Jenny Poole, Head of Digital Engagement

Twitter: @treepixie , email:jennifer.poole@bis.gsi.gov.uk

WordPress: both sides of the story

Steph Gray, Helpful Technology

Twitter: @lesteph , email:steph@helpfultechnology.com

My first html book …

Reminds me of a book

I owned as a child…

Refine policycrowdsourcingtest & develop policy ideas

consultation-public

comments-online surveys

decisionweb & social

media channels

Identify issues

analyse results

and data

policy analysis

foster policy Collaboration

online

implementmonitoringprogress.

evaluationgather evidence

sentiment analysis

Wordpress is a godsend…

But there’s some bits that still scare me…

A quick recap: 3 kinds of digital engagement *

Collaborative drafting and detailed commenting on a document

Crowdsourcing, reviewing and prioritising ideas

Ongoing engagement around a strategy

*all of which have been done at one time or other in WordPress

2008: CommentPress

2009: Commentariat 1.0

2010: The new brief

A WordPress theme for a new ‘hub’ to support engagement around a major new policy launch

1. Social & CMS functionality: blog, document download, comments, links, feeds, email alerts, tweets, embedded content

2. With a look-and-feel that can be tweaked and repurposed for future projects

3. By a non-technical team, without editing CSS, modifying theme files or installing WordPress

2010: Commentariat 2.0

2010: Commentariat 2.0

One theme to rule them all (well, sort of)

Three bits of magic: 1. Multisite

Three bits of magic: 2. Theme Options

Three bits of magic: 3. Widgets

Three bits of magic: (er) 4. Custom Menus

http://lgtransparency.readandcomment.com/

The next phase: Readandcomment.com

Commentariat 2.0 + plugins

Hosting, configuration + maintenance

As much support as clients need

+

+

WordPress 3.0 multisite

+

12 months, fixed price, standard T&Cs

The bits I’m not telling you

• Cut and paste is still f***ing boring

• An engaging site is a tiny piece of the puzzle

• Ultimately, it’s just a WordPress theme (you could achieve 90% of it on WordPress.com)

• It’s easier than building from scratch, but still…

• Not really grappled with GPL implications

• Working out if and how this scales

Worse still (actually, this stuff really is embarrassing)