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.
Responses
Hi Simon, the reason there’s no tagging or author archive is because the Moveable Type blog is only temporary – it was always intended it would move to WordPress soon after launch, which would boast a much more comprehensive set of features – or at least that was the plan when we set it up – I’ve left DCMS now so dunno if that’s still the intention. I’m sure Mark will enlighten you 🙂
Ta for noticing though, we put a lot of effort into getting the content up there, even if it is a only a first step.
Scott Andrews (ex-Web Manager, DCMS)
Thanks for the insight, Scott. Was it really quicker to set up on Movable Type?