There’s plenty of WordPress-powered online properties in Government right now and some very busy freelancers building them. For a while now, I’ve been trying to compile a list of useful people, agencies, tools and resources for WordPress, so I thought I’d kick it off here. It’s obviously incomplete, and mention here does not necessarily constitute personal recommendation.
Please add any additions, amendments or feedback in the comments and I’ll amend this post over time so it becomes a bit of a living resource. If you’re an agency/developer and have client permission, I’m happy to add some portfolio URLs to your entry below.
Agencies & freelance developers
- The Awesome Web (Jenny Brown, @jennybee)
- Davepress.net (Dave Briggs, @davebriggs)
- The Dextrous Web (@dextrousweb)
- Harrisment (Jonathan Harris, @harrisment_uk)
- InterconnectIT (not used them, but look pretty specialised – reviews welcomed)
- Popokatea (Laura Whitehead, @littlelaura)
- Public Platforms (Joss Winn & Tony Hirst, @josswinn & @psychemedia – CommentPress experts)
- Puffbox.com (Simon Dickson, @simond)
- Sweet Interaction (Simon Wheatley, @simonwheatley)
- Visudo (Eddie Tejeda, creator of Digress.It – see below)
- We Are Social (@wearesocial)
- The Workshop (Sheffield based)
- Worth Digital (Brighton based)
- Zed1 (Mike Little, @mikelittlezed1)
Worth also joining & asking on the WordCampUK mailing list. More info about WordCamp.
Hosting providers
- Bytemark (seems to assume slightly more command-line savvy than some hosts)
- Eduserv
- WebFusion
- Memset
- uRevised
- I seriously need more options in this category. Please recommend good UK-based WP hosts.
Useful themes & plug-ins
- 40 Free WordPress themes, Six Revisions
- All in One SEO Pack (adds features to improve search ranking of your blog)
- BackupWordPress (automatic backups for a WP install)
- BuddyPress (social network theme/plugins)
- Category Order (lets you drag/drop categories, handy to tweak menu order)
- Commentariat (comment on sections of a document)
- Contact Form 7 (flexible email contact forms)
- Digress.it (formerly Commentpress; comment on paragraphs of a document)
- Google XML Sitemaps (auto-generate Google sitemap.xml documents)
- My Page Order (lets you drag/drop pages, handy to tweak menu order)
- [ Podpress ] (upload podcasts, generate feed, add embedded player to your posts — but mixed reviews about compatibility/support – not a silver bullet for podcasting)
- Post Ratings (add star ratings to posts)
- Sociable (add social bookmarking links)
- Subscribe2 (let users sign up to email notification of new posts – Feedburner also accomplishes this)
- Subscribe to Comments (add tickbox to comment form so commenters get email notification of new comments)
- TinyMCE Advanced (adds extra styling features to normal rich-text editor)
- Widget Logic (switch widgets on/off on different parts of the site through basic logic)
- WordPress multi-user (host multiple WP blogs on one install, a la WordPress.com)
- WP Super Cache (speed up your blog)
Training & tutorials
- Hardening WordPress, WP codex
- see InterconnectIT above, who also offer training
- The complete guide to creating widgets in 2.8, Justin Tadlock
- Learn WordPress at Elstree Studios (1 day, £250 – haven’t used it, but let me know if you do)
- So you want to create WordPress themes, huh? (via Martin Oxley)
- WordPress Template Tags, WP codex
- WordPress.tv
UK Government examples (as of September 2009)
- 10 Downing St
- Audit Commission Newsroom blog
- The Big Care Debate
- BIS Science & Society Strategy
- Defra Food 2030
- Defra Third Sector blog
- Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
- Department for International Development consultations
- Digital Britain Forum
- Digital Policy Blog (COI)
- DFID blogs
- Governance of Britain
- Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact
- JackSpeak – Royal Navy
- Parliament’s News channel
- Power of Information Taskforce Report
- Scotland Office blog
- Wales Office
See also Puffbox’s archive of reports on WordPress use in Government
Great list, thanks.
Another government blog example on wordpress is the dfid blogs http://blogs.dfid.gov.uk and they are on memset – who also host the consultation platform you have already mentioned, and yet another wordpress site, the Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact http://iacdi.independent.gov.uk/
Don’t forget Jenny Brown as a provider or the Governance of Britain as an example.
(p.s. great list)
Thank you both – added.
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Steph, the Government 2010 site is powered by WordPress. OK we squeeze every last inch of capability out of it but it’s WordPress nonetheless.
http://g2010.co.uk
Jeff Peel
Organiser
Government 2010, 22nd October, London
I’ve been keeping a similar list over at Puffbox.com.
A couple of higher-profile examples you’ve missed off:
http://news.parliament.uk/
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/jackspeak/
http://blog.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/
Oh, and please note; it makes Matt Mullenweg sad if you don’t capitalise the P of Press. And we don’t want Matt to be sad.
Jeff – I suspect that’s fighting talk around here, and no doubt SimonD will be along in a second to explain how you’re only scratching the surface of WordPress capability… 😉
Steph – for our part, I’d chuck in Defra’s Third Sector blog, managed by Simon Berry and team, at http://blogs.defra.gov.uk/3rd-sector. On the plug-ins section, I’d add the TinyMCE Advanced, which we’re using (planning to use/whatever) to limit the damage content editors can do – no more underline or font controls! Hosting wise, we’ve been successfully using Zen Internet since our first WordPress blog a year or so ago.
Good stuff, and some things (and people) I’m going to check out almost straight away! Still looking for a magical automated backup system though…
Cheers,
Simon
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For WordPress hosting, I’m pretty happy with eUKhost.
@Jeff – but would it be stretching it a bit to describe your site a government site? A site about government perhaps…
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This is a really helpful list of resources.
There are still a number of people I come across in Whitehall that are nervous about using WordPress as a platform, so it’s useful to pull together the examples of where it has been done previously.
Simon, you are correct – there are some other cracking sites based on WordPress that much more than we do at G2010. Here’s an excellent client site (not government) based on WordPress: http://replify.com
Whitehall Webby – you are correct also. But then again the http://G2010.co.uk team are shameless self-publicists. We want you all to watch on October 22nd.
Jeff
Hi Steph,
Hope people find a lot of use from the resource you’re building here.
May I add TANDOT to your list, a boutique agency providing strategic planning and WordPress-backed CMS solutions with a community and angagement focus?
We’re at tandot.co.uk.
Engagement too.
@jeff – no problem with self-publicists 🙂
You’re only scratching the surface of… etc. (Is that what you were after, Simon E?)
There’s not a lot WordPress can’t do; I hope we’ve (collectively) proven that. But as I wrote on my own blog recently, I think we’re moving from ‘proof of concept’ to sustainable WP-based solutions. That’s why I think Steph’s right to flag up the issue of quality hosting/support. And it’s something I hope to be able to help with shortly.
You missed us!
We’re mostly working with Enterprise and News & Media types, but do anything, really. And I reckon something like http://www.telecoms.com probably pushes WP as hard as is sensible.
And then there’s the stuff we’re not talking about. Yet 😉
Firstly, this is a really useful list.
@Simon Everest – there’s a good plugin to automate backups and provide for easy recovery of your entire WP site content and database:
BackUpWordPress by Roland Rust
http://wordpress.designpraxis.at/plugins/backupwordpress/
Hmmm… not so sure about Podpress being recommended – it is no longer being developed or supported and there are issues with the latest versions of WP. No-one has forked it from what I can see.
Try these for Podcasting:
http://www.blubrry.com/powerpress/
http://cavemonkey50.com/code/podcasting/
very nice article,very helpful
This is really helpful thanks Steph to see all WP-Gov in one place – many thanks for putting it together.
I wouldn’t recommend podpress as it doesn’t not work with the current release of WordPress without serious adjustments. PowerPress from Blubrry, Podcasting and even 1 Pixel Out’s Audio Player currently function well with 2.8.4, but you seem to have listed the one podcasting plugin that isn’t compatible anymore.
WordPress is a magnificent CMS for now. I’m using WordPress for most of my own website.. =)
One to add to your tutorials list:
“So you want to create WordPress themes huh?”
http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/02/19/so-you-want-to-create-wordpress-themes-huh/
A superb tutorial, I’ve almost finished creating my first theme, great fun!
For the list of sites, COI are using WordPress too:
http://coi.gov.uk/blogs/digigov/
And for hosting companies, I can strongly recommend Bytemark, who’ve just started offering a managed service: http://www.bytemark.co.uk
Great list thanks
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