Telegraph Blogs launches on WordPress MU

[davecoveney]

Well, today one of the UK's top papers, the Telegraph, launched its blogging platform on WordPress MU.

It's a nice implementation, still beta, and we helped them a little with it. Not vastly - about a week or so of consulting, some code, and some training was all it took as they had their own staff to do the bulk of the work. But hopefully there'll be work there for us later in adding features and tricks :-)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/blogs/ to see it in action.

And today we also got the verbal agreement on building the portals and themes for a multi-national newspaper group. Bigger job for us, but a sign that WordPress is really getting into the news sector. We've yet to see a major paper go to WP for everything, though I remember a naughty smile breaking out at the Telegraph when I suggested they could.... Who knows what the future holds when the journalists themselves rave about WordPress and prefer it to the clunky CMSs they've had to deal with in the past?

[andrea_r]

Oh hey, that was your fault? ;) Awesome....

[davecoveney]

I'd like to say we had a lot to do with it... but we didn't. We advised on a broad number of issues, did some training, that kind of thing. The real work was down to a developer there called Adrian (I guess I can divulge that) who put in a lot of hours to make it happen.

I think some features have been dropped for the first phase as stuff I expected to see hasn't yet appeared. I guess it's a matter of time though.

[Martin]

Very nice setup! It's good to see some more big name websites taking up WordPress.

[joetek]

Very nice Dave! Always great to see large scale WPMU installs go live!

Congrats on your upcoming contract too! Sounds like things are hopping!

[Jeffro]

The site looks great Dave. I noticed the press release went out the other day :)

[davecoveney]

Press release? Who from?

[Jeffro]

From here:

http://www.globalgold.co.uk/web-host...-19236283.html

I see alot of WordPress based press releases from these guys. They always show up in the Google News alerts.

[davecoveney]

Not sure if that really counts as a press release? And it wasn't from the people doing it - the Telegraph doesn't really need to do press releases, I suppose, being a part of the press :-)

Launch seems to have gone well. Some of the more fusty Telegraph readers are having a field day whinging about it, but that's normal - it's in their nature. I imagine retired colonels in small villages shouting "By jove! Change?! CHANGE?! I say! Oh... oh... NURSE, the green pills please!"

[davecoveney]

Some circular linking here:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technol...legraph-blogs/ - check out the comments!

But looks like I should just keep quiet when dealing with anything to do with mass media :-)

For the record anyone who is following the links on the post should note that the line above was meant light-heartedly.

I'm not sure some of the comments against me are meant light-heartedly, however. It's quite hurtful in a way to see people thinking that this was in some way some kind of chummy conspiracy. It's just... you know, some work. A few days.