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Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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  • 31 Dec 2008
    technology
    ccleaner, dropbox, launchy, linux, ubiquity, ubuntu, windowsxp

    Reviving a slow XP machine

    Lately, my trusty XP desktop has been grinding to a virtual halt. Things were getting so bad that I’d decided to trash the lot, and do a fresh install. But having made the decision, I got brave enough to do some radical / drastic spring-cleaning – sure, what did it matter if I borked it? I was going to reinstall anyway! – and it’s actually been enough to bring the thing back to life. Not quite as zippy as a box-fresh installation, but certainly back to acceptability.

    A few tips I’d like to share from the experience:

    • There really aren’t more than a handful of software applications you really, really need. I made a list of barely 20 things I absolutely had to have if I did a fresh install (and 6 of those were web browsers).
    • CCleaner is a marvellous piece of freeware, which will wipe your Windows machine clean of all sorts of stuff that simply doesn’t need to be there. It also includes an ‘advanced’ (?) Registry Cleaner, which identified and sorted out hundreds (literally) of issues for me.
    • One particular area of agony was the time it took for Windows to draw up the list of ‘All Programs’ under the Start button. As a workaround, I started using Launchy – which effectively puts a ‘command prompt’ inside Windows. Press Alt-Space, start typing the name of what you want, and it’ll present a list of suggestions. Pretty quickly, you’ll find the right programs are coming up when you type the first letter. It’s a remarkable timesaver, and so efficient I’m still using it, even after reviving the machine.
    • On similar lines is the experimental Firefox addon, Ubiquity. As with Launchy, a ‘hotkey’ brings up a command line interface, where you type pre-determined commands to do online things. Some of the reviews have been glowing; personally, although it’s certainly clever, I didn’t find myself using it much. So as part of my spring-clean, I uninstalled it… and was amazed at the speed increase I saw in Firefox as a result. I can’t say for certain that Ubiquity was slowing things down; but there is mention of a known bug in the current version, which may have been causing my problems. I’ll be back (probably).
    • There are so many good uses for a service like Dropbox: an online storage / backup / syncing service, with Windows, Mac and Linux clients, plus a pretty web interface. 2GB is free, 50GB costs $99/year. It’s very tempting.

    And finally, one that won’t be at all contentious…

    • Linux is ready, but the IT industry isn’t. I was beginning to think it’s time to finally ditch Windows. I’ve been tinkering with Linux on and off for 10 years; and there’s no doubt now that Ubuntu, Fedora or various other distributions are now up to scratch. Was this the moment to go Linux-first, with Windows as backup – be it dual-boot, or ‘virtual machine’? In the end, I bottled it. Partly because I’d revived the Windows installation, but mainly because there were going to be issues with many, perhaps most of my peripherals.I was able to find long, tortuous workarounds to make most (but importantly, not all) of my kit mostly work; but that’s not the point. I don’t have the time or energy to put up with lengthy, intricate installation processes, or accept limited functionality, when we know it would have been plug-and-play under Windows. True, there is a part of me that would fancy the challenge; and I dare say, for most hardcore Linux types, that challenge is (the main?) part of the attraction. But it’s too much to ask of mere mortals.Don’t get me wrong; I’m very pro-Linux in principle, and I actively want to make the switch – probably to Ubuntu, since you asked. But I need people like (quick glance round the room) Dell, Apple, Garmin and (ha!) Microsoft to catch up. Make your kit work with Linux, guys, out of the box – and we’ve got ourselves a revolution. In the meantime, I’ll have to satisfy myself with occasional playing in Sun’s VirtualBox.
  • 16 Dec 2008
    technology
    bbc, digitalhome, ipod, wii

    Home Of The Future at High St prices

    Never has a nail been hit more squarely on its head than when Charles Arthur wrote his Guardian piece last week about how ‘The digital home hub is finally happening‘:

    [Gates and Jobs’s] vision is coming true. Except that it’s not the computer they thought which is at the hub. It’s a rather different one that hadn’t even been considered at the time, using a technology that had only just begun to get traction. That would be the iPod Touch, and Wi-Fi.

    At the very moment it popped up in my Twitter stream, I was completing the purchase of something I’ve been looking forward to for literally years: a digital audio solution for the bathroom, previously the only ‘quiet zone’ in the house. But after weeks of looking at expensive, high-end media-sharing solutions, such as the (albeit impressive) Logitech Squeezebox Duet, I’d decided on a much more modest (and ultimately, more powerful?) setup: a Sony iPod dock with DAB Radio (crucially, with external speakers) and an iPod Touch talking to my home wireless network. No PC at the heart of it; no need.

    It gives me live digital radio, access to my music library (including downloaded podcasts), and BBC iPlayer radio/TV… with goodness knows what else to come, as Apple’s AppStore expands. All very modest kit that you’ll easily find on any High Street – but an outcome straight out of ‘Tomorrow’s World’.

    I had a similar reaction when the BBC took us inside Bill Thompson’s ‘digital home’ last week: two Macs and an XBox 360 connected through a wireless network, beamed out via a low-end projector. All very well… but frankly, I think I get a better user experience from my Wii – connected to the internet via the home wireless setup, with BBC iPlayer delivering (almost) full-screen TV on demand on our (again, fairly modest) big flatscreen telly. No need for computer X to talk to computer Y here; all controlled without having to leave the sofa via Wiimote.

    Charles reckons ‘almost 30%’ of homes have wireless networks; and the Wii is trouncing the competition again this Christmas. A lot of people are going to have all the kit they need to enjoy some digital living.

  • 5 Dec 2008
    technology
    youtube

    YouTube goes widescreen, HD

    A quick glance at Steph Gray’s digitalgovuk catalogue reveals the perhaps surprising number of government departments now using YouTube. (It’s almost a case of who isn’t using it.) So it’s worth paying attention to the drip-drip-drip of interface changes happening at YouTube, and ensuring your content is handled accordingly.

    The biggest shift is the introduction of a widescreen video player. The YouTube.com page layout now expects videos to be 16:9; but it will put black blocks either side of any 4:3 content. Thankfully though, the ’embed’ code recognises the different dimensions, and adjusts the width/height of the embedded player accordingly: so you won’t get ‘letterboxing’ (either way) on embedded clips.

    What you may get, though, is a nasty surprise when you hover over the upper third of the embedded player: a YouTube search box sliding down, obscuring your footage and tempting your viewers to find something more fun. It’s especially nasty if you’re embedding clips at a reduced size. By way of example, here’s a recent clip of our Prime Minister. Try hovering over his hair:

    Two ways to turn it off. Either add &showsearch=0 to the end of both the embedding URLs – param value= and embed src=; or if you add &rel=0 to the URLs to switch off the ‘related clips’ at the end, that stops the search box appearing too.

    If you’re producing any video clips from now on, I’d say it makes sense to do them in widescreen. And I’d advise against buying a video camera unless it can deliver widescreen… and HD. They’re currently testing HD quality video, as this clip shows: you may have to click on ‘Watch on HD’ to get the full effect. The difference is startling.

    The 10 minute restriction on length is still in place – not that that should worry you, as the optimal length of a video is somewhere between 1 and 3 minutes; but for a little while now, you’ve been allowed to upload files up to 1GB. Remember, Google stores whatever you upload, and downgrades it on-the-fly as necessary when someone watches it. So use that extra capacity: it may not matter much now, but you’ll be glad you did later.

    (It might also be a good time to look again at your home ISP’s monthly download limit: with all this HD video popping up, you could find yourself downloading a lot more than you realised.)

  • 19 Nov 2008
    politics, technology
    blogger, blogging, parliament, paulflynn, richardbenyon, typepad, wordpress

    An MP's guide to blogs

    Labour MP for Newport West, Paul Flynn has apparently ‘been stripped of a Parliamentary allowance for making fun of other MPs on his blog‘, if you read today’s BBC piece on the subject. Flynn himself tells the story slightly differently, on said blog.

    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.

  • 14 Nov 2008
    technology
    android, google, tmobile

    Two weeks with my T-Mobile G1

    The release of the first ‘Googlephone’ running the open source Android couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

    My Nokia E65 had served me well, but was getting a bit temperamental. I’d already handed all my email over to Google, and was keen to do likewise with my calendar needs (bye bye Outlook!). Plus, Google tends to just get it right, where Apple’s track record is a bit patchy in my experience. Of course I was going to get a Googlephone; and with my contract’s minimum period having just expired, why wait?

    Let me straight away: I like it a lot. A heck of a lot. But it’s not without its faults, some of them significant.

    The screen is beautiful, the interface is beautiful, the unit itself is pretty (rather than iconic). As you’d expect with Google, everything integrates neatly. When you power up for the first time, you’re asked for your Google Account details – and yes, thankfully, that includes ‘apps for your domain‘ accounts. Instantly, you’re looking at your Gmail inbox, with all the same contacts, and your Google calendar. Change something on your desktop PC, and it reflects instantly to the phone – and vice versa. That’s enough to make you love the phone itself.

    The keyboard is small but usable with practice. The web experience is excellent, with the browser firing up instantly. Google Maps is as good as you’d expect, with or without GPS. Oh yeah, and it’s good at making phonecalls too. Google’s contacts app has come in for criticism, much of it justified; but its integration with Gmail gives you a headstart, importing from Outlook was easy, and courtesy of Gravatar, I’ve managed to add photos for a remarkable proportion of my contacts with zero effort.

    But there are faults, some of which will resolve themselves over time. Others won’t.

    • Zoom. For me, the key to the iPhone is the multi-touch operation, which the G1 doesn’t have. So if you want to zoom in on a photo or a web page, you’re pressing zoom in/out buttons. It feels so primitive already.
    • Camera. Three megapixels is respectable, and the quality is fine. But jeez, is it slow to snap… almost unusably so. I’m seriously considering carrying a proper camera again; and that’s really not good enough.
    • Lack of homescreen widgets. If you’ve ever seen Nokia’s Widsets, you’ll recognise the horizontally scrolling desktop on the G1. Some aspects are cool: it scrolls beautifully, you can add shortcuts to individual contacts, and there’s widget functionality. But the selection of widgets is shockingly small: an analogue clock, a picture frame, a Google search box, and that’s it. No calendar view. No to-do list. No weather widget. I’m hoping this is just a temporary weakness, forgiveable since Android’s only been properly public for a matter of days. But still…
    • Lack of ‘send’ functionality. I’m amazed it doesn’t include the ability to send contacts or calendar events via SMS, Bluetooth, email or anything else. Yet.
    • Media playback. There’s a respectable ‘Music’ app, and there’s even some Flight of the Conchords in there to start you off. But if you’re hoping to stream anything other than YouTube, or playback video, you’re going to have to visit the Android Market and hope for the best. For now, you’ll be disappointed.

    There’s quite a lot to play with in the Android Market: a selection of weather apps, the barcode-scanning programs are fun, there’s a fantastic Twitter app called Twidroid, and who can resist (proper) PacMan? The big names are starting to appear – among them the Telegraph and MySpace, and others will follow no doubt (including MySociety, I hear?). Again, early days.

    Android is unquestionably going places, and there’s an undeniable thrill at being in at the very start, watching it all evolve. But I’d recommend steering clear of the ‘free on 18 month contract’ deals. Although there’s no mention of it in the T-Mobile publicity, my local shop sold it to me for £50 on a 12-month contract; by which time I bet better devices will be available, and no nastiness with unlocking / jailbreaking.

  • 5 Nov 2008
    company, e-government, politics, technology
    Mark Ballard, nhs, patientopinion, Scotland, scotweb2, Stephen Glenn

    Speaking at ScotWeb2

    I spoke last Friday at ScotWeb2, organised by (now former) civil servant Alex Stobart to talk about Scotland and web 2.0, open source, engagement, all that good stuff – with a particular, but not exclusive, focus on public sector activity. There isn’t yet (so I’m told) much of a critical mass for this stuff north of the border, and this was an effort to kick-start things.

    It’s a story I’ve told many times before: how open source software and free services can be a match (or more) for mega-expensive content management solutions; how the rock-bottom cost of development should make us reconsider the meaning of ‘failure’; and the fact that whatever you want to do online, you could probably now do it. As ever, it turned into a WordPress evangelism session, and I think I’ve encouraged a few people to look at it for their more modest online projects. It’s becoming a very easy ‘sell’.

    James Munro from Patient Opinion was up before me. His starting point was that people would share their views of NHS services, whether you provided a mechanism or not – but I didn’t expect him to quote Flickr or YouTube as the platforms people might use. Having initially been funded by the Department of Health, 50 NHS organisations are now paying for ‘value added’ services on the Patient Opinion site… and with the NHS in Scotland being a separate entity, James talked about looking to expand northwards.

    If I’m honest, I was a little distracted during the afternoon’s proceeding; having got my Googlephone on launch day, I hadn’t had the chance to play with it. (Er, I mean, configure it properly.) But there were – inevitably – some interesting discussions in the pub afterwards – concentrating most notably on also-ran Scottish football. By which, of course, I mean all of it apart from Rangers and Celtic.

    The event took place at Edinburgh University‘s education faculty (?), a few doors up from the Scottish Parliament, but I was struck by the event’s very different atmosphere compared to, let’s say, a similar seminar in Westminster. Much more relaxed, with no problem interrupting speakers’ presentations, and with people on all sides of the political game happy to chat. I’d never been to the Parliament building – and it’s reassuringly, remarkably ordinary. If that’s what comes of devolution, let’s have more of it.

    Hi to some of the guys I met on the day: LibDem PPC Stephen Glenn, ex-Green MSP Mark Ballard, blogger Duncan Stephen and Stewart from w00tonomy… and thanks to Alex for making it happen.

  • 28 Oct 2008
    company, e-government, technology
    downingstreet, javascript, opera, PHP, puffbox, wii, youtube

    Gordon Brown on your Wii

    One of the more inspiring developments at the BBC recently has been the extension of iPlayer away from the desktop PC. Back in April, they launched iPlayer on the Wii – but it wasn’t the breakthrough moment it might have been. Leaving aside the fact it didn’t stream especially smoothly on my machine, the interface was optimised for a screen resolution which the Wii couldn’t deliver, making for a horrid user experience. Last week they made amends, with a Wii-optimised screen setup – and it’s truly brilliant. Try it on your desktop PC, but to appreciate its full glory, you need to be sitting on the living room sofa, in proper telly-watching mode.

    I’ve been a bit surprised that people haven’t done more optimising of content for ‘games consoles’ – particularly the current generation, with their online capabilities. And with the Wii (again) selling like hot cakes (set to get even hotter too), it has tremendous potential for video-on-demand in the living room.

    Inspired by the Beeb’s efforts, I wondered how much effort it would take to put a Wii-friendly front end on some YouTube content. So I took a few hours last night to build a prototype – and here it is: wii10.puffbox.co.uk

    It’s basically the same concept as the BBC’s design, rebuilt from scratch using a combination of PHP, RSS and Javascript (specifically, JQuery). The code pulls in the last 10 items from Downing Street’s YouTube account, and puts them into a JQuery-driven carousel. When you click on a clip, a popup fades into view, and the embedded YouTube player autoplays. The big buttons left and right make the playlist scroll beautifully from side to side.

    I want to stress: I’ve done this completely off my own bat. Although we have a continuing working relationship, I wasn’t asked to do this by Number10. It’s purely a proof-of-concept, using publicly available (publicly funded) material. It’s a bit rough round the edges: some of the link highlighting isn’t too smooth on the Wii, the word wrapping isn’t polished, and it doesn’t seem to work properly on (desktop) Firefox for some reason – although curiously, all other browsers seem OK, even IE! But having proven the concept, to be honest, I may not bother going back to fix these issues. There’s also a risk of YouTube changing their code, as has happened before: the Wii’s Flash player is a bit behind the times, and YouTube’s improvements have caused problems in the past.

    But for now – it works, really quite nicely, and I’m dead pleased with it. You need never again say the words ‘there’s nothing on telly.’ 🙂 And with more and more government content going on YouTube, if anybody thinks this might be useful in a proper business context, please get in touch.

  • 15 Oct 2008
    company, e-government, technology
    mysociety, puffbox, tomsteinberg

    MySociety, outsourcing and precedents

    Happy birthday to MySociety: five years old, and now talking in terms of 20-year plans. Tom Steinberg’s speech at last night’s birthday party contains much to ponder.

    Our agreement on the basics is a given. You can do a tremendous amount of good with relatively little money, as long as you have good people involved. People who understand the context, who have a feel for the technology, and who have a passion for what they’re doing. That’s been the very basis of MySociety’s success, and (I hope) my own here at Puffbox.

    ‘So long as the cult of outsourcing everything computer related continues to dominate in Whitehall,’ Tom says, ‘little is going to change. [The UK government] fired everyone who could do those things, or employed them only via horribly expensive consultancies. It is time to start bringing them back into the corridors of power.’ Hmm… depends what you mean by ‘outsourcing’, and ‘bringing them back in’.

    It’s an outrageous generalisation, but what the heck – my experience over the last five or so years has been that small computer-related projects done by small companies are generally successful, whereas large projects done by large companies aren’t. So if we’re talking outsourcing to those ‘horribly expensive consultancies’, by which I guess we’re talking six, seven or even (gasp) eight-figure budgets, hear hear.

    But having operated as a consultancy myself for a little while now, I actually think the outsourcing of small jobs to small external operators is beneficial to all parties.

    • The client generally deals with someone at, or certainly much closer to the coalface. No account managers, business analysts, project support officers, etc etc. All these people and processes are introduced to reduce risk; but in my experience, they actually increase the risk of not delivering.
    • There’s an inherent benefit in doing lots of small jobs for lots of different people: you inevitably learn something new on every job, which then makes the next job even better. If you’re tied to one single government department, there just won’t be that many interesting jobs in any given year.
    • ‘Coming in from outside’ gives you the right to be a bit more contrary, provocative, arrogant even. You can say the unsayable, if you like. And whilst it’s never a desirable state of affairs, you do have the right to say ‘no’ to the more insane propositions which might come your way.
    • The rigidity of government grading and payscales is actually a disincentive for ‘doers’ to remain in a civil service job. To earn a ‘market wage’, you need to seek promotion to senior management levels… and with every upward step, you move further and further away from the coalface. More talking, less doing. Trust me, I’ve been there.
    • It’s invariably cheaper, and often better quality.

    Given the more commercial edge to the new MySociety website, it looks like I’m pushing at an open door there.

    I’m a little intrigued by Tom’s comment about the ‘repurposing [of] generic new communications tools like blogs’. That has become the core of what Puffbox does, and I make absolutely no apology for it. It allows me to deliver powerful, intricate websites in double-quick time – giving end-users what they want, how they want it, whilst maintaining a straightforward back-end interface. It gives people cutting-edge tools to do their work, and hopefully makes them ask more difficult questions of the inevitably bespoke IT projects elsewhere in their work.

    I detect a slightly pessimistic tone to Tom’s remarks, and not just on funding. ‘We’ve shifted the culture of government internet usage less than we might have hoped over the last five years,’ he concludes frankly. I’m more inclined to see the upside; it has shifted, and it is shifting – slowly.

    I’ve written and spoken before about the power of precedent: and with every MySociety production, large or small, the precedents become stronger. (I hope the same can be said of Puffbox’s work too.) Yes, it’s taking time to see the ripple effect: but it’s definitely coming. Some of the projects I’m discussing with people just now are truly mouthwatering.

  • 8 Oct 2008
    company, e-government, technology
    blogactionday, blogging, dfid, puffbox, simonwheatley, tonyparsons, wordpress

    DFID Bloggers: tales from the front line

    The latest Puffbox project gets a soft launch today, ahead of a formal (and hopefully high-profile) announcement next week. DFID Bloggers is a satellite site off the main Department for International Development website, and follows in the FCO’s footsteps of giving front-line staff a blog on which to talk about their work and experiences.

    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.

  • 17 Sep 2008
    technology
    hosting, security, support, wordpress

    The perfect WordPress host

    I’m increasingly convinced there’s a market out there for some kind of managed WordPress hosting. A provider with special expertise in WordPress, PHP and MySQL. Someone who can look after patches etc automatically for you. Who has the knowledge and tools to offer better-than-average security. But crucially, who is also happy for competent people to mess around a bit.

    There’s really no argument with the power of WordPress, its simplicity, and (of course) its price. So the point for debate when I go to pitch a WP-based idea, is where it will sit, how secure it will be there, and who will look after patches and updates. Of course, there are good answers to those questions:

    • use wordpress.com, and let Automattic themselves take care of it all;
    • self-host, and self-manage;
    • some kind of rolling arrangement, where you bring Mr Consultant back in as and when;

    but I’m thinking of a brilliant answer. One whereby the supplier pledges to apply additional security measures, and to install any patches / security updates to WordPress, PHP or MySQL as soon as they become available… but still gives freedom to designers / developers to make reasonable use of plugins (etc).

    Of course, that doesn’t cover you for potential weaknesses in the plugins: and the perfect host would take some responsibility here too – vetting, approving, updating, whatever. I’d be looking for some kind of proactive communication, bringing things to my attention as and when. And of course, let’s not forget the inevitable hosting questions of bandwidth, 24/7 monitoring, disaster recovery, and so on.

    If such a hosting provider exists, I’ve yet to find them. I know of several well-regarded services aimed at serious developers; but I haven’t yet seen any aimed at the emerging class of designers with reasonable tech skills.

    And I’m steadily becoming convinced there are enough of us around, small-scale operators producing customised WordPress sites, to make it a viable business. Clients would unquestionably pay a decent premium annually for managed hosting like this, especially when the base software itself is free of charge.

    It’s not something a solo operator could take on, but I’m wondering if there are people reading this who could help make it happen. Some kind of cooperative, perhaps? Somebody already in the hosting business, with PHP and MySQL skills, but no WordPress t-shirt yet?

    Please, if anyone has any thoughts, suggestions or draft business plans… stick a note in the comments, or drop me an email.

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