Puffbox

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

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    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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    Signs of life on the left

    There are growing signs of life on the left of the blogosphere. An article a few days ago in the Independent (now displayed inexplicably as a photo gallery?) describes the ‘dramatic impact’ of Sunny Hundal’s Liberal Conspiracy site, launched late last year. (See, I told you.) We’ve had the sale of LabourHome to the New Statesman’s new backer; and conversely, the selection of LabourHome front-man Alex Hilton as Labour candidate in the new Chelsea & Fulham seat (although with the Tories theoretically 30% ahead on 2005’s votes, he needs a miracle). LabourMatters is an interesting attempt to ‘provide Labour news from the grassroots upwards’, aggregating press releases (sic) from ‘councillors, MPs, MEPs, etc’.

    But what’s been particularly interesting in the last few months has been a growing self-assertion. Sunny Hundal led a boycott of Iain Dale’s now annual survey of the top political blogs, calling it ‘at best … an ego-massaging exercise which will inevitably push their own narrative that left-blogs are useless.’ Labour councillor Bob Piper opted out because he felt ‘there have been a few occasions when Iain Dale has been rude and derogatory about the standard of ‘left’ blogs.’ (The boycott wasn’t universally observed, of course.) LabourMatters, a blogger at LabourHome, dismissed the poll as a means of boosting Dale’s own Google ranking, and called for a policy of refusing to link to Tory bloggers. There has been active discussion about LabourHome’s ‘open door’ policy on site membership.

    I guess this is a reflection of the wider political climate. After a long period of broad consensus, there are things worth arguing about. After two rather dull general elections, we’re looking at a real scrap next time. Blogs have earned their place in the political world, and with the stakes higher than they have been in a decade or more, perhaps it’s inevitable that they should become more tribal.

    So it’s especially gratifying to see remarkable things like this: right-leaning Matt Wardman contributing an article suggesting (quite radical) improvements to LabourHome, with a contribution even from Guido Fawkes. In theory, these are precisely the people who should be wanting to see it fail.

    That’s what attracted me to the political blogs in the first place. It was almost there was more that united them than divided them. Opinions naturally differed, but there was a shared belief in the value (or necessity?) of better reporting and debate. Your readers could learn from your great wisdom and insight, and equally, you would probably learn a lot from them too. (I think back to David Miliband’s New Statesman piece 18 months ago about ‘the politics of I Can‘.)

    The left of the blogosphere unquestionably needed to raise its game, and I’m glad to see that happening. Better product on both sides (and in the middle) will lead to better outcomes. As long as it doesn’t result in the loss of the optimism and openness which make it such an intriguing medium.

    (I see there’s an event at the Labour conference ‘to discuss how the ‘Labour blogosphere’ is developing’. Should be interesting.)

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    Two new LibDem websites (Clegg on WordPress!)

    What are political party websites actually for? We’ll see which way the wind is blowing over the next couple of weeks: the LibDems unveiled a new party site earlier this week, ahead of their conference in Bournemouth; and they’ve just opened they’re on the verge of launching a new site for leader Nick Clegg too. The Tories will be relaunching their site before gathering in Birmingham; most of the attention has focused on plans for a new group blog as a complement (or competitor?) to ConservativeHome etc. No word on anything significant from Labour, although that won’t come as much of a surprise.

    The new LibDem site is, I’m told, built on Ruby On Rails; there’s also a bit of Prototype-powered Ajax functionality. It plays things fairly straight: if you’re looking for party news or facts, it’s all there for you. The feel is unquestionably ‘bloggy’, with plenty of RSS icons, a prominent ‘tag cloud’, and (generally) chronological presentation. But it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to inspire, persuade or otherwise stir your emotions.

    Instead, the thrust is towards the local dimension – including nice integration with their excellent Flock Together site of local events, a database of LibDem People (including inbound feeds from their blogs and They Work For You where applicable), and a selection of posts on other LibDem sites/blogs. I note with particular interest the page of Online Tools to help party activists build their own sites, including specific widgets for Blogger and WordPress, as well as instructions for Mambo/Joomla sites.

    On a functional level, I think the site’s a success. It’s easy to take in, with things in logical places. The chronological presentation is becoming a given these days. I love the widespread use of inbound and outbound RSS; I look forward to seeing how this gets used. And subjectively, I like the visual approach. On the down side, there’s a lack of warmth, of personality to it: but there may be a good reason for that.

    Complementing the new party site is a new personal site for LibDem leader Nick Clegg – powered by WordPress ๐Ÿ˜€ (using a customised version of the Revolution theme, and yes, they do credit it). It’s immediately warmer and more friendly: first name terms, bigger and more smiley imagery, comments enabled on the site articles (written, sadly, in the third person), and so on. There’s a prominent ‘Meet Nick’ button, listing his public appearances: a nice touch, although it does invite comparisons with the Tories’ impressive Cameron Direct.

    I note the Flickr, YouTube and Twitter links on the Clegg site are all to ‘libdems’-branded accounts (although not his Friendfeed account: the exception proving the rule, I guess). It’s surely a conscious decision to put this ‘warmer’ material here. And with politics increasingly dominated by the leader’s personality rather than his/her party, it seems like a smart move; I always felt Clegg’s promise to go to court in defiance of compulsory ID cards hinted at a conscious strategy to brand the party strongly in his youthful image. (Clegg’s constituency site remains separate.)

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    COI's contradictory rules on browsers

    Timely, given the release of Google Chrome, and the reopening of the Browser Wars: COI has just issued a consultation document, five months in gestation, on browser standards for public sector websites. Its 15 pages can essentially be boiled down to the following, based on an intriguing 2% rule of thumb:

    17. Browsers used by 2% or more of your users must be supported.

    18. Operating systems used by 2% or more of your users must be supported (although it rather undermines itself later on, demanding support for Mac and Linux).

    19. The two most popular browsers on each supported operating system must be supported.

    20. Browsers and operating systems used by less than 2% of your users may be semi-supported. This means that the content and navigation works but the website might not display correctly.

    Like it or not then, we’re obliged to ensure the content, functionality and display all work ‘as intended’ on IE6 – although there’s no precise definition of what ‘as intended’ means. One would hope for a pragmatic (ie not ‘pixel perfect’) approach.ย  And it sounds like bad news for Opera, whose user base is highly unlikely to pass the 2% threshold, or hold the no2 ranking on any one OS.

    There’s an all too predictable write-up in The Register; Andrew Orlowski opens with the statement that ‘a firestorm is brewing’, and quotes ‘experts’ who say ‘taxpayers will be forced to change their browsing habits and computer setup to accommodate the guidelines.’ I disagree with the first part, and I’m not sure I see the second as a bad thing. It’s entirely appropriate for government to advise people on suitable behaviour where their body’s health is concerned… why not also their PC?

    Orlowski quotes Bruce Lawson of the Web Standards Project – and, as Orlowski neglects to point out, a Web Evangelist for Opera – who apparently said something along the lines of ‘designers should conform to commonly agreed basic standards, rather than browser idiosyncrasies.’ (Shame it’s not a direct quote.)

    Philosophically, I can’t argue with that point. But pragmatically, it can’t work. The browsers are here, on the ground already; and Utopia it ain’t. You can’t tell people unable to use your site with IE6 that ‘hey, it’s not our fault Microsoft didn’t buy into web standards seven years ago.‘ And whilst the latest browser releases are getting closer to standards compliance, the current IE6 market share of 25% clearly shows (as does the 66% of people hitting COI’s own site) that it’ll take a l-o-n-g time for everyone to upgrade accordingly.

    Deep down, I want COI to take a stand on IE6. As I wrote (coincidentally) the other week: development would undoubtedly be quicker, easier and most importantly, cheaper for the taxpayer. A friendly ‘government health warning’ could advise you to upgrade, for this and other good reasons. Others have already set the precedent. But I know such a brave step isn’t likely.

    If anyone from COI is reading this, please consider the following to be my contribution to the consultation process:

    • There’s an inherent problem with the 2% thing. You don’t have to support a browser unless 2% of your own unique users are using it; but if the site doesn’t support them, they won’t be able to use the site anyway. Catch-2%, you might say. Whilst I see the value in the ‘2% of your specific user base’ rule, it may have to be a global assessment of market share.
    • Keep the geeks on board by including an explicit note about web standards, welcoming the progress towards better standards compliance… but acknowledging the reality of current usage levels, particularly as regards IE6.
    • Terms like ‘look as intended’ or ‘major/minor maintenance release’ are too vague to be meaningful. Similarly, there are problems with the get-out clause for beta versions (para 27), especially now Google (with its perpetual betas) is in the game.
    • There’s no recognition of emerging scenarios like the iPhone or Nintendo Wii (over 1m sold in UK). I accept I may be an ‘edge case’ here, but as video becomes increasingly important to the web experience, I find myself using the Wii – and specifically, the big telly in the living room – to browse the web.
    • You simply can’t make an exception for Linux (para 32), or indeed the Mac (para 35). Either the 2% rule stands, or it doesn’t. Grant one exception, and you’ll have countless others making an equally strong case.
    • If you’re specifying operating systems, you might as well go the whole way, and specify particular browsers and versions. This isn’t as impossible as it sounds: the BBC does it. There’s a strong case for the simply ‘contracting out’ the testing process to the BBC, and adopting their rules as the gov-wide standard. They are subject to the same accessibility obligations as any government site.

    The consultation document is here, in universally browser-unfriendly DOC and PDF formats.

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    Speaking at ScotWeb2

    Alex Stobart at the Scottish Executive Government is putting together ‘an informal, bar camp style event allowing participants to listen, network and share experiences with those who have designed and are managing Web 2 services’: and he’s seen fit to invite me up to speak at it.

    ScotWeb2 is a one-day event being held at Edinburgh University’s Holyrood Campus, with backing from BT, on Friday 31 October – long weekend, anyone? It’s already a cracking line-up, with Ross Ferguson (ex Hansard Society, now at Glasgow’s Dog Digital); James Munro from Patient Opinion; Iain Henderson of the intriguing Mydex; and Stewart Kirkpatrick, ex editor of Scotsman.com, now running w00tonomy – ‘Scotland’s first, only and leading content marketing agency’. Oh yeah, and me. Gee, that’s a lot to pack into a single day, never mind a Friday. (And more is promised.)

    There’s more information at Eventbrite, with the ability to claim your (free) ticket; there will be a website at scotweb2.com, but it’s not really ready yet.

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    Full launch for Met crime maps

    Wednesday saw the formal launch of London’s crime maps, which first appeared in beta only a couple of weeks back. Don’t call it ‘1.0’ though: the source code declares it’s actually ‘beta 1.02’.

    As before, it shows areas colour-coded for the rates of ‘burglary, robbery and vehicle crime’, based on comparisons with ‘the average’. Yes, that’s an approach which has its limitations – my favourite being that areas containing police stations tend to rate worst for offences, because of (for example) finding drugs on someone you’ve just taken into the custody suite. But as a first step, it’s surely a good one. There are plenty of legal and logistical issues to overcome before we start putting dots on the map according to offences… and as we all know by now, if you try to sort everything out before going live, you never go live.

    No mention of the total cost in the official press release, but I’ve seen a figure of ยฃ210,000 reported (eg Daily Mail). Given that it’s a fairly straightforward map mashup, using the standard infoWindows and polygons built into the (free) Google Maps interface, I’d be very interested to see a confirmation and/or breakdown of that. Fair play to Boris and his Conservative administration for getting it out the door early; but the next ‘how much did that government website cost?’ argument could be interesting.

    Meanwhile, I see the Foreign Office is doing some map mashing of its own, with a cute (rather than useful) map of travel advice notices for the home nations’ World Cup qualifiers. But crucially, they’ve done it using the free ‘My Maps’ functionality; and it’s offered purely as an external link, not even an embed on the FCO page.

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    The Ministerial blog you don't know about

    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.

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    No extensions, no Chrome

    It was the usual mix of excitement and fear as I downloaded Google Chrome last night: the former to see what Google would do when it had total control of the browsing experience, the latter in case it rendered any of my designs horribly. To be honest, there wasn’t much to report on either front.

    Let’s not get carried away: Chrome is a web browser. I like the minimalist interface (with Vista-esque styling even on XP). The ‘omnibox’ is a great idea, as long as you’re happy with the privacy question. It’s kinda fun – and sometimes a bit frightening – to be able to see how much memory an individual page consumes, particularly if you can recall the days of the ZX81 and its 1K of memory. I’ll take their word on the stability and security features, but (happily) I’ve yet to see any evidence. The automated ‘favourites’ on new tabs is a nice touch, I suppose. But for all this, it’s still just a piece of software which renders HTML, CSS and Javascript into pages.

    Chrome’s main selling point seems to be its improved Javascript performance – according to one test, it’s 2.5x faster than Firefox, and a ridiculous 22x faster than IE7. That’s going to matter in the future, allowing Javascript interfaces to become more complex. But I don’t imagine many websites will feel ready to take things to that higher level for quite some time.

    Will I be switching? No – for one simple reason, and that’s the surprising lack of plugin capability. The help documentation declares:

    Currently, Google Chrome supports the most popular plug-ins necessary to display the Web correctly, including Flash, Acrobat Reader, Java, Windows Media Player, Real Player, QuickTime, and Silverlight.

    And that’s it – which is a problem. Firefox is my do-everything window on the world. I get an alert when new email messages are detected by the Gmail plugin I use. My bookmarks are fed into the browser courtesy of the Delicious plugin. Without these and many others, I’m feeling lost in cyberspace.

    It’s a curious omission, given that Google’s quite happy for developers to write their own Gadgets for Google Desktop and iGoogle. According to Google blogger Matt Cutts:

    Iโ€™m sure that extensions/add-ons are something that the Chrome team would like to do down the road, but the Chrome team will be a bit busy for a while, what with the feedback from the launch plus working on Mac and Linux support. Iโ€™d suggest that you give Google Chrome a try for a few days to see if enjoy browsing even without extension X. A lot of really cool extension-like behaviors such as resize-able textareas and drag-and-drop file upload are already built into Google Chrome.

    So it looks like Chrome won’t be able to give me the online experience I’ve grown to expect, not any time soon. It confirms the theory offered by Shane Richmond yesterday, that Chrome is an attack on Internet Explorer rather than Firefox. It’s for people – the vast majority of people – who don’t know or care about customisation. It will give them a streamlined online experience, with all the plugins they need and no more, within a controlled environment. If you want more, well, you’re probably on Firefox already… and, like me, unlikely to move.

    Quick update: it looks like the new Javascript engine planned for Firefox v3.1 (known as TraceMonkey) is even faster than Chrome. But for me, the most interesting comparison in this new data isn’t between Chrome’s engine and Firefox v3.1’s engine… it’s between XP and Vista. Chrome’s V8 is 30% slower on Vista; TraceMonkey is 20% slower on Vista. I’m no expert, but that doesn’t sound good.

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    Selling free software

    Presenting, in the blue corner, Google’s announcement of its forthcoming Chrome browser – by the medium of the comic book. And in the red corner, Mr Stephen Fry’s armchair chat on the subject of GNU, the movement to create a completely free operating system.

    Both are trying to do something quite peculiar: they want to give you something for nothing, and they feel they have to really push the boat out to persuade you why that’s a good idea. For the record, I’m not sure either is a presentational success. I find the comic book really hard work to read, especially when it starts talking about detailed tech stuff. And much as I hate to say it, Stephen Fry’s video piece is rather dry and a little repetitive. Maybe it needs more Alan Davies. (It certainly could do with better audio.)

    Selling ‘free’ software – normally WordPress, of course – is effectively what Puffbox does. But what am I actually ‘selling’? The manifestation is usually in the form of custom theme design, selection and configuration of plugins, brainstorming of new features and functions, plus a bit of coaching and training. But fundamentally, clients are paying for my experience with the product: knowing what it’s good at, knowing how to make these things happen, and being able to do it more quickly (and hence more cheaply) than they could themselves.

    And as WordPress (well, strictly Automattic) CEO Toni Schneider told the recent WordCamp in San Francisco, it’s a flourishing business. You can’t say that about much these days, can you? But then, as noted on my last piece about Internet Explorer… I really believe the ยฃ0 price tag changes all the rules.

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    Should HMG support IE6?

    I’m on the brink of starting another coding project – a blogging initiative on behalf of another central government department, which I won’t name just yet. And I know how it’s going to turn out, because it always turns out the same.

    Many a true word, as they say, spoken in jest. But the reality is, most coding jobs would take a fraction of the time if we didn’t feel obliged to support IE6.

    I mention this because today, 27 August 2008, is the 7th birthday of Internet Explorer v6. Seven years, people. Yet the latest data from Hitslink shows IE6 still has a market share in excess of 25% – despite the upgrade to v7 being free, despite the availability of better competitors, despite the lack of ongoing support from Microsoft itself.

    But there are rumblings in the industry. Apple’s MobileMe service announced back in June that users would need to be using Internet Explorer v7 (the first major service to do so, according to 37signals). Then, 37signals themselves announced that their entire product line – including the well-known project management tool, Basecamp – would stop supporting IE6 as from this month. They wrote:

    Continued support of IE 6 means that we can’t optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of our customers, and continuing to support IE 6 holds us back.

    It’s an even more compelling case when we’re talking about taxpayers’ money. Is it right for a government web project to cost (wild guess) 20% more than necessary, just because some of its potential users can’t be bothered doing a free upgrade – which, since 93.2% of UK internet connections are now broadband, most of them at speeds of 2Mbps or higher (according to the latest ONS data), should take a couple of minutes, at most?

    It wouldn’t be difficult for sites to do a quick browser detection, then offer links to download pages for IE7 and some other alternatives you might want to consider (Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc). It’s in everyone’s interests, not least Microsoft’s, to make more people upgrade. We’d be open to allegations of ‘nanny state’… but I wonder if the ‘public finances’ argument would win out?