One MP who hasn't let the transition to Ministerial office stop her blogging is Lynne Featherstone. She's been as prolific as ever, with posts on constituency matters, party affairs and her new Home Office equalities portfolio. This caught the attention of the Daily Mail, who published a story at the weekend entitled: 'Minister warned over 1am tweets'.

There were only two problems with that headline:

• The tweets weren't at 1am. As Mark Pack explained at Lib Dem Voice, the default timezone when you look at Twitter.com is San Francisco: so those '1am tweets' would actually have been 9am UK time... if that even matters.
• I've been in touch with Lynne directly, and she confirms to me: 'no [Home Office] mandarins have told me off at all!' And the next bit won't come as any surprise: 'Nor did the Mail check any details with me.'

The extent of the warning appears to have been a proactive call to the Home Office press office, with a 'spokesman' being quoted: 'The Minister is well aware of her responsibilities under the Ministerial Code.' You could call that a warning; I'd call it a statement of fact.

It's a pathetic character assassination piece, with so many holes in it that I can't face picking it to pieces. Even a blog post highly complimentary of her 'boss' at the Home Office, Conservative minister Theresa May was depicted as a controversial expression of her doubts. So it's not a bit of wonder that the ensuing comments react with horror at how someone so divisive and clearly deranged should be a government minister. Even if the Mail were to correct or withdraw the piece - which, so far, it shows no sign of doing - it's too late; the damage, such as it is, is done.

But at least the 'proper' newspapers wouldn't print something so shameful, would they? Sadly, they did. Later the same day, the Telegraph basically re-wrote and re-published the Mail piece, minus (to give them a tiny amount of credit) the embarrassing timezone thing. The Sun did pretty much the same thing, the next day.

You know, you'd almost think they're more interested in inventing controversy than reporting facts.

I make it seven members of the new Coalition cabinet with Twitter accounts: although of course, some have been more personal than others:

• Nick Clegg
• William Hague
• Vince Cable
• Chris Huhne
• Eric Pickles
• Danny Alexander
• Jeremy Hunt

It's worth noting that only Hague and Pickles have been active since polling day; and judging by one recent tweet, Pickles seems intent on maintaining pre-poll levels of activity. I wonder how many others will restart... has Twitter served its purpose, now they've been re-elected?

We also have a few bloggers:

• Jeremy Hunt
• David Laws
• Sir George Young

Some of the senior Tories have made frequent contributions to the Conservatives.com site's Blue Blog - among them David Cameron and Eric Pickles.

The case of Sir George Young is worthy of special mention: his 'on a lighter note' writing goes back as far as 1999. And whilst it wouldn't really meet the definition of a 'blog' - no feed, no commenting, etc - he surely deserves some credit for getting started so early. And indeed, for publishing his full constituency diary, ribbon-cutting by ribbon-cutting!

Update: Although not strictly Cabinet, it's also worth noting reports that the Conservatives' head of press, Henry Macrory is to take 'the same role at Downing Street' (although his Twitter biog hasn't yet been updated). Henry has been a prolific tweeter, and as you might expect from someone in his position, they've usually been rather partisan in nature. Can't quite see that continuing somehow, especially not the anti-Clegg stuff.

The newspaper media group's new blogs editor, Damian Thompson is buzzing with excitement at the potential which this move opens up. Among the 'immediate benefits' he highlights: faster operation, easier commenting, better integration with the wider site, even a Twitter element. (I'd add a few others myself, all available instantly with a bit of URL hacking.) But he's right to recognise that the switch won't be immediately popular - and guess what, the majority of the 200+ comments on his introduction post aren't positive. Yeah, we've all been there.

Most of the work, I understand, was done by the Telegraph's in-house team, with some assistance from my fellow WordCampers (and technically, I suppose, competitors) InterconnectIT. The firm's director, Dave Coveney says they're already working with another newspaper group and a magazine publisher. He's clearly seeing the same momentum I am; there's certainly no shortage of interest in WordPress just now.

This week saw the next phase in the incremental redesign of the Department For International Development's website. It's a much airier, brighter look than before, and with a YouTube video front and centre, plus all those drop shadows, rounded corners and various JQuery effects, it feels bang up to date. There's a new 'top layer' of public-friendly information, Fighting Poverty, which is very easy on the eye, without getting in the way of the more mundane operational stuff. They've struck an excellent balance, I think.

The changes to the parent site meant we had to revisit certain elements of the DFID Bloggers site, built and launched by Puffbox just a couple of months back; partly for visual consistency, but also because we're feeding off the same CSS stylesheet. Everything's more or less where it was before, but the colours have been brightened up a bit, and taking a lead from the parent site, we're now optimised for 1024px-wide screens. We've also tweaked a few other things, but I doubt you'll notice them.

(The parent site has repaid the compliment by giving front-page space to the Bloggers site - but before anyone mentions it: no, it isn't automatically taking the latest item via RSS, they're choosing which items they want to promote.)

On the Bloggers site at least, the switch on the night was remarkably pain-free: just a simple matter of changing from one WordPress theme to another, literally a single click and it's done. I've always seen this as one of WordPress's hidden strengths - and I've talked to one or two clients about making deliberate use of it. You can imagine a scenario where there are several versions of the same basic design, all stored as separate WP themes, for different situations and circumstances - as a crude example, a black-tinged 'national mourning' version. Deploying it would take seconds. Hey, can your big ugly CMS do that, I wonder?

The DFID team are taking an incremental approach to their web development - and good on them for it. There are further 'structural changes and technical improvements' planned for 2009, plus - all being well - some cool new functionality in the Bloggers site. Stay tuned.

I've had a similar run-in with my own MP, Newbury's Richard Benyon (Con). Back in September, the first posting on his new blog made some undeniably party-political comments: he talked about Labour being in a state of 'desperation', and his boss David Cameron '[continuing] to look like a Prime Minister in waiting'.

Good old political knockabout, nothing wrong with that... except his website proudly declared on every page that it is 'paid for from his Communications Allowance', which is explicitly not to be used 'to promote, criticise or campaign for or against anyone seeking election'. To his credit, he made swift if superficial amends: I don't see from a technical viewpoint how it's possible for www.richardbenyon.com/blog 'not [to be] connected to www.richardbenyon.com'.

The point is this: as both Flynn and Benyon have said, playing by the Parliamentary allowance's rules would have meant a 'totally non-political, fence sitting and boring' blog. With the cost of setting up a basic blog being so low, indeed zero in most cases, it doesn't make sense to take a chance with the 'Byzantine complexity of the House of Commons rules' (to quote Mr Benyon, although frankly I'm not buying that; the rules couldn't be much clearer).

If you're an MP, and you want to start a blog, here are the facts:

• Most political blogs live on Blogger.com, a hosted service owned by Google, and free of charge. It's not the most sophisticated platform in the world, but it does allow you total freedom to customise your pages... if you so wish. It's good enough for Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale, generally seen as the #1 and #2 in the UK; they've gone to considerable lengths to design their sites. Others, like Lynne Featherstone, John Pugh, David Jones or Andy Love really haven't.
• Personally, I find WordPress.com a better blogging tool; but in its free, hosted incarnation, it's limited in its scope for (full-on) customisation. See Tom Harris's top-rated blog, or the Lords Of The Blog group effort.
• But there are other free alternatives. Adrian Sanders runs his blog on MySpace - hey, why not? Tory MEP Daniel Hannan has a blog on the Telegraph's website; and whilst his is technically on the 'columnists' side of the fence, rather than the 'public' my.telegraph.co.uk service, there's nothing to stop you doing that either. It's not ideal, but maybe it suits you and your situation.
• If you want extra functionality, extra control or extra customisation, you're looking at spending some money - but frankly, it needn't be more than the price of a (very modest) dinner for two. Typepad used to be the service of choice for those who wanted to take things more seriously; their 'pro' service costs £75 a year, and gives you all the customisation and room for expansion you're likely to need. Paul Flynn's site lives there, as does ConservativeHome, and the blogs of lobby journalists Benedict Brogan and Paul Waugh (among others).
• These days, the (generally) preferred option - certainly in these parts! - is to download and run your own copy of WordPress. It's free, and it's the best; but you'll need to pay a few quid to put it somewhere - say £22.99 a year from Eukhost; and running it yourself does take some effort. Tom Watson, John Redwood and Richard Benyon use it, as does the remarkably popular PoliticalBetting.com; but for a simple blog, it's probably overkill. When you want to do something more, though, it's perfect: ask Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and Jim Murphy.

There's absolutely no shame in using the free options; and if you decide you need more, for whatever reason, you're looking at a couple of hundred quid, tops... with most of that going to the friendly geek who sets it up for you. I dare say many MPs could find that kind of sum down the back of their sofa.

Spending a portion of your Communications Allowance on a blog is just The Wrong Thing To Do. And frankly it calls into question the purpose of the 'totally non-political, fence sitting and boring' Allowance in the first place. £10,000 times 646 MPs, times 4 years in a typical Parliament equals... no, don't, it's a terrifying answer.

PS: By sheer coincidence, I note that the British Computer Society held its MP Website Awards today: winners were Derek Wyatt, John Hutton, Alan Johnson and  Kerry McCarthy. All Labour, for the record.

Whilst other sites seem keen to cram ever more into their homepages, the new FT homepage makes the site feel really quite small. Just ten 'top stories' in a list, sorted in order of importance; headlines and very brief excerpts, with timestamps, categories and related articles. There are still plenty of sections and subsections; but the primary navigation is mainly hidden behind dropdowns (Javascript-enhanced HTML blocks rather than traditional form dropdowns, incidentally). The page layout is (broadly speaking) three columns: fat, thin, thin - a configuration we've grown familiar with in the blogosphere.

Gawker.com shares my take, and concludes: 'the online medium continues to assert its precedence over print; even the rich love blogs; and bloggers all deserve to be paid more money'. No argument on any front there.

It's further evidence, in my mind, that the divisions between 'blogs' and 'proper websites', 'blogging tools' and 'proper CMSes' have disappeared, if they were ever there to begin with. Let's just ignore the labelling. Blogs and blogging systems evolved as a means for writers to get news items up on the web quickly and efficiently. Guess what - journalists want to get their news items up on the web quickly and efficiently. So do (should?) press officers.

In my own work, once the decision is made to use a blogging tool (ie WordPress), certain design decisions are basically inevitable. But it's very interesting to see the FT choosing to make many of those same design decisions, without any (apparent) requirement to do so.

Stephen has already touched on the FCO's choice of the rather obscure Roller blogging platform - 'because of the ease with which we could integrate it with our web platform'. His latest post reveals something I hadn't previously appreciated: 'we opened up the blogs over the summer so that any member of staff with a valid business reason could start an official blog'.

That's a remarkable move in itself, and perhaps unexpectedly, puts FCO on a par with hi-tech companies like Microsoft - but I'm still in two minds about the wisdom of people blogging in a personal capacity on an official platform (generally speaking). My instinct remains that corporate blogging is best done on a project basis, with more personal stuff (again, generally) kept separate.

In that respect, we should all be grateful to FCO for testing the water here; we'll only find out what works - if anythying - by trying it, and they've certainly got the Boss most likely to give them the freedom to experiment.

In some respects, it was an obvious thing for DFID to do. Their work isn't generally seen by the UK taxpayers who fund it. By definition, they operate in exotic and/or difficult locations, and have powerful stories to tell. They saw the value in putting some human faces on it all; and in opening lines of communication with anyone worldwide with something to contribute. The Foreign Office had already set a helpful precedent: my brief was effectively 'can we have what they've got, please?'

Using WordPress was, of course, a given; but perhaps surprisingly, I took the decision early on to use the standard version, rather than MU (Multi User). Everyone is effectively writing to the same 'group blog', allowing us to aggregate and consolidate the presentation (eg on the homepage, and in the main RSS feed). But the WordPress approach to output templates allows us to give each blogger a personal homepage, with a fuller biography, a filtered RSS feed and an archive of posts. The best of both worlds, if you like - with fewer concerns about the speed of updates and the compatibility of plugins.

All the standard blog functionality is in there, plus a few things you won't have seen. The homepage shows the latest post for each 'active' blogger; when they haven't written something for a fixed number of days, they'll automatically drop down into an 'archive' list. There's some customisation of the standard WordPress user profile, adding a new 'job title' (ie short biography) field, and incorporating Google Map functionality, for the bloggers to pinpoint their location. This geo-data gets aggregated into a Bloggers Map page, with the popup 'speech bubbles' showing a summary user profile, including a link to their latest blog entry.

I can't say how pleased I am with the results. I've been collaborating with a couple of new contacts - my near-neighbour Tony Parsons on the design side, and Simon Wheatley (who I met at WordCamp) on the technical stuff that was beyond me. Both have been truly brilliant. And I have to say, the DFID guys have been fabulous too - giving me all the freedom I could ask for. It's been a perfect combination, and I think it shows in the site.

In the spirit of open source, Simon W has released the custom WordPress plugins to the world via wordpress.org. In reality, you'll only be interested in them if you're wanting to build a carbon-copy site; but they are now 'out there', and you're welcome to them.

I've also been working with Shane McCracken and his Gallomanor team (including Dave Briggs and Griff Wigley), who have been tasked with training the DFID volunteers in the art of blogging. Judging by the initial posts I've been reading, they've done a great job. I'm sure they will tell their own stories in due course.

Quite honestly, I think it's the best thing Puffbox has yet produced. Great design, great functionality on front and back end, and a client committed to doing it right. With so many great stories and pictures out there, I hope it can have a big impact.

And by the way... it's no coincidence that the site is launching just ahead of Blog Action Day next Wednesday (15 October), when bloggers have been asked to write something about poverty and development issues.

Clearly the Scotland Office are pretty excited. They sent out new secretary of state Jim Murphy's first post from his new blog, without mentioning that the blog didn't exist yet, or even the address it would occupy when it did finally launch. Ian Cuddy managed to glean that: 'It will be going on the Scotland office website in a more conventional blog format ... once we've got one or two technical things ironed out.' Which came as some relief to those of us who feared this might be an attempt to blog by press release alone. What a concept.

The 'blog' is now live on the Scotland Office site: but ominously, it looks like a standard web page. No RSS feeds, no comments, no tags, nothing that would fit the de facto definition of a blog. But it's a start, I suppose. To their great credit, they've got it into WordPress relatively quickly. Comments, feeds, the whole lot are now available, and it slots seamlessly into the existing corporate site. Makes you wonder why they didn't just do that in the first place.

It's been very interesting to watch how Jim Murphy has warmed to blogging. He started in September 2007, as the Foreign Office launched their ambitious multi-author approach. My understanding at the time was that he had to be persuaded to do it: with the EU Constitution/Treaty argument at its height, a blog was seen as a good thing to do. The FCO project is generally recognised as a success, with Murphy's own blog being singled out for particular attention: an impressive following, and at least one instance where a reader comment affected subsequent policy. Shortly afterwards (I think), Murphy started blogging on his own personal website.

Had he wanted one, the move up to Cabinet level would have been an excuse to stop. Greater responsibility, no existing platform, etc. So it's good to see his desire to continue - and you have to assume, it was high on his priority list when he arrived. He tells us (via that press release):

When I was Minister for Europe I had a regular blog. I found it a useful way of letting people know what was going on in Europe, and I got a lot of good feedback. Now I’m Secretary of State for Scotland I’m going to carry on blogging and I look forward to having a dialogue about the really important issues that face our country.

It's very much the same challenge: emotional discussions about matters of national sovereignty. And by vowing to keep blogging, it's probably the best signal we'll get that it was felt to have been a valuable use of his time. There are, of course, quite a few parallels here with David Miliband who kept up his blogging through two reshuffles (ODPM to Defra to FCO), all the way to the Cabinet table.

And while we're on the subject of people with multiple blogs... I note that James Barbour, press secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, and an occasional visitor to these parts, now has an official blog on the Foreign Office platform, to go alongside his personal blog outside. I asked him via Twitter how he was planning to juggle the two: his honest reply comes on a post on his personal blog: 'I'm not entirely sure myself, Simon, but I'm going to try.' You can't ask any more. Good luck sir.

I'd like to wish a happy first birthday to Margaret Hodge's DCMS Diary. I thought I knew of every Ministerial blog out there, but a client mentioned this one to me earlier this week, and I was amazed to see it had been going so long. (Hodge only arrived at DCMS at the end of June '07, as part of Brown's inaugural reshuffle, so she didn't hang around either.)

Google Reader only knows of 6 subscribers; and in my experience, Google accounts for 50% of the typical blog's RSS subscriptions, taking us to a mammoth dozen. After a year? - now that's what I call a soft launch. It's basically a record of her glamorous adventures as culture minister, rather than a forum for detailed political discussion; and posts are somewhat sporadic... currently running at one every two months.

It's running on Movable Type v3, with the IP address coming out as a Windows/IIS box at Digex UK (aka Verizon, I think). DCMS's main site sits at Rackspace, which makes me think it's another of the 'sandbox' servers which seem to be popping up (and rightly so) all round Whitehall. Comments have been disabled across the entire site, which is a shame, particularly in the light of the Digital Dialogues conclusion that moderation is never as onerous as you expect.

Somebody really ought to compile a list of Ministers' blogs... but maybe it's best to wait a few weeks, for what are probably obvious reasons.