Puffbox

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

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  • WordPress named best free CMS

    I’m amazed that .net magazine is still going at all, never mind that it’s reached its 177th issue. The focus moved from consumer magazine to industry journal a long time ago, and it’s well put together. But the six quid cover price still came as quite a shock.

    To their credit, they made the right choice when producing an article on how to ‘choose the best free CMS’ this month. Quite rightly, they drew no distinction between ‘blog’ and ‘proper CMS’ solutions; and quite rightly, they ranked WordPress top of the list, with a five-star review – although the feature’s conclusion was ultimately ‘horses for courses’.

    In the last couple of years, the WordPress platform has surged in popularity, partly due to a mistake by Six Apart in how it licensed Movable Type. It has great community support and is frequently updated. Recently there have been some concerns about how secure it is, but the recent release of WordPress 2.5 has seen significant improvements. *****

    Whilst I remember the fuss about Movable Type’s licensing, I’d personally suggest WordPress’s popularity is more down to the fact that it’s such a great tool in its own right. If that had been such an issue, you’d have expected a resurgence for Movable Type after they went open source with v4 – but I’ve yet to notice it.

    A few years ago, I’d probably have seen this as a fantastic endorsement by a high-credibility source. But since I no longer see print as having any greater credibility than online, it barely registers a blip. Mind you, I can imagine myself using the words ‘five-star review’ in my next few pitches.

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    @WordPress Happy Birthday!

    Five years ago today, a new blogging platform was released to the world for the first time. WordPress was the successor to b2/cafelog, itself launched in June 2001 – and indeed, it’s amusing to review Cafelog’s readme from 2002, which describes many of the very same functions I’m using on a regular basis. WordPress launched with a redesigned admin interface made ‘as simple as possible, and no more’; and streamlined presentation templates ‘with the latest in simple, easy-to-understand standard XHTML and CSS’.

    Five years on, it’s these very same qualities which make it – in my view – such an important piece of code today.

    I can’t stress enough how much WordPress means to me. I started just over Puffbox just over a year ago, with the intention of doing mainly advisory work, and rarely getting my hands dirty. But it soon became obvious that WordPress was a platform I could work with. It took care of the ugly, complicated stuff I knew I didn’t understand, letting me get on with the top-layer stuff I knew so well. And it offered users a front-end which allowed them to do virtually everything they (really) needed, without bugging their chums in IT.

    The Puffbox proposition changed overnight. Now I’m now just preaching a gospel of open source-led, low-cost, high-speed site development, I’m able to actually deliver it myself.

    People come to Puffbox looking for two things. One: rapid development of small-scale websites, which can be managed without an IT department. Two: larger websites with ‘blog-esque’ or ‘2.0’ features as standard – community, comments, inbound and outbound feeds, etc. And invariably, WordPress is equal to the task.

    I often reflect on the line from psychologist Abraham Maslow: ‘If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail.’ Maybe there are better or neater ways to do what I do. Maybe smarter or more experienced people would do it differently. All I know is, people like what I’m delivering. It’s fast, it’s cheap and it works – often better than the million-quid solution they hate dealing with. And it’s all because of WordPress (plus a basic knowledge of PHP).

    To Matt Mullenweg and the gang: thank you.

    PS: I’ve finally got round to signing up for the forthcoming UK Wordcamp to be held in Birmingham in mid-July. I’ll probably offer to lead a session on what I do, including details of one h-u-g-e project currently in the works.

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    Sky News covers threesome live

    There’s no stopping CoverItLive, the specialised live-blogging app. It’s becoming a regular feature on some of the leading political blogs… and now the Sky News website has arrived at the CIL party, carrying a live three-way interview (you can’t really call it a ‘chat’) with the leading candidates in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election this morning.

    They’ve used it as a pseudo-chat application, which (as I’ve said before) isn’t its optimal use case. It’s a live blogging tool, intended for one individual to post rapid-fire comments, with occasional contributions from readers. Yes, you can use the same functions to deliver a moderated chat function, but that’s really not the point. To be honest, reading back through the chat transcript, it’s really quite hard to follow without the strong leadership of an active moderator/host.

    Still, it’s quite interesting to see the very different approaches to the live chat medium. Lengthy contributions from an eager LibDem candidate, occasionally too eager on the copy-and-paste a few times; mind you, host Martin Stanford did the same a few times. Snappy – almost too snappy? – answers from Labour’s Dunwoody Jr. And (it must be said) very rare contributions from the Tory, who appears to have arrived late.

    PS: I’m just sorry they didn’t invite the Monster Raving Loony candidate, The Flying Brick (?) to participate. My favourite from the list of policies on his website: ‘I will introduce piranha to the river Weaver, this will make fishing a spectator sport. Tourism would be increased tenfold and jobs increased in the Leighton Hospital. I propose a new, world leading, ward opened specialising in fish bites.’

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    Movie critic Kermode takes video-blogs into mainstream

    I’ve always been a big fan of Mark Kermode, movie critic, broadcaster and visiting fellow at the University of Southampton. Prior to podcasting, I would schedule my Fridays to allow me to hear his Five Live segments with Simon Mayo. And yet curiously, I’m not really a movie fan (although I sometimes think I could have been). And besides, I’m now the devoted parent of a toddler. Cinemas are off my agenda for the foreseeable.

    Kermode has one thing in his favour: passion. He really cares about movies, and he’s quite prepared to show it. It’s almost as if that passion is what attracts me, more than the subject matter. It’s the same with Clarkson & co on Top Gear. Since last summer’s floods I no longer own a car, and I don’t get especially excited by them. But Top Gear is must-see TV. (Indeed, as my wife puts it, she loves Top Gear apart from the car bits. That kinda sums it up.)

    So it’s great to see Kermode being the subject of the BBC’s latest blogging project – and, if I’m not mistaken, their first true ‘video blog’. And yes, guess what, it’s great stuff.

    Let’s look at the mechanics of it. The ‘entries’ use the BBC’s embedded video player (which finally works on my system!)… and look terrific in full-screen. They’re limited to 2 minutes, ish… and they’re mostly a fixed camera pointing at his head and shoulders, with the occasional still image or trailer excerpt dropped in for variety. No clever production, no smart-arse video effects, no background muzak. Frankly, nothing you couldn’t do yourself with a dead cheap camera, probably even a half-decent phone, and a YouTube account.

    Why does it work? It’s all down to Kermode himself, once again. A warm and engaging personality, a thorough knowledge of his subject, a sense of what makes a good anecdote. He’s clearly comfortable in front of a mic or camera; he goes in knowing what he’s going to say, but doesn’t seem to be reciting a half-memorised script – or worst of all, reading off an autocue. But mostly it’s his passion, genuine passion. His opinion on what constitutes a good film (almost) doesn’t matter.

    This is the first example I’ve seen of a ‘mainstream’ videoblog which really works (although as Dan Taylor points out, you can arguably trace it back to BBC2’s Video Nation); and it shows the power of video in personal engagement.

    There’s unquestionably a role for this in government and politics, giving MPs, ministers and candidates an opportunity to demonstrate the genuine passion they have for what they (want to) do (in theory). And this is the model they should aim to follow.

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    'It's getting easier, isn't it?'

    There was a sudden chill in the air when I uttered those words in a client meeting this week.

    We’re planning another high-profile WordPress-based website, with ‘mashing’ of RSS feeds from third-party sites like YouTube and Flickr a prominent ingredient. In practice, that means the site’s photo galleries and video streaming have been ‘contracted out’ to the companies recognising as the best in the world. And courtesy of their RSS feeds, we’ll be able to display the latest additions on the site, more or less seamlessly. The main site will be updated automatically, as soon as you upload your image or clip, give or take a slight delay for feed cacheing. And the media items will be available to members of those sites’ communities worldwide, making it easier to find and (theoretically) share.

    My mind inevitably drifted back to the Bad Old Days, and the weeks I spent discussing, writing and reviewing Functional Specifications. I can imagine how long it would have taken, a couple of years back, to get anything like the functionality which Flickr and YouTube offer me, free of charge, in a matter of moments. And for all the risks of using a third-party service, with no formal SLA per se, I’ve yet to see things go any more wrong than any equivalent function you might have commissioned from one of the Big Ugly Consultancies. (If at all.)

    Case in point: It took a couple of hours last week – from a standing start – to decide to use Flickr for photos from the regional launches of NHS future visions, as chronicled by the Our NHS Our Future website, and work out how we might do it. The images are now featuring (automatically, courtesy of Flickr’s tag feeds) in the popups on the homepage map. It makes the whole thing much more personal and human… which is entirely in keeping with the exercise itself. And it’s basically Flickr plus an RSS parser doing all the work.

    Fact is, it’s now outrageously easy to integrate best-of-breed video and photo functionality in any website. The technology is straightforward, and the (lack of a) pricetag means the bulk of the bureaucracy can be avoided. It used to be a case of ‘how would we do it?’. Now it’s more like ‘why aren’t we doing it?’.

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    More Gov live blogging

    There’s no doubt what the hot trend in blogging is: real time, thanks largely (or perhaps solely?) to the superb CoverItLive application/service. And following the apparent success of the Progressive Governance Summit last month, we’ll be seeing another e-government example today.

    More than 80 MDs, CEOs, chairmen and Presidents from big-name global companies, plus a few heads of government (including our own) and various other dignitaries are attending ‘Business Call To Action’ – a London conference, backed by the UK government and UN Development Programme, to talk about what business can do to reduce poverty in the developing world, and get the Millennium Development Goals back on track. It’s quite an illustrious guest list, even if it’s only published in PDF.

    The web component isn’t Downing Street-branded, but it’s being managed by the Downing Street team, with some Puffbox assistance (although most of the work has been handled by someone else). The plan is to run another liveblog of the proceedings, again using CoverItLive… plus a bit of video, and Flickr/Twitter mashing if schedules allow.

    On my last post on the subject, Paul Canning queried the value of liveblogging, in the context of election coverage… and I take his point, in that context. But for something like this, it can provide an excellent channel for colour commentary, or even ‘context sensitive links’: when we did the ProGov event, people were contributing URLs providing additional background on the points being raised, for people who didn’t know the subjects. (Like, for example, me.)

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    Long Term Support for WordPress

    Oops. I wrote this piece yesterday, wishing that WordPress offered Long Term Support for occasional releases, along the lines of Ubuntu. I then get a comment from Mr WordPress himself, Matt Mullenweg, telling me that there actually is a long-term supported release. Here it is for the record…

    The official policy from Team WordPress about software upgrades, as described by Matt Mullenweg last month, is pretty straightforward: when we release a new version, you should upgrade. Like, immediately. But when you’re dealing with the corporate world, where you deliver a project and effectively walk away, it isn’t quite so simple… and I’d personally welcome a Long Term Support approach along the lines of Ubuntu.

    WordPress was built for bloggers: technically literate self-publishers, with some grasp at least of what’s involved in running a website. But as I’ve documented here countless times, and as my continuing mortgage payments demonstrate, comms professionals with no particular IT skills find its convenience, flexibility and simplicity (not to mention the price) equally appealing.

    But the chink in the armour, if you like, is WordPress updates. Corporate projects tend to come with lists of requirements, which push well beyond normal blog-based sites. Normally, these requirements are achievable using plugins or a bit of custom code. But as Matt acknowledges, when an upgrade comes, there’s no guarantee that a particular plugin will work. And even worse, given that most plugins are offered up by volunteers, there’s no guarantee that the plugin will be updated accordingly.

    I’m afraid Matt’s assertion that ‘having a secure site is much more important than the functionality of a single plugin’ won’t really stand up in the corporate context. You’ll ultimately face a decision between a site which might be at risk, but does everything you want; or (to put it provocatively) an under-performing site which still won’t be 100% secure anyway, because nothing ever is. And I’m afraid most marketing or communications people will choose the former.

    There’s also the issue of the high-visibility upgrade notifications in the more recent WordPress releases. Whilst these are fantastic for those of us who run our own server setups, and aren’t scared of the upgrade process, I’ve had several phone calls from clients who are seeing this warning, and panicking (I’d say) unnecessarily. And I can’t honestly promise them that ‘hey, just do it, nothing can possibly go wrong.’

    There is a compromise solution here: and that’s the model of Ubuntu‘s Long Term Support releases.

    There’s a new version of Ubuntu’s Linux package every six months, with a promise to offer product support (ie minor fixes) for at least 18 months. But some of these are designated as having Long Term Support: these come with a promise of three years’ worth of fixes for the desktop version, and five years’ worth for server versions. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never have to do a major upgrade. But it’s a guarantee that the fundamentals won’t change for a considerable period – long enough to put the IT manager’s mind at rest.

    That’s the kind of commitment I’d value as a WordPress ‘developer’. I want to present pitches to clients based on guarantees, not probability. And I’ve seen specific examples of excellent WordPress plugins, perfectly secure and stable in their own rights, which suddenly become obsolete because something changes in the next major WordPress release. Looking back, the changes are almost certainly for the better overall; but not if I’ve built a particular function around a particular plugin which no longer works.

    The v2.5 release of WordPress takes it to a new level of maturity. A policy of LTS releases, ideally via simple ‘overwrite this file with that file’ patching, would signal the product’s readiness to be taken most seriously in corporate environments. And it would make an already strong proposition almost undeniable.

    … and here’s the info about the ‘legacy 2.0 branch’ which is almost exactly what I was asking for. Now, I consider myself fairly well versed in the ways of WordPress, but I’d never even heard of this, and various Google searches yielded nothing.

    I guess my only response would be that the description of the legacy branch needs to be rethought. The word ‘legacy’ (to me anyway) sounds negative; the idea of ‘Long Term Support’ sounds positive.

    My thanks to Matt for correcting me, without making me sound like a total idiot.

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    Liveblogging the election results

    Interesting to note some of the attempts to ‘live blog’ the election results last week – with Guido Fawkes, Slugger O’Toole and ConservativeHome all using CoverItLive‘s fantastic liveblogging ‘app’. Needless to say, there’s significant variation in the tone of each site’s usage.

    Of course, it’s ironic to note both having a pop at Gordon Brown’s leadership when, dare I mention it, it was a Downing Street website – produced by yours truly – which first brought this technology to the attention of the UK political scene.

    Now Iain Dale’s gone a bit CoverItLive-crazy, using it as an ad-hoc chatroom facility. It’s not really what it was intended for, and it’s probably quite hard work for Iain and colleague Shane Greer to moderate, but it does the job I suppose. They’re making good use of the popup polling mechanism, it must be said.

    Correction: It took a heck of a lot of digging to find it, but I discover that ConservativeHome did use the CoverItLive tool back in January. My apologies; a straightforward Google search didn’t reveal it. I’m grateful to Guido for the advice to the contrary.

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    Full-text feeds on BBC blogs

    It’s great to see the long-awaited improvement to the BBC’s blog infrastructure coming fully on-stream. I’m hearing reports of long, long hours being worked this week; and the inevitable post-launch debugging work continues. The Beeb’s Jem Stone describes the full horror, and scores extra points for an obscure Guns N Roses reference.

    But I’ve spotted one interesting development for the ‘bug or feature?’ desk. A few of the Beeb’s blogs are unexpectedly pumping out full text RSS feeds. Not all, it must be said. But as I write this, the feed for the BBC Internet Blog is dropping the entire posting, formatting and all, into the ‘description’ field; the feed for the dotlife blog is delivering the full text, stripped of all formatting, so it renders (in most cases) as a single paragraph. Looking back through the archives I compile as a bi-product of my onepolitics site, it looks like Nick Robinson’s feed was full-text for a brief while, but isn’t any more. Sadly.

    If it’s a bug, guys, please don’t fix it. In fact, let it multiply. Given the problems you’ve had supporting the huge volume of comments, it’s probably in your interests to minimise hits to the blogging platform. Let Google Reader and Bloglines share the strain. And encourage us to actually read more of your stuff.

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    BBC News site: too wide, too tabular

    I’ve given it a fair crack over an extended period, but I’ve reached my conclusion: I just don’t like the redesigned BBC News site. In ‘standard’ conditions, a desktop PC running at 1024×768, it’s clearly an improvement: brighter, more airy, less cramped. But away from the norm, they’ve broken the golden rule of any revamp: don’t make anything worse.

    As any website’s usage data will show, most people are now running a 1024×768 screen resolution. And monitors are just getting bigger, right? Wrong. I have four ‘web devices’ I use on a regular basis, and the two I bought most recently – an Asus Eee (classic edition) and a Nintendo Wii, both of which have sold like hot cakes – don’t operate at the larger resolution. So when I look at the majority of pages on the BBC News site, I have to deal with arguably the Number 1 no-no in web usability: horizontal scrolling.

    (Curiously though, I see the second-level / subject homepages – eg UK or Politics – the page body remains sized for 800-sized screens?)

    What’s infuriating is that (a) for all the BBC’s army of supposed design and usability managers, consultants and experts, nobody considered these widely-used devices worthy of appropriate support; and (b) it doesn’t have to be like that. CSS-based coding using DIVs could allow the site to work ‘well enough’ at 800-width, whilst looking its best at 1024. Instead, the site continues to use TABLE markup for layout, in clear breach of W3C advice dated 1999(!):

    Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control layout rather than tables.

    When I do a coding job, most of my time is spent working with DIVs and CSS, trying to make designs work acceptably across all browsers and all common setups. It’s not fun. TABLEs would be much easier, much quicker and much cheaper for clients. But coding with DIVs is unquestionably the right thing to do.

    The BBC isn’t alone here: the major UK news sites are all – without exception, as far as I can see – forcing screen widths beyond 800 pixels. The Telegraph also uses a TABLE approach; whereas the Guardian and Times don’t. But we expect higher standards from the BBC. And that’s what annoys me most. Like a lot of people, I used to advise that whatever the BBC was doing, we all should be doing too. I don’t feel I can say that now.

    Am I just being too idealistic here? And where does it leave government’s commitment to dated accessibility rules: what’s the point, when sites with receiving many times more traffic – the sites which define the typical UK user’s internet experience – are imposing a contradictory de facto standard? I’d be more than happy to go back to TABLE coding.