancing efficiency without the need for additional resources. Here’s why and how. 

  • Expert management: By providing expertise on code, server infrastructure, plugin choices, and security, WordPress VIP gives your teams hours back to their day, so you have more room to focus on your business priorities.
  • Efficient onboarding and support: Concierge Onboarding and 24/7 global support ensure smooth operations and quick issue resolution, minimizing downtime and associated costs.
  • Streamlined migrations: Migration services facilitate efficient site transfers to WordPress VIP, reducing the time and resources needed for transitions and ensuring predictable, on-time delivery.
  • Performance optimization: Performance Service provides testing and improvement plans, enhancing site efficiency, increasing the chances of site conversions, and reducing costs related to performance issues and troubleshooting.
  • Tailored consulting and training: Architectural consulting services and training workshops offer customized technology recommendations and skill enhancement, optimizing resource use and reducing the need for external consultants.

Enhanced publishing workflows with content and AI tools

For government agencies, WordPress VIP combines the world’s most popular website platform with multiple layers of security and governance, offering a powerful system to enhance your communications efforts. Content writers and editors turbocharge content creation using intuitive, what-you-see-is-what-you-get tools, all safeguarded by robust admin controls and governance.

The intuitive visual editor allows you to customize pages in minutes with the Gutenberg Block Editor, the world’s most flexible drag-and-drop editor. You can build from standard blocks or create reusable content blocks to construct new modular content easily. 

The media library lets you upload and access media as part of your content workflow, organizing it with custom taxonomies or integrating it with your own Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution.

As legacy technologies struggle to meet the demands of composability and AI, governments are turning to open source solutions like WordPress VIP to build best-in-breed systems. Our platform provides safe, intelligently designed AI tools that can be trained on your top-performing content to deliver optimal results.

Our publishing workflow enables collaboration with peers to develop great content and schedule publishing to align with your publishing calendar. The Parse.ly Content Helper (PCH) integrates data about your content directly into WordPress Admin, helping you make informed authoring decisions by providing content performance context where you draft and edit.

Note: All AI functions in WordPress VIP can be disabled depending on agency requirements.

With Salesforce Integration, you can activate your content to power email marketing campaigns by directly integrating with Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

“Our shift to WordPress VIP has helped our editors produce content faster, reduced our development costs, allowed us to re-allocate money to hiring more editors, and opened up new opportunities to improve our experience.”

—Stephen Merrill, Chief Content and Product Officer, Edutopia

The impact on risk and spend

With WordPress VIP, you can focus on publishing engaging content for readers using intuitive tools without being blocked by IT dependency. Here’s why and how. 

  • Efficient content creation and management: The Gutenberg Block Editor and intuitive visual tools streamline content creation, while reusable content blocks minimize repetitive work, saving time and labor costs.
  • Reduced IT dependency: By providing user-friendly tools and seamless integrations, WordPress VIP reduces reliance on IT support for content management and technical tasks, reducing IT-related spend.
  • Integrated media and workflow management: The media library and publishing workflow simplify media management and facilitate collaboration, reducing the need for additional tools and optimizing team productivity.
  • Data-driven content optimization: The Parse.ly Content Helper provides performance insights within the WordPress Admin, enabling data-driven decisions that enhance content effectiveness and reduce trial-and-error costs.
  • Seamless integrations and advanced search: Integrations with platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and integrated Enterprise Search streamline publishing efforts and reduce the need for third-party solutions, reducing associated spend.

Real-time analytics and insights with Parse.ly 

Parse.ly is the go-to analytics platform for content teams within government agencies looking to create a data-driven culture. Its user-friendly dashboard helps stakeholders see how their work resonates with their constituents, offering a big-picture view and detailed insights. With Parse.ly, you can stay ahead of the curve, joining conversations as they happen rather than playing catch-up.

The Parse.ly Dashboard is key to understanding content performance and improving your strategy. It provides easy access to important details like titles, tags, authors, and performance metrics such as pageviews and engaged time. With real-time updates every five seconds, you can make quick, informed decisions.

Parse.ly offers reports on more than 30 key metrics, giving you a comprehensive view of your audience’s behavior. You can access 13 months of historical data for deeper analysis and track marketing campaigns to see how they drive engagement and conversions. Plus, with cross-channel reporting and a mobile SDK, you can measure content engagement across all platforms, including mobile apps.

The platform highlights important conversion events like pdf downloads and newsletter signups and lets you segment your audience for more targeted insights. The Parse.ly Content API helps you recommend content on your site and export data to your internal tools, enhancing your content strategy.

With the Parse.ly Data Pipeline, you can stream real-time constituent interaction data to your systems using AWS APIs, ensuring you have historical and live data at your fingertips. Parse.ly equips content creators with the tools they need to succeed and confidently make data-driven decisions.

“The ability to break things down by region—especially when cross-referenced against Parse.ly’s range of metrics—visitors, engaged time, social referrals and interactions—is priceless.”

—Adam Blenford, Managing Editor of Digital in Europe, Bloomberg

The impact on risk and spend

With Parse.ly Analytics, you’ll optimize content strategy and decision-making processes by looking at what content works and what doesn’t. Here’s why and how. 

  • Data-driven decisions: Parse.ly enables organizations to make informed decisions about content strategy by providing real-time insights and detailed performance metrics. This reduces the trial-and-error approach, saving time and resources that would otherwise be spent on ineffective content.
  • Improved content efficiency: With access to audience-centric metrics and historical data, organizations can identify what content resonates most with their constituents. This allows for more efficient content creation and distribution, reducing waste and maximizing the impact of each piece of content.
  • Enhanced audience engagement: Parse.ly’s ability to track audience behavior and preferences helps organizations tailor content to meet specific constituent needs. This targeted approach increases engagement and retention.
  • Streamlined reporting: The platform’s intuitive dashboard and reporting tools simplify analyzing and sharing insights across teams. This reduces the need for extensive manual data analysis and reporting, saving time and labor costs.
  • Integration and scalability: Parse.ly’s integration with other tools and platforms allows organizations to incorporate analytics into their existing workflows seamlessly. This scalability reduces the need for additional software investments and minimizes operational disruptions.

Real-time analytics and insights with Parse.ly 

Parse.ly is the go-to analytics platform for content teams within government agencies looking to create a data-driven culture. Its user-friendly dashboard helps stakeholders see how their work resonates with their constituents, offering a big-picture view and detailed insights. With Parse.ly, you can stay ahead of the curve, joining conversations as they happen rather than playing catch-up.

The Parse.ly Dashboard is key to understanding content performance and improving your strategy. It provides easy access to important details like titles, tags, authors, and performance metrics such as pageviews and engaged time. With real-time updates every five seconds, you can make quick, informed decisions.

Parse.ly offers reports on more than 30 key metrics, giving you a comprehensive view of your audience’s behavior. You can access 13 months of historical data for deeper analysis and track marketing campaigns to see how they drive engagement and conversions. Plus, with cross-channel reporting and a mobile SDK, you can measure content engagement across all platforms, including mobile apps.

The platform highlights important conversion events like pdf downloads and newsletter signups and lets you segment your audience for more targeted insights. The Parse.ly Content API helps you recommend content on your site and export data to your internal tools, enhancing your content strategy.

With the Parse.ly Data Pipeline, you can stream real-time constituent interaction data to your systems using AWS APIs, ensuring you have historical and live data at your fingertips. Parse.ly equips content creators with the tools they need to succeed and confidently make data-driven decisions.

“The ability to break things down by region—especially when cross-referenced against Parse.ly’s range of metrics—visitors, engaged time, social referrals and interactions—is priceless.”

—Adam Blenford, Managing Editor of Digital in Europe, Bloomberg

The impact on risk and spend

With Parse.ly Analytics, you’ll optimize content strategy and decision-making processes by looking at what content works and what doesn’t. Here’s why and how. 

  • Data-driven decisions: Parse.ly enables organizations to make informed decisions about content strategy by providing real-time insights and detailed performance metrics. This reduces the trial-and-error approach, saving time and resources that would otherwise be spent on ineffective content.
  • Improved content efficiency: With access to audience-centric metrics and historical data, organizations can identify what content resonates most with their constituents. This allows for more efficient content creation and distribution, reducing waste and maximizing the impact of each piece of content.
  • Enhanced audience engagement: Parse.ly’s ability to track audience behavior and preferences helps organizations tailor content to meet specific constituent needs. This targeted approach increases engagement and retention.
  • Streamlined reporting: The platform’s intuitive dashboard and reporting tools simplify analyzing and sharing insights across teams. This reduces the need for extensive manual data analysis and reporting, saving time and labor costs.
  • Integration and scalability: Parse.ly’s integration with other tools and platforms allows organizations to incorporate analytics into their existing workflows seamlessly. This scalability reduces the need for additional software investments and minimizes operational disruptions.

Reducing risk and spend with WordPress VIP

Empower your teams to drive your digital business with a website infrastructure, platform, and analytics that help them move faster. Ask for a WordPress VIP demo

And if you want to save this Ebook locally and share it with your colleagues: