photo credit @dmwmartin

Yesterday was the first ever WordUp Edinburgh meeting, bringing together WordPress bloggers, designers and developers from across Scotland (and a few from northern England too). The event was really well organised by Taryn Wallis and Martin Young, who ensured a wide range of speakers and topics.

What did we talk about?

There were a wide range of talks and discussions. All the session materials and related tweets are now on the Content page (well done to @wpscotland for doing this on the day after the meeting!)

Jim Convey started off the day by telling us how he had used WordPress to learn CSS. He used the Artisteer tool to experiment, but also as a way of rapidly developing a good looking site with minimal effort.

Andy Gilpin and Martin Young spoke about the challenges and opportunities of WordPress in the Enterprise. They threw out challenges to the WordPress community about how to better support enterprise deployments:

• separate security from functional patches
• trusted repositories for themes and plugins – quality assurance and checking – community resource?
• support for legacy releases to slow down release cycle (e.g. Ubuntu model)

Taryn Wallis is a member of the WordPress Theme Review Team, and gave us an overview of how the disciplines and principles set out by that team can help in developing custom themes.  In particular, the Twenty Eleven default theme is a great exemplar to learn from.

photo credit @dmwmartin

One thing that really impressed me was the level of discussion from the whole audience, and this livened up the day. The panel discussion on WordPress in the Voluntary Sector (with Alex Stuart, Mike Little and me) lasted 90 minutes and covered a really wide range of topics. The key point for me was wondering how we as a WordPress Scotland community could offer more services (commercial and volunteering) to voluntary organisations, that could really make a difference. (Funny, no-one mentioned the Big Society!)

We also ran a How did you did that? session, similar to the one I tried at WordCamp Portsmouth UK in July. Advance warning gave the opportunity for a few people to prepare, and I particularly enjoyed the presentation by Heather Burns on incorporating high volume mapping.

Donncha Mac Gloin‘s prediction is that the number of websites will increase (more single-issue or ephemeral sites) and that, rather than managing a few sites, we might end up managing hundreds of sites in one place. Donncha gave some advice on how to prepare and build to that scale.

We’ve all heard of Responsive Design but some of us would find it hard to articulate what it means or how to build a responsive site. Ian MacKay gave an in-depth presentation on both responsive and adaptive design, explaining how this would work with WordPress. In my opinion, this was the best talk of the day.

And, last but not least, Kimb Jones provided an overview of the history and current state of the WordPress theme marketplace, which has dramatically evolved over the past couple of years.

And the buzz?

The whole day again goes to show what we’ve found at WordCamps: WordPress people are friendly, open to learning and open to sharing their experience. People ranged from one of the WordPress founders to people who use WordPress as a personal hobby, and the organisers catered for everyone. One gap – it would be good to hear more from people who are using WordPress for personal rather than commercial reasons. I’ve already thought of a few content ideas for the next one.

A suitable venue?

The venue at Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh was excellent. We had a room in the relatively modern conference centre (next to a glass-fronted room where they carry on teaching autopsies, apparently). The projection facilities were good, as was the wifi. This is definitely a suitable venue for a future WordCamp UK.

And finally…

Many thanks again to Martin and Taryn for their organisation of the meeting, and to all the sponsors for making it possible. Let’s do it again. Soon.

I had a chance to test this out recently. I wanted to take a copy of a live WordPress install, so that I could test a new plugin. It only took a few minutes to clone the site onto my development server. WP Twin moves all the files and database from the cloned site, and sets it up in a new location, re-pointing all the links to the new site.

As anyone who has ever moved a WordPress site before will know, this is much simpler than the manual steps FTPing all the files, backing up the database, editing the database and then iterating through checking that everything works.

Neat tool. I’ll use this more in the future.

The slides from this session are on slideshare:

The discussion covered three themes:

1. How do people use WordPress within organisations?
2. What are the challenges of deploying WordPress within an organisation?
3. How can WordPress evolve to be more effective for internal use?

This is a short summary of the discussion at the session (as far as I remember it) and further discussions throughout the weekend. Do feel free to add your own notes in the comments.

How is WordPress used within organisations?
We reviewed a number of cases where WordPress has been used within organisations. For example I have some experience of using WordPress within a large organisation, particularly to try to foster internal discussion around technology issues. WordPress is a great choice to manage this as it has inbuilt commenting, ready-made themes and is relatively easy to set up and manage.

We also discussed the WordPress-SharePoint interface, and how organisations need to work out how they can use both applications in a complementary way.

What are the challenges of deploying WordPress within an organisation?
The choice of architecture is key. Externally hosted WordPress sites generally run on a full LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL), but introducing this within a Microsoft-based organisation means that the IT operations staff may not have the skills, experience or confidence to support (“What if it falls over at 3am on a Sunday?”). One possible solution we discussed (and was elaborated on in a later session by Andy Robb) was how WordPress could be run on a Windows environment. There are a number of options for this, including the use of the XAMPP distribution (good for development servers) or the Microsoft Web Platform Installer.

Another crucial challenge is user authentication. The common model used by Active Directory plugins is to generate a new WordPress user for each person logging into the WordPress site. This may give rise to maintenance issues when users change role or leave the organisation and their records (including created content) is not cleaned up. There are various theoretical solutions for this, but not many concrete plugins. We therefore wrote a small plugin to identify users from their Apache REMOTE_USER property (linking Apache to our Active Directory domain and groups through directives in the httpd.conf) and this enabled us to recognise people from their Windows logon. This is an area for further work.

Multi-site or single instances. The consensus was that a multi-site instance would be useful for a family of similar sites, although single instances can provide an opportunity to provide a different experience from this standard.

Some plugins are hard-wired to operate within an Apache server environment. We need to build a community of trusted and tested plugins that solve enterprise problems.

Although WordPress 3.2 stopped support for IE6, it is still used by a large number of public sector organisations in the UK (according to The National Archives, 54% of government users in the UK compared with 1% of the general public).  .

Environments. In order to maintain a well-controlled and stable live service, enterprises use separate Development, Test and Live environments, and this is good practice for any WordPress installation. However, as content and configuration are not physically separated within the database, this adds some additional work. A plugin such as WP Twin (mentioned in a later session), or a more rigorous approach to source code control of the plugins and themes directory may help in this area.

WordPress core has regular patch releases but these are too frequent for many enterprises to cope with. Although some enterprises operate a continuous integration model for their own software builds, regression and integration testing of external packages takes time and effort, and most organisations could only cope with a major upgrade every 18 months or so. Could this be alleviated by splitting functional and security releases?

What needs to change?
We discussed that there were three areas where change is needed:

Follow-up from WordCamp UK
Since the session at WordCamp UK, the conversation continued throughout the weekend. Gareth Thompson has now created a site to help us manage that ongoing conversation.

Ben Balter is also working on a Google Summer of Code project to develop a document management plugin for WordPress. This introduces versioning and checkin/checkout functionality to document management using custom post types. Worth keeping an eye on.

This is fascinating. You can see I spend a lot of time travelling up and down to London on the West Coast Main Line. I’ve also had a few days holiday in North Yorkshire. But, unsurprisingly, most of my data is from Glasgow and East Kilbride. At that scale, no big secret.

Some anomalies though – I’ve not been to Worcester, Wakefield, Perth or Hull recently. The data isn’t terribly precise, as it uses triangulation rather than GPS. Or at least that’s my story…

However it is worrying that my iPhone is recording and storing this information without my permission or knowledge, and without adequate protection. Maybe I’d be geeky enough to want this information, and for me it’s not that important if people know where I’ve been, but for anyone in the public eye this must be a security nightmare. I’m glad we know about it now.

In January this year DFID began to publish details of every aid project in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard XML schema. There are now a set of XML downloads referenced from the IATI Registry covering countries, regions and multilateral aid activities, all delivered through a RESTful API, and refreshed every month with up-to-date data. DFID also publish a more human-readable version of this information on the Projects Database on the DFID website.

The Hewlett Foundation are the second organisation to publish in IATI format, and others are following on close behind.

Eating my own dogfood

Owen Barder blogged recently that organisations publishing data should be forced to use that data on their own websites – so that “eating their own dogfood” would drive up quality. As I don’t get the chance to do this at work, I’ve been having a play with the IATI data in my own time. Just for fun, you know.

Here are a few initial prototypes. I will blog implementation details in the next few posts, and include code.

Charting using amCharts

I first saw the amCharts charting tool in ForeignAssistance.gov, the US aid portal. The tool takes XML or CSV data and generate Flash or Javascript charts – pie, column/bar, line, bubble and so on. The tool is very straightforward to set up, and data can be set up using XSL transformation of IATI XML data.

These sort of charts would be useful to:

• get an overview of what a donor is doing in a country
• use as a widget on a site dedicated to aid in that country
• (if aggregated across donors in a country), provide an overview of what activities are considered important
• show past and future aid flows for a country

There are still some challenges – for example aggregating the sectors (health, infrastructure, water) rather than the very granular sectors listed.

See with the charts in action. Use 2-letter ISO codes to look up a country you’re interested in.

Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! Pipes is a tool that enables manipulation of internet data feeds using a set of pre-determined tools. This pipe retrieves the country file for, in this case, Uganda (UG), filters for currently active projects, and produces a list of aid activities matching those criteria.

Note: the IATI schema needs to have the XML directive added at the top to enable it to be read by Yahoo! Pipes.

These tools would be useful to:

• aggregate information for a country from different sources (for example through the IATI Registry)
• mashup using connections between aid projects and other indicators
• transform or filter the data without using XSL

Go on, have a play.

WordPress Country View

In the WordHack at last years WordCamp UK, the WordHack team developed a prototype to import aid data into a WordPress custom posts structure. As the WordHack was based on non-IATI XML, I’ve adapted this for IATI data.

In short, openaid.org.uk allows an import of IATI XML data for a particular country into a WordPress instance, creating a new Custom Post from each IATI activity (aid project), and dealing with DFID’s hierarchical project/component structure. The code regularly checks the data source for updates and creates new versions accordingly.

This could be used by a Civil Society Organisation (CSO) in a developing country to:

• aggregate all donor activities for their country,
• allow citizens to add comments on each donor activity using the WordPress commenting capability, and
• keep track of the changing nature of the projects through regular updates.

Here’s the example site with a very few test projects.

Next steps

These are just a few initial ideas and prototypes. Please add your ideas below, or, if you’re really keen, visit the new IATI Support forum and send in your ideas.

Disclosure: Although I work for DFID, these prototypes were developed in my own time and using my own equipment. Yes, I’m a geek.

Key features of this design, learning some lessons from the Adelaides work:

• Again, the design is a child theme of Twenty Ten. In fact there are only four files in the child theme: header.php, homepage.php (home page template), functions.php and style.css.
• The slider on the front page is Dynamic Content Gallery. I’ve used this in a few sites before and it works well for me. I did have a look at a couple of other sliders (and may update this one) but it is functional and easy to configure through the admin screen. I’m displaying a single Category (unsurprisingly called “Featured”).
• I used Gravity Forms for the contact form again. Liking it a lot.
• And this time I got to use Google Fonts. Very straightforward to incorporate in the site.

And I found out that it is possible to turn on page excerpts in WordPress 3.x by putting the following line in functions.php

add_post_type_support('page', 'excerpt');

The next stage in the evolution of this site is to concentrate on the content and refresh that to say something more about the personality and activities of the church. Now that more members of the church can “see” the design, they are better able to suggest improvements. We’re also hoping to keep the information dynamic by including a “grid” (sorry, some ideas are just too good to leave to gov) to be reviewed by the leadership monthly so that we can prepare material in advance.

Most of the photos on the site are by Jonny Ferry, who has a real eye for detail.

The new home page layout directs visitors to the area of the business they are most interested in, and each area of the business has a slightly separate visual identity (different colours, logos and headers). We’re also working on improving the content and making the site more useful to guests, nursery parents and events co-ordinators.

The key design and technical features of the redesigned site are

• Child theme of Twenty Ten. The theme folder only contains five files plus two CSS files, and uses a lot of the features of TwentyTen including header images and menus.
• Featured images are used to drive the different header images for the different business areas.
• All menus (including those in the sidebar for the different business areas) are controlled by the WordPress 3.0 menu system
• Gravity Forms has proved invaluable to develop simple, usable contact forms for the different business areas
• Introduced some more interesting fonts using font-face declarations (I will one day update to use Google Fonts but I couldn’t find the font I was looking for in their limited list).

I’d be interested in your comments on the design. Fire away!

The WordHack at WordCamp UK in Manchester this year was really exciting. By 4.30 pm on day 2 the team had created a stunning WordPress site that:

• Reads and transforms XML data on DFID aid projects into a format ready for import into WordPress
• Imports the XML into a WordPress Custom Post Type for each DFID aid project, creating new post versions if the source data has changed
• Links comments to the post version, so that someone can view comments in the context of the data at the time
• Displays the data in a clean user interface, focussing on the conversation that people can have around aid projects

User Story
The concept (User Story) of the site is that people (either UK citizens or citizens of developing countries) can view summary details of DFID aid projects, and can start conversations around individual projects. Ultimately, this may be best used for sub-sets of the full 3000-odd projects based around communities of interest, for example by a community within a developing country.

Why WordPress?
The new Custom Post Types in WordPress provide the framework needed to handle more structured data around aid project information. Other core features are the commenting capability, use of categories and tags for classification, and the built-in post versioning system. These would require a significant effort to write from scratch.

Credit to the Team
I was really pleased with what the team achieved, and it builds on work done at the recent Aid Information Challenge. It clearly shows what can be done with government information when the data is provided in a reusable format.

The keys to the success were:

• Shaun Hare‘s organisation was critical. He set up the WordHack wiki page, canvassed for ideas early, and allowed for discussion within the group.
• Getting ideas early really helped, as people could develop the ideas over a couple of weeks, and come to WordHack with a better-formed solution in mind. It also helped to break up the problem into a number of logical components that enabled everyone to do something useful.
• The skill and dedication of the team was phenomenal. Each person chose a different component and delivered something useful, and Chris and Shaun tied it all together on Sunday afternoon.

More details
The technical details of the site are available on the OpenAid project page on the WordCampUK Wiki, and we hope to have a Google Code project set up soon.

Next steps
The next steps are likely to be:

• Add Ajaxy goodness to the front page to allow the most recent conversations to magically appear, Twitter style.
• Make the import plugin generic to allow any XML data to be transformed into the Custom Post Type – possibly by providing a URL for the XML and an XSL transform.
• Create a map based on country data to show where the conversation is happening.
• and many more…

If you are interested in continuing involvement then please follow @openaiduk on Twitter.

Like last year, the main benefit to me was to meet the key people in the UK’s WordPress community (in the flesh rather than just on Twitter). It was great to meet with the key people again (and I was very surprised that lots of people remembered me from last year!).

Here’s what I took away from this year’s WordCamp UK:

WordHack
Efficiently organised by Shaun Hare, this was a fantastic and stimulating experience. I was involved with a team of seven people who developed a completely new WordPress site at openaid.org.uk. This site reads XML data on DFID aid projects, transforms and imports the XML into Custom Post Types in WordPress, with a new theme that presents comments on the aid projects as a live conversation, and ties the comments to the post versions. Read more on the OpenAid project page. Brilliant going for half a dozen people in around 6 hours, and shows the real value of exposing government data for others to reuse.

BuddyPress
Paul Gibbs gave a great introduction to BuddyPress. This is a plugin for WordPress that adds social media and community features (extended profiles, friend relationships, groups, forums and activity streams). It looks relatively straightforward to set up, although there needs to be some tinkering around with existing themes. The most impressive example Paul gave was CycleOregon, which doesn’t look at all like a membership-driven site. I have two immediate uses for BuddyPress, both with an international dimension, and Paul’s talk was a great and timely introduction.

Theme frameworks and theme clubs
Theme development was a recurring (ahem) theme this year, but this time it was focussed on the growth of theme frameworks and theme clubs. Kimb Jones gave a good run-down of the theme club and commercial theme market, and this was followed by a launch of the private beta test for WonderFlux theme framework. This is an area where I need to learn more.

WordPress for the voluntary sector
There is a strong community of WordPress developers working with charities and other organisations in the voluntary sector, providing some innovative solutions. Jason King spoke about some of the opportunities and challenges. One observation was that small organisations use a lot of (commonly cloud-based) apps, and this can be challenging to integrate with, for example, a WordPress membership list. This group has a lot of relevance for my WordPress work.

WordPress in the Enterprise
This was another strong theme, as larger organisations are starting to see the benefit of using WordPress. Dave Coveney discussed outward-facing sites in Big Media and larger Enterprises, but there was no formal discussion about the use of WordPress as a social intranet within organisations (idea for a session next year?). We informally discussed some of the challenges of using WordPress within larger enterprises (of which more in a later blog post).

Will there be a WordCamp UK 2011?
The weekend proved that the WordCamp UK organisation is strong and vibrant.

Unfortunately the conference ended on a downbeat note, when Jane Wells from Automattic casually mentioned that the WordCamp.org organisation would prefer to see city-based WordCamps rather than larger events at a national level, following the practice in the US (although not, interestingly, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden and others). I’m sure Jane didn’t intend to cause the resulting uproar!

Moving to a city-based model could be positive if it fosters a strong local community and those local WordCamps were able to attract experienced speakers from across the UK. But personally I value the broad cross-section of people at a UK-wide WordCamp and would like to see it continue.

I’d prefer to see WordCamp UK continue as a travelling circus, working alongside local WordPress communities to put on this exceptional event in different cities each year, while strong local groups also put on more local or regional events as appropriate. I’ve been trying to make contact with WordPress community in Scotland but there doesn’t appear to be a groundswell of opinion for even a Scotland-based WordPress User Group (if I’m wrong, please do get in touch!).

My most embarrassing moment, caught on camera
At 1100 on Saturday, I was comfortably sat in Room 1 settling in to listen to Jonny on theme frameworks, when I saw a tweet wondering why I wasn’t in Room 2. A minute or so later Gurbir walked through and informed me that I was meant to be running a session on Managing Multiple Instances of WordPress! This was an idea I’d had about 6 months ago, had proposed it on the wiki and had completely forgotten about it. Unfortunately, Mike Nolan was there with his iPhone, capturing my just-in-time session planning on Flickr!

Finally, a big Thanks!
Finally, a big thanks to Chi-Chi Ekweozor, Tony Scott and the other organisers. It was a really successful weekend, and shows that WordCamp UK organisation is strong and vibrant. It will be good to mature further into an organisation that mentors people with different skills and outlooks, and encourages local WordPress communities.