Based on everything I’ve read on Twitter over the weekend, the WordUp Whitehall event in London, England was a success. Think of WordUp as a mini WordCamp. Not quite the large WordCamp event but not exactly a small meetup either. HelpfulTechnology.com has an interesting post available detailing what they took away from the event and stated that contributing back to the project was one of their goals for 2012. Perhaps one of the most interesting and talked about subjects during the event was the UK Government and it’s use of WordPress or open-source products in general.
UK Civil Service Site Switches To WordPress
We (the Digital Engagement team) were tasked with producing a new site at very little cost and within a six week window. To restructure the content to make it easier to find we used Google analytics to analyze typical user journeys. Harnessing user insight will be an iterative process through the ongoing development of this site.
We chose to use WordPress as it offers a simple, quick (with such a short development window) and flexible open source solution to a site primarily designed for publishing content. As such it is easy to use for a wide range of content editors and, of course, provides significant cost savings for maintenance and development. Rather than develop a theme ourselves we chose to use a theme called ‘striking’ developed by Kaptinlin that fitted what we needed with a little customization. – Via Holding the Fort