University of Florida Tops Open Source CMS March Madness

The University of Florida has taken the title in this year’s Open Source CMS March Madness, an unofficial spotlight on how NCAA Men’s March Madness schools are using open-source web platforms. The Gators, while not using Drupal, support open source through their use of WordPress. The university’s Web Services team runs WordPress Multisite across major properties, including www.ufl.edu and UF Health.

Drupal Enterprise & AI Advocate Laura Caraker shared insights from the event, gathering data on the content management systems used by the 68 participating schools. She noted that 42 of them — 62 percent — incorporate open-source tools into their web strategy.

Among those 42 schools:

• 7 (17 percent) use both Drupal and WordPress  
• 25 (60 percent) use Drupal  
• 18 (49 percent) use Drupal exclusively  
• That accounts for 37 percent of all 68 schools using Drupal, and 26 percent using Drupal only  

There is more Drupal than WordPress in this group. She also observed a regional divide: schools in the South, East, and West are more likely to use Drupal, while open source usage overall is limited in the Midwest. She invited feedback on this trend.

Of the 18 schools using Drupal exclusively:

• 3 (17 percent) use Acquia  
• 2 (11 percent) use Pantheon  
• 13 (72 percent) are self-hosted  

Additional statistics shared from the project:

•  9 of the 42 open source-using schools (21 percent), or 13 percent of all 68 schools, use Pantheon  
• 1 school, Missouri, uses both WordPress and Drupal with Platform.sh  
• 1 school, UCLA, uses both WordPress and Drupal, and both Acquia and Pantheon  

Laura noted that these findings are based on her own data collection and may not be 100 percent accurate. She closed her post by raising questions about the year ahead: Will Drupal see increased adoption? Will more schools move away from self-hosting? Will providers like amazee.io join the list?

Read the full LinkedIn post here.