Public image


I use Flickr quite a lot – but almost exclusively for family stuff. The main attraction was the ability to send automated email notifications to family members who spend more reasonable amounts of time than myself in front of computer monitors. And since Flickr connectivity is built into any self-respecting mobile device nowadays (including some cameras), there’s no real reason to try and put something together myself in WordPress – although I do occasionally muse on how I might do it. (I’ve already come pretty close to it on a recent project for the Dept of Health.)
Anyway – one of the very few non-personal photos on my account is this one: a hastily-snapped shot of a news-stand outside Russell Square tube station, captured on nothing more advanced than a Nokia E65 phone. The Evening Standard’s report of a declaration of war seemed laughably over-the-top; and I was delighted to have captured the news-seller on his mobile phone, thus completing the trinity of media past, present and (not too distant) future.
Bill Gates War On Google
Anyway (again) – I discovered at the weekend that it had been lifted by a journalist at the Economist to illustrate an insightful piece on old media’s woes. No qualms there: I’d put a CC Attribution license on it, so I was more than happy for them to use it. And on some level, the story behind the picture makes it even more appropriate.

Lane Fox review hints at further rationalisation

Martha Lane Fox’s review of Directgov appears to have taken a slightly wider view than simply how well everyone’s favourite orange website works. Speaking at a conference in Birmingham, Cabinet Office director of digital delivery Graham Walker said:

We’ve been doing a review of Directgov and most of government on the web. We can see that there is a need to massively simplify it, with a lot more rationalisation and to improve the user experience.

Most of government on the web? More rationalisation? I’ve been hearing rumours that Ms LF’s recommendations may include a stronger role for Cabinet Office in departmental / policy publishing, much as it already has (through Directgov) in citizen-facing material. Are we looking at a single super-site for departments?
On a superficial level, that’s a return to the Dark Ages of 1994, when departments used to send floppy disks in the post to Norwich, where someone from CCTA would mark them up into HTML, and FTP them over to the Government Information Service (aka open.gov.uk). It’s also a return to the expensive and ultimately unsuccessful notion of The Club / DotP, which would have seen all departments running on the same (bespoke) CMS as Directgov and DH.
But a lot has changed in the past year or two – and it’s possible to envisage more modern publishing infrastructures, based on a managed multisite approach. You can look at what we’ve done on WordPress for Defra as an example: a centrally controlled environment, with the root level defining aspects like primary navigation and plugin selection, but with a high degree of flexibility and freedom given to the various child sites.
So yes, I can see why such a move would seem desirable – Directgov has been a success, at a very high price of course, and consistency of presentation and UX wouldn’t be a bad thing. (Indeed, I’ve written here previously, in praise of greater presentational consistency.) And yes, I believe it’s now technically realistic, in a way it never was before.
The precedents give plenty of reason to be pessimistic, though.

Thoughts on Drupal 7


Things are happening on the Drupal front. There’s a new drupal.org website up today; and the first beta of the long-awaited v7 emerged a fortnight ago. I hear talk of Drupal-based projects and proposals in the vicinity of Whitehall, including various staff moves. There may be big announcements on the immediate horizon.
It’s been a while since I ventured into Drupal – so I downloaded the v7 beta, to give it a spin. And whilst it looks a bit prettier than previous versions, it still feels like the same old Drupal underneath. A rather tortuous installation process, requiring much chown’ing and phpmyadmin’ing, and manually shifting files from folder to folder. And at the end of it, an empty shell, with little guidance as to what you might do next.

Let’s just imagine for a moment that you want to start creating a page. You click on the ‘Add content’ button, which now lives in an admin bar across the top of the page. This generates an overlaid window offering various content types: choose one, and you end up on an authoring screen – with no WYSIWYG text editor. That’s right – out of the box, you’re expected to code your own pages in HTML.
Of course, you can have WYSIWYG: but you need to add it as a plugin – er, sorry, module. You can choose from a dozen different WYSIWYG editor functions, all of which have various benefits and drawbacks. And then, you’re probably going to have to put them in the right folder manually.
This rather encapsulates the Drupal mentality. Perhaps you’re someone who gets very worked up about the use of one particular WYSIWYG component over another: well, Drupal gives you the choice. And for a certain type of person, that’s just what you want.
The WordPress mentality, on the other hand, favours sheer simplicity. Install WordPress, and a WYSIWYG component is already installed. (TinyMCE, since you asked.) It’s more than satisfactory. There are certainly a few things it could do better. But it looks and feels like Microsoft Word – and for the vast majority of my clients, that’s precisely what they want.
Geeks love Drupal; people love WordPress. The Drupal guys know this. In kicking off the Drupal 7 user experience process, Drupal founder and project leader Dries Buytaert wrote:

Drupal’s steep learning curve filters out far too many smart, motivated people who could benefit from Drupal. We see it all the time in the Drupal.org forums, in my “State of Drupal” surveys, on Twitter, when talking to customers, and on the web. Even though we’ve made significant progress with making Drupal easier to use, a lot of work is left to be done. With other content management systems such as Joomla! and WordPress making strides to catch up to Drupal in terms of development flexibility, if we want Drupal to remain competitive, we have a challenge we have to face: we need to create a user experience that makes it easier for people new to Drupal to discover all of its richness and power.

Oh – and which platform did the Drupal 7 user experience team use to blog their work? You’ll never guess. Leisa Reichelt writes:

We know Drupal is amazing and we love it … but unfortunately, for the time being, it is too broken for us to be able to do the work we need to do on this project at the pace that we need to do it. We don’t have time to ‘learn’ Drupal, nor the skills to bend it to our will (and make it look acceptably pretty), we can’t even get a blog post on the homepage. We appreciate all the offers of porting this blog over to Drupal, but to be honest, I really like using WordPress and nothing I’ve seen of Drupal makes me want to switch over at the moment.
We know that Drupal is not WordPress, and we have no intention of making it so, but using WordPress helps us get our work done faster and easier for the time being, and it helps us maintain perspective and distance – and for now those things are really important to us. But if, this time next year, this blog isn’t running on Drupal and if it doesn’t look amazing – then please come and shout #fail as loudly as you can. Because then you’ll be completely right, we will have failed.

That was written in March 2009. The blog is still on WordPress, by the way.
Leisa later hints at some of the underlying tensions in making Drupal more human-friendly:

Drupal developers are … the most important audience. What this audience wants is not Drupal as a product that (ordinary users) can use out of the box, they want a developer toolkit that gives them more and more flexibility and capability to build cool stuff, and to push Drupal way beyond the realms of a simple Content Management System. And so we have this tension. Drupal as a ‘Consumer Product’ and Drupal as a ‘Developer Framework’. Currently, the official direction is that the project is going to attempt to be both. I think this is a serious problem.
I know that for many people the idea of making a Drupal that (ordinary users) can love, making something that can actively compete from a UX perspective with the likes of WordPress, is a grand aspiration. So it is, but unfortunately I also think it is the wrong aspiration for Drupal core. The sooner we focus on the core target audience of Drupal core – the developers – and commit to making a user experience that supports them in their use of Drupal, the sooner we’ll really have actually achieved a really Great User Experience for Drupal.

Now let me be absolutely clear. Drupal is an excellent platform. Great things can be done with it. And on some levels, comparisons between Drupal and WordPress are pointless. They are currently aimed at different types of people, and different use cases – so it’s ridiculous to say that one is materially better than the other. Besides, they’re rapidly converging: Drupal with its UX improvements, WordPress with its custom post types etc. They can both do clever things like multisite installs. They both have thousands of user-created plugins/modules. They can both be whatever you want.
But if I were contemplating a large-scale decentralised publishing platform for mainly text-based information, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind: it has to be WordPress. Our recent work with Defra is a perfect case in point: multiple independent child sites, with tweaked themes as appropriate to the subject matter, giving relatively non-tech-savvy authors considerable creative freedom and flexibility, within bounds permitted by a central administrator.
If you’re listening to the users of that platform, you’d build it in WordPress. If you’re listening to the geeks, you’d build it in Drupal. It’s your choice.

Culture blogging with Movable Type

I’ve only just come across the Department for Culture, Media and Sport‘s blogging server, running on Movable Type. Departmental CIO Mark O’Neill certainly kept that one quiet, when he came along to Word Up Whitehall last week. 😉
Started back in June, it consists primarily of posts by junior ministers John Penrose and Hugh Robertson – but features occasional posts by secretary of state Jeremy Hunt (who continues to blog on his constituency site), and a somewhat random collection of guest bloggers including celebrities, sports stars and officials: but these only seem to be one-off contributions.
It looks nice, and they’re making an effort with photos. But there’s no commenting, no subject tagging, no author archiving, just a single global RSS feed, and only the highest-level categorisation of posts. As a result, there’s no real sense of structure, and nothing making me want to engage with either the authors or the content.

An alliterative summary of Word Up Whitehall

There’s no point writing a session-by-session summary of last Wednesday’s Word Up Whitehall event, when Julia Chandler has done such a fine job of it already. So instead, here are my memories of the common themes which came out of the various sessions and fringe discussions. And picking up from one of the day’s presentations, they all begin with the letter ‘S’.
Speed. Almost every presentation referred to the speed with which a WordPress-based site could be cobbled together. Some had special theming code, to assist with this; others went with what was already out there. A few hours, and you would almost certainly have something up and running. What a different expectation, compared to the more traditional route of commissioning (conventional) external suppliers – or worse, contracted IT providers.
Specialism. But there was a gap – ‘gulf’ is perhaps too strong a word – between those instant templated sites, and the much more involved (infra)structures discussed by Simon Wheatley (re Defra) and Mike Little (re No10). It reinforced a sense I’ve had for some time, that no matter how advanced the internal skills base becomes, there will always be a role for the external experts.
Subversion. There’s definitely a skill – or is it an instinct? – in taking WordPress functionality meant for one thing, and using it for another. In his writeup, Steph mentioned the plans we’ve made with Defra, to use (unpublished) WP comments for user feedback. Mike had used WP’s foreign-language function to turn ‘I’m A Scientist’ into ‘I’m A Councillor’. Maybe it’s an early-adopter thing: we aren’t afraid of hacks and workarounds. But you’d need a certain degree of experience and expertise to understand how the functions work in the first place, before contemplating how you might subvert them.
Silos. Mark O’Neill’s presentation of Culture’s new transparency site encapsulated many of WP’s benefits: quick, cheap, multi-user, etc etc. Many departments would benefit from having such a service to call upon. And I’d argue, even where departments’ web platforms were up to the job, it’s beneficial for the user if departments were all using the same publication channel. This would have been a perfect opportunity for a Whitehall-wide WordPress project: a rare blank canvas. It didn’t happen, not this time anyway, and I think that’s a shame.
Sustainability. This is a tricky one to phrase appropriately. But the bottom line is this: government web development is in a much better place now than, say, two years ago – and that’s down to a small number of individuals and micro-agencies. We have developed solutions and strategies which allow government to save a fortune, doing things which would never previously have been possible or practical. We need to find balanced trading models which allow those small suppliers to keep earning decent livings: support contracts, packaged services, whatever.
Sequel. I think I can declare the event a success. Will we do it again? Yes, I hope so – as long as the ideas keep coming, and the sites keep developing. But it won’t be for quite a while. I dare say we’ll have a few WordPress-based sessions at January’s UKGovCamp, so that should keep things ticking over for a few months: maybe we’re looking at late spring, early summer for Word Up Whitehall II.

Word Up Whitehall: in tweets

simond Right, I think everything is sorted for tomorrow’s #WordUpWhitehall event. Now, I must go and count my unhatched chickens. Tue 19:06:58
nickmhalliday RT @simond: Right, I think everything is sorted for tomorrow’s #WordUpWhitehall event. Now, I must go and count my unhatched chickens.> good Tue 19:11:26
johnthegeo On my way to the Caledonian Sleeper on the way to #WordUpWhitehall. 5 hours ahead of @martinjohnyoung but on same train as @contactsimon. Tue 21:37:50
lesteph Suitcase half-unpacked, doing late night slides for my session with @treepixie on http://www.bis.gov.uk/growth for #WordUpWhitehall Tue 22:15:05
simond @neillyneil So far it’s been #wordupwhitehall in full. Long but accurate. Wed 07:14:19
simond The #WordUpWhitehall donuts have arrived. Be punctual or accept leftovers. Wed 07:17:43
mikelittlezed1 On my way to #WordUpWhitehall, just rehearsed my presentation and it came in at 14 mins. Yeah right! Like that’s gonna happen. Wed 07:26:48
westi I hope everyone has a great time at #WordUpWhitehall today – sad that I’ve gone down with an illness at completely the wrong time Wed 07:32:41
neillyneil @simond @rphosking I’m in Kingsgate House, 3rd floor. Shout me when you get here. At your service. #wordupwhitehall Wed 07:51:04
simoneverest Looking forward to attending #WordUpWhitehall – presenting at same, less so! Wed 07:51:57
davemee @simond #wordupwhitehall ? Waah! No-one tells me about these things. Hope it goes well. Wed 07:52:47
neillyneil @simoneverest glad you are, though. Crowd on your side! #wordupwhitehall Wed 07:54:14
neillyneil Warning anyone coming to #wordupwhitehall – I’ve got new Moo mini business cards and am not afraid to use them. Wed 07:55:58
simond Note to #WordUpWhitehall attendees: please dress to match your Twitter icon, to aid recognition. Wed 07:56:01
ingridk RT @simond: Note to #WordUpWhitehall attendees: please dress to match your Twitter icon, to aid recognition. Wed 07:57:46
simoneverest Just added nice comments about BIS/DIUS/BERR to my #wordupwhitehall pres (@neillyneil @lesteph 😉 ) Wed 08:09:15
contactsimon @simond Damn…I left my curly-hair wig at home. It’s ok, I’ll print out a pic of Mick Hucknall and stick it to my face #WordUpWhitehall Wed 08:21:35
neillyneil @simond @rphosking Sorted – Reception will call my Bberry when folk arrive for #wordupwhitehall (or they can tweet me) and I’ll collect ’em Wed 08:40:35
scrumph Am suffering greatly from “more haste; less speed” this morning. On my way to #wordup but i’m not going to be early… :/ see you soonish Wed 09:16:10
karentriggs LSC digital manager @alicecilsmith has left the building and is en route to #wordupwhitehall Wed 09:34:36
jonworth @Simond opening #wordup Whitehall, joking about whether Matt Mullenweg or Mike Little started #Wordpress Wed 09:40:03
lesteph That @simond, who’s done more than most for WordPress in govt, kicking off #wordupwhitehall with the history of WP Wed 09:41:31
lesteph 8.5% of web runs WordPress, says @simond #wordupwhitehall #madeupstats http://yfrog.com/47pw1j Wed 09:45:57
nickmhalliday RT @lesteph: 8.5% of web runs WordPress, says @simond #wordupwhitehall #madeupstats http://yfrog.com/47pw1j > allegedly Wed 09:49:33
davecoveney Settling in at #wordup Whitehall. Simon Dickson is introducing the day’s proceedings. Wed 09:49:49
psychemedia Looks like a good tag for today could be #WordUpWhitehall http://bit.ly/cDtPno Wed 09:54:51
cyberdoyle RT @psychemedia: Looks like a good tag for today could be #WordUpWhitehall http://bit.ly/cDtPno Wed 09:57:25
PBAge Looks like a good tag for today could be #WordUpWhitehall http://bit.ly/cDtPno /via @psychemedia Wed 09:57:44
nickmhalliday @lesteph talking about magic of #wordpress #wordup Wed 10:07:43
neillyneil #wordupwhitehall @lesteph unveiling the super-flexible Commentariat2 theme – limitless layout options for non coders. See readandcomment.com Wed 10:10:41
jkerrstevens RT @lesteph: 8.5% of web runs WordPress, says @simond #wordupwhitehall #madeupstats http://yfrog.com/47pw1j Wed 10:10:55
b3rn RT @neillyneil: #wordupwhitehall @lesteph unveiling the super-flexible Commentariat2 theme – limitless layout options for non coders. See readandcomment.com Wed 10:11:10
simoneverest @lesteph’s Commentariat 2 #WordPress theme is a thing of beauty #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:11:27
nickmhalliday #wordupwhitehall now using correct handle, either way good stuff Wed 10:14:37
neillyneil @treepixie says she is the bridge between digital and policy wonks -this is so true, every team should have one #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:16:27
neillyneil Readandcomment.com sites can be deployed within half an hour -and that’s often what govt needs #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:19:23
cyberdoyle RT @neillyneil: Readandcomment.com sites can be deployed within half an hour -and that’s often what govt needs #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:20:29
nickmhalliday RT @simoneverest: @lesteph’s Commentariat 2 #WordPress theme is a thing of beauty #wordupwhitehall > yup Wed 10:20:57
paul_clarke @neillyneil does that mean a greater potential to act without thinking things through? 😉 #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:21:15
cyberdoyle RT @neillyneil: #wordupwhitehall @lesteph unveiling the super-flexible Commentariat2 theme – limitless layout options for non coders. See readandcomment.com Wed 10:23:56
lesteph RT @neillyneil: @treepixie is the bridge between digital and policy wonks – this is so true, every team should have one #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:26:02
neillyneil @simoncollister talking about @wearesocial work for NHS #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:34:58
lesteph Interesting to hear @wearesocial’s Reach, Engagement, Visibility scoring for online influencers from @simoncollister #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:37:08
simoneverest Work-relevant conferences shouldn’t be this cool #wordupwhitehall – hearing about insight tools from @wearesocial @simoncolister Wed 10:39:20
nickmhalliday RT @simoneverest: Work-relevant conferences shouldn’t be this cool #wordupwhitehall – insight tools from @wearesocial @simoncolister > fab Wed 10:40:02
neillyneil Marmarati, Tesco fashion and now this. I’m increasingly wowed by @wearesocial’s approach #wordupwhitehall @simoncollister Wed 10:42:46
lesteph Now, @marxculture on using WordPress to publish #opendata http://www.transparency.culture.gov.uk #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:49:51
contactsimon This is what I’ve wanted for ages, the digital engagement equivalent of a media database…@simoncollister can we talk? #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:50:24
nickmhalliday RT @neillyneil: Marmarati, Tesco fashion and now this. I’m increasingly wowed by @wearesocial’s approach #wordupwhitehall @simoncollister > Wed 10:51:26
smithsam @lesteph where is #wordupwhitehall ? May be able to stop by for a bit later and say hi Wed 10:53:11
neillyneil @marxculture is using WordPress as quick fix to overcome shortcomings of 60 partners’ legacy CMSs & suppliers for #opendata #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:55:12
neillyneil Always fun to watch a non Mac user click the red cross in the corner of a window and expect it to close the app #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:56:52
simoncollister @ContactSimon hey Simon. That was our thought initially too! Love to chat over lunch. #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:57:30
simonwheatley Department of Culture Media & Sport have just launched their transparency data on WordPress, as demoed by CIO @marxculture #wordupwhitehall Wed 10:59:02
Treepixie love DoH/ Simon Collister’s evaluation methods, can I steal? #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:05:42
lesteph Every open source tool considered shd be at least as secure as the equiv Microsoft offering’ – @marxculture on gov OSS #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:13:00
davidpidsley RT @lesteph: ‘Every open source tool considered shd be at least as secure as the equiv Microsoft offering’ – @marxculture on gov OSS #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:13:54
simoneverest RT @lesteph: ‘Every open source tool considered shd be at least as secure as the equiv Microsoft offering’ – @marxculture on gov OSS #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:20:03
simoneverest RT @Treepixie: love DoH/ Simon Collister’s evaluation methods, can I steal? #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:20:28
Treepixie more than 10% of this audience is called Simon, it’s nickname time! #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:20:29
neillyneil Top prize goes to @davecoveney for whizziest slide transitions #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:22:49
simonwheatley Passionate presentation from @davecoveney on the evolution of a site from quiet traffic blog to CEO blog. #wordup http://yfrog.com/n0arkhj Wed 11:29:50
lesteph Nice story from @davecoveney about how a no-cost WP.com internal blog evolved to become a primary communication #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:31:05
nickmhalliday RT @lesteph: Nice story from @davecoveney how a no-cost WP.com internal blog evolved to become a primary communication #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:32:20
lesteph Link to that @davecoveney example of a blogging council chief exec for urban regeneration: http://janbritton.org/ #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:33:52
wwdmartin @johnthegeo has kindly given me 3g wifi – some great stuff going on at #wordupwhitehall and I’m still awake! 🙂 Wed 11:35:10
neillyneil Er… Is that really a hit counter on http://janbritton.org/ ? #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:35:34
Treepixie @davecoveney talking about using WordPress to sidestep bureaucracy, definitely our experience too #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:37:04
neillyneil RT @Treepixie: @davecoveney talking about using WordPress to sidestep bureaucracy, definitely our experience too #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:37:57
wwdmartin @davecoveney showing great example of strategic corporate blogging. Need to twist some arms… #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:38:48
wwdmartin personal highlight is DCMS transparency site, all built in WP and easy to replicate – hope to steal some ideas #wordupwhitehall Wed 11:41:16
qwghlm At #wordupwhitehall (@ Kingsgate House) http://4sq.com/9W4vcB Wed 12:04:09
davidthep Wishing everyone all the best from afar for #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:06:41
Luke_Oatham RT @neillyneil Er… Is that really a hit counter on http://janbritton.org/ ? #wordupwhitehall < Bless! Wed 12:12:54
wordcampuk A big hello from #wordcampuk to everyone at #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:28:41
lesteph Wowed by @simoneverest on Defra’s use of WordPress for serious corporate use: http://bit.ly/9sIdDh and http://bit.ly/cwR6pN #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:31:57
Treepixie RT @wordcampuk: A big hello from #wordcampuk to everyone at #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:33:27
neillyneil Nice coinage by @simoneverest – “stratical” or “tactegic” #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:33:45
nickmhalliday Simon Everest new word #stratical cross tactical and strategy @simoneverest #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:34:27
Treepixie @simoneverest hilarious tongue in cheek use of David Brent-esque words ‘stractical or tactegic’ #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:36:17
draml RT @neillyneil: Nice coinage by @simoneverest – “stratical” or “tactegic” #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:36:50
nickmhalliday Stunning presentation by @simoneverest very polished, funny and powerful #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:41:46
lesteph Comments don’t have to be published’ – @simoneverest on using WP comments as a private feedback channel. Brilliant. #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:43:45
wwdmartin Comments as private feedback = genius. @simoneverest on fast moving WP implementation at #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:48:29
tonys RT @wordcampuk: A big hello from #wordcampuk to everyone at #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:52:22
lesteph The sound of a whole room leaning forward as @simonwheatley talks about scaling WordPress sites for high loads #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:53:50
nickmhalliday #icannotbelieveitsfree big thanks to all organisers, presenters of #wordupwhitehall actually priceless info, background, knowledge – cheers! Wed 12:54:14
neillyneil I want to know what mac software @qwghlm is using to take notes. Full screen, simple, very cool. #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:55:07
neillyneil RT @lesteph: The sound of a whole room leaning forward as @simonwheatley talks about scaling WordPress sites for high loads #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:55:52
mrchrisadams Great to see WordPress being adopted and used so well on UK.gov sites. http://bit.ly/9sIdDh & http://bit.ly/cwR6pN #wordupwhitehall Wed 12:57:20
nickmhalliday RT @lesteph: ‘Comments don’t have to be published’ – @simoneverest using WP comments as private feedback channel. Brilliant #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:05:39
wwdmartin @simonwheatley just delivered best explanation of WP backend and server side workings I’ve ever heard at #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:09:52
Treepixie RT @lesteph: The sound of a whole room leaning forward as @simonwheatley talks about scaling WordPress sites for high loads #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:10:38
1jh The Twitter feed from #wordupwhitehall is very interesting. Hope it’s going well. Great job @simond! Wed 13:11:04
simonwheatley Totally overran my time to talk about scaling WordPress websites for high levels of traffic. Good fun, thanks for listening #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:27:15
nickmhalliday Wrong room syndrome #tootechnicalforme #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:32:50
simoneverest RT @wwdmartin: @simonwheatley just delivered best explanation of WP backend and server side workings I’ve ever heard at #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:33:31
CarolynWillitts RT @wwdmartin: @simonwheatley just delivered best explanation of WP backend and server side workings I’ve ever heard at #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:33:55
CarolynWillitts RT @lesteph: The sound of a whole room leaning forward as @simonwheatley talks about scaling WordPress sites for high loads #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:34:05
simonwheatley RT @wordcampuk: A big hello from #wordcampuk to everyone at #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:35:58
simonwheatley RT @lesteph: ‘Every open source tool considered shd be at least as secure as the equiv Microsoft offering’ – @marxculture on gov OSS #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:38:38
neillyneil Starting to yearn for some balance. What isn’t WordPress perfect for? What are the downsides? #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:41:58
simoneverest @simonwheatley suspect any overrunning was down to me? #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:45:38
lesteph @neillyneil Let’s brainstorm some. Workflow, masses of content, many multiple languages, sites with tonnes of comments? #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:49:08
wwdmartin About to present at #wordupwhitehall – be kind Wed 13:50:23
lesteph A nice thing about #wordupwhitehall is that most of the presenters seem to spend more of their days coding than presenting Wed 13:56:12
paul_clarke RT @lesteph: A nice thing about #wordupwhitehall is that most of the presenters seem to spend more of their days coding than presenting Wed 13:57:45
rphosking #wordupwhitehall yum! http://yfrog.com/my38vbj Wed 13:58:57
contactsimon @wwdmartin reprazents for @DFID_UK http://twitpic.com/2x9qf3 #wordupwhitehall Wed 13:59:37
simonwheatley A rather belated Twitter list for #wordupwhitehall @simonwheatley/wordup-whitehall Wed 14:03:13
lesteph Listening to @johnthegeo on WP at DFID for an internal discussion platform on IT, staff ideas and senior blogged #wordupwhitehall Wed 14:04:23
neillyneil RT @simonwheatley: A rather belated Twitter list for #wordupwhitehall @simonwheatley/wordup-whitehall Wed 14:05:52
simoneverest Having numerous eureka/hallelujah moments at DFID intranet WordPress pres #wordupwhitehall Wed 14:09:18
neillyneil Very encouraged by @johnthegeo sorting out authentication to use WordPress internally #wordupwhitehall Wed 14:27:35
nickmhalliday RT @simoneverest: Having numerous eureka/hallelujah moments at DFID intranet WordPress pres #wordupwhitehall > yes revelatory Wed 14:35:13
contactsimon RT @simoneverest: Having numerous eureka moments at DFID intranet WordPress pres #wordupwhitehall < Well done @johnthegeo @wwdmartin Wed 14:41:32
neillyneil Too much balance! I’ve caused a rumpus at #wordupwhitehall Wed 15:06:42
lesteph Conflicting views around room on whether holes in security are a #wordpress or scripting language issue #wordupwhitehall Wed 15:11:11
johngoode RT @neillyneil: Always fun to watch a non Mac user click the red cross in the corner of a window and expect it to close the app #wordupwhitehall Wed 15:15:59
neillyneil @simond should be very proud of how #wordupwhitehall has gone – should I say “first #wordupwhitehall”? Think it’s got legs. Wed 15:26:53
johnthegeo Lots of interesting ideas at #wordupwhitehall to scale and manage enterprise scale #wordpress instances. Wed 15:26:53
davecoveney Interesting bit from @mikelittlezed1 on a staging architecture. Not how we do it, but one we’ll be checking out. #wordupwhitehall Wed 15:27:03
simoneverest Interesting from @mikelittlezed1 about staging/test configuration potential with WordPress #wordupwhitehall Wed 15:29:13
lesteph RT @neillyneil: @simond should be very proud of how #wordupwhitehall has gone – should I say “first #wordupwhitehall”? Think it’s got legs. Wed 15:38:06
hmshale Really enjoyed #WordUpWhitehall. Listening to people talking about the brilliant things they’ve done is good. Wed 15:58:25
simoneverest RT @neillyneil: @simond should be very proud of how #wordupwhitehall has gone – should I say “first #wordupwhitehall”? Think it’s got legs. Wed 16:00:35
draml RT @neillyneil: @simond should be very proud of how #wordupwhitehall has gone – should I say “first #wordupwhitehall”? Think it’s got legs. Wed 16:16:29
draml Fascinating, enjoyable & v useful day at #wordupwhitehall, congrats & thanks to @simond and all involved. Nice to put faces to online names! Wed 16:18:32
simoneverest At pub with remains of #wordupwhitehall – appears 100% male: a WordPress issue or a pub one? (Adam & Eve on Petty France) Wed 16:29:25
cyberdoyle @simoneverest boys will be boys. #wordupwhitehall Wed 16:39:10
nickmhalliday RT @neillyneil: @simond should be very proud of how #wordupwhitehall has gone – should I say “first #wordupwhitehall”? Think it’s got legs. Wed 17:05:51
ShaneMcC Nicely done by @simond on #wordupwhitehall – thx to @neillyneil and BIS for hosting – next time we need more people not called Simon Wed 18:08:58
scrumph RT @ShaneMcC: Nicely done by @simond on #wordupwhitehall – thx to @neillyneil and BIS for hosting – next time we need more people not called Simon Wed 18:32:43
scrumph Really enjoyed #wordupwhitehall useful hearing experiences, issues and optimism of others. Didn’t tweet much as others beat me to comments. Wed 18:36:31
draml The iPhone battery lasted right thru #wordupwhitehall till I got on the train at Waterloo. Sadly music/podcastless journey home tho. Wed 18:39:03
scrumph Thanks @simond for organising the first #wordupwhitehall. Where would be a good virtual space to carry on the conversation? Wed 18:39:32
TommyBaines Enjoyed #wordupwhitehall 2day, great presentations & knowledge sharing. Big thanks to @simond for organising & @bisgovuk for hosting. Wed 19:21:25
johnthegeo RT @ShaneMcC: Nicely done by @simond on #wordupwhitehall – thx to @neillyneil and BIS for hosting – next time we need more people not called Simon Wed 20:06:40
johnthegeo Really pleased with the response to our presentation at #wordupwhitehall. Thanks @wwdmartin. Great to meet others with similar challenges. Wed 20:09:52
simond Table for one at Nando’s on the way home from #wordupwhitehall. If that went half as well as it seemed to go, I’m a happy host. Wed 20:30:18
simond Stephen Fry, Kylie Minogue, me. That @simonwheatley knows how to start a presentation. #wordupwhitehall Wed 20:31:58
johnthegeo @simond You should be a happy host indeed. #wordupwhitehall Wed 20:34:04
juliac2 Published small set of photos from #wordupwhitehall event – last 4 in this set http://bit.ly/Zwp5r lots of great wordpress ideas on show Wed 22:28:01
harrym An excellent day: #wordupwhitehall (props to @simond) followed by dinner with @williamheath and friends, with fabulous food by @mikelib Wed 22:41:11
juliac2 RT @draml: Fascinating, enjoyable & v useful day at #wordupwhitehall, congrats & thanks to @simond and all involved. Nice to put faces to online names! Wed 22:43:34
simoneverest RT @TommyBaines: Enjoyed #wordupwhitehall 2day, great presentations & knowledge sharing. Big thanks to @simond for organising & @bisgovuk for hosting. Wed 23:04:50
wwdmartin RT @contactsimon: @wwdmartin reprazents for @DFID_UK http://twitpic.com/2x9qf3 #wordupwhitehall Wed 23:34:51

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Word Up Whitehall today

Big day today: it’s Word Up Whitehall, the mini-WordCamp for UK central government people, which I’ve been putting together over the last month or two. I thought it might generate some interest, but I never imagined it would ‘sell out’ in just over 24 hours… and I’m nervously hearing people already talking about ‘the next one’. Gulp.
Why hold such an event? Initially, my reasoning was that there was so much stuff in the 3.0 release of WordPress which wouldn’t be immediately obvious to those who weren’t already fairly deep into the code. Features like custom post types and taxonomies have amazing potential, but many people – even those who would consider themselves ‘power users’, comfortable with themes and plugins – simply wouldn’t see it. An event like this was a chance to demo this stuff, and spark some ideas.
It was also an opportunity to build some WordPress-based connections around government, and between civil servants and government-focussed suppliers. Community is at the heart of the WordPress ethos, and it felt natural to try and foster some of that same community spirit around Whitehall… even to the extent of inviting (notional) business rivals along.
Plus, if I’m honest, I fancied having a go at curating an event like this. I’ve never done it before, and I’ve actually really enjoyed the responsibility of drawing up my own dream running order. (No pressure, guys.)
Why now? Two reasons really. One is the government spending review: it’s no coincidence that we’re doing this a week before George Osborne wields his axe. We need departments to understand that they don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands, or millions, on websites – when the WordPress-based approach will deliver equally good sites, and arguabl better, for a fraction of the price, and in a fraction of the time. Departments need to find savings, and we’re raising our hand to help.
The other is the growing interest of established agencies and The Big Consultancies in WordPress. I’ve had too many bad experiences lately, with people claiming to have WordPress expertise – based on little more than ‘well, how hard can it be?’. The fact is, to get the best from WordPress, you need a thorough knowledge of how it works. Yes, the Famous Five-Minute Install will get your personal blog up and running… but it won’t be industry-strength. The professionals I’ve gathered for the event know this, and we know what to do about it. Frankly, this event is us marking our territory.
The running order features everyone I could have hoped to get along – including Peter Westwood, one of the five WordPress lead developers, and Mike Little, who basically started it all. If anything, I’m wondering if the schedule is too good: each speaker gets just half an hour each, although we’ve got the option for them to ‘get a room!’ if there’s enough interest to extend a particular discussion.
We should have enough bloggers and twitterers in the room to ensure the best bits get thoroughly reported, for those unable to come along, or too slow to bag a ticket. Watch out for tweets with the hashtag #WordUpWhitehall during the day; and I’ll try to collate a list of blog posts after the event.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to cue up some Finnish oompah music, and put my name on a donut.

Culture builds transparency site on WP


Nice to see the team at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport launching a new WordPress-based site this week, for the distribution and archival of their transparency data. They promise the monthly publication of financial data, with others ‘as appropriate (at least annually)’. Data is being posted as CSV, as per official guidance, and uploaded as attachments to WordPress posts – meaning it can be viewed by (hierarchical) category, and/or month of publication, or via RSS feed.
In fact, it’s precisely the model I’ve been discussing with the Wales Office, for implementation in the next week or two… although in their case, we’ve been using categorised WordPress posts for two and a half years, integrating things like FOI disclosures into their news stream; so it’s really just following an established model.
It’s a nice touch to see DCMS using a government-developed WordPress theme – namely, the Digital Britain/Clean Home design by BIS. The site looks to be hosted at Rackspace, like Culture’s (ASP-based) corporate site… What? WP on a Microsoft IIS7 server? Hey, why not – WordPress doesn’t have to sit on Linux, and Microsoft have been love-bombing the WordPress community recently. Having said that, I still feel somewhat uncomfortable at seeing a WordPress logo on a microsoft.com page. (If you’re determined to run WP on Microsoft, this site will be useful.)
If you’re coming along to the Word Up Whitehall event on Wednesday, you’ll be able to ask CIO Mark O’Neill all about it.

Always keep hosting, domains and email separate

A quick technical tip for my loyal and esteemed readership: when setting up a modest website, don’t buy your domains from your web host. And ideally, get your email from somewhere else too.
One of the second-order selling points for an open-source solution like WordPress is disaster recovery. In a worst-case scenario, you can simply export your content from one installation, import it into another, and change the DNS. I’ve had to help people do this twice in the last couple of months, when relations with hosting companies have soured – once due to repeated security problems, once because of a billing disagreement. The sites were live from their new homes within a couple of hours.
When things go wrong, you’ll probably want to turn tail and leave in a huff; and to be honest, for the amount you’re paying, most hosts won’t consider it worthwhile persuading you to stay. Transferring your DNS records to a different registrar is going to be a lengthy process, probably a few days at best. But if you’re already using a third party registrar, separate from your hosting supplier, they don’t ultimately care where your ‘www’ record is pointing. The change can be made in mere seconds.
The same goes for email. To be honest, with Google offering its standard-level Apps For Your Domain free of charge, there’s really no reason (excuse?) to tie yourself to your hosting provider’s bundled email service… which is probably inferior anyway.
Many hosting companies include a free domain as part of their package. Whether or not they do this deliberately, it’s a form of lock-in… and you’re probably only saving the price of a pint of beer (London prices) per year. The freedom to take your business elsewhere, at the drop of a hat, is worth a lot more.

Wales Office gets a WordPress refresh


The Wales Office was where the whole WordPress-in-Whitehall thing started, back in late 2007. As a relatively tiny department whose communications were almost exclusively news-based, a blog-style website was ideal for them. But I still remember nervously going into our first meeting, conscious that we were proposing something quite radical.
It all went remarkably well; ongoing support amounted to barely one phone call every 3-6 months, seeking advice or a quick template tweak. And of course, it sparked interest in WordPress as a platform which government could build on: you can draw a line from the Wales Office, to 10 Downing Street, to BIS, to Defra, to… well, who knows.
Two and a half years on, the list of Things We Really Ought To Do At Some Point was beginning to grow. And with the election leading to a change of government, it was high time we made some of those changes. We pushed the rebuilt sites live yesterday, for Puffbox’s second Whitehall department ‘relaunch’ in two days (after this one). Surely some kind of record?
The templates, originally designed to fit 800×600 screens, have been rebuilt from scratch – but hopefully, very few people will even notice. Once again, the brief has been to keep it looking almost exactly as-was… understandably, in the current conditions.
The main new function is an automated Photo Library, exploiting WordPress 3.0’s image handling. The Wales Office team have always been very good at adding photos to their press notices; but thus far, they were manually resizing them for on-page display. Now they can upload the highest resolution available, and let WordPress resize accordingly. And we can present a set of paginated search results listing all uploaded images, linking to those high-res versions, for media to re-use if they so desire.
It all lives in a WordPress 3.0 multisite (and multi-language) setup, including my first step into theme and plugin internationalisation: the same theme creates both the Welsh and English sites, with WordPress dropping in any Welsh translations from a .PO file. We’re using the somewhat outdated Welsh language pack available from automattic.com; late in the day, I discovered a new translation based on WP3.0, but integrating it (and undo’ing my workarounds) was too much to take on by that point.
And because we’re in multisite mode, it’s an easy job to move all the material from the previous government into an explicit archive site – keeping it all searchable, unlike the National Archives copy.
It’s been interesting to revisit what was my first major WordPress project: a milestone by which to measure both my own development, and WordPress’s. Some of my more, ahem, ingenious workarounds can now hand over to proper, core WP functions; but with features like the Photo Library, I feel we’ve pushed things just a little further again.
A hearty ‘diolch’ to Dean at Eduserv for the server-side stuff; and to the Wales Office team, who keep letting me play with their material.