Tag Archive for 'Council Websites'

Yearly Review: 2008/2009

Published
by
Phillip
on Sat January 3, 2009
in Annual and Reviews
. 0 Comments

During 2008:

  • I Moved from the Technical and System Co-ordinator post to Senior Web Developer at Great Yarmouth Borough Council. With the former I was involved in the operation and maintenance of the LED Broadcasting Screens, DMX lighting products and the development and management of some tourism web sites. With the latter, I have technical responsibility for delivering and developing the web services that the Council provides.
  • I assisted in creating a full-time web team to support the online services that the Council provides.
  • I developed my skills and knowledge at an unprecedented rate in a relatively short period of time.
  • I started my BSc (Hons) in Information Communications Technologies with the Open University as well as achieving ITIL Foundation certification. I have also completed a number of short courses related to the Open Text Live Link WCM Presentation Server CMS and the .NET 3.5 Framework.
  • I began the replacement and redevelopment of the corporate web infrastructure and website - this is progressing well and provides an excellent foundation and framework for future developments and online services.

During 2009:

  • Move house!
  • Complete the first phase of the new corporate website, launching a public beta in the first quarter of 2009, prior to going live. I will also continue to develop and integrate new and improved services into the website.
  • Aim to ensure the new Corporate Website starts and remains in the top 10 of Local Government Websites benchmark provided by Sitemorse.
  • Continue my support and development of the Flegg High PE ONLINE website.
  • Continue my personal development through self learning, experience and, if possible, further short courses.
  • Continue my study with the Open University. If possible, I would like to start three, 30 credit courses this year.
  • Continue my Open University Study Journal and write frequent posts about the new corporate website among other posts.
  • Aim to make greater use of Social Media tools, primarily Twitter.
  • Look to implement some GTD methods into my working practice to increase my productivity.
[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]

Corporate Website Redevelopment

Published
by
Phillip
on Mon December 8, 2008
in GYBC
. 0 Comments

Back in September, I blogged about the new GYBC Website Templates and the progress that is being made with the corporate website redevelopment.

The website is a key channel to support the shift of customer contact from face-to-face and telephone contact to the web. In order to aid in the shift, the journey of our customer, findability and accessibility of the site’s content needs to be improved. It can be seen from the Sitemorse Local Government Website Benchmarking Report that the website is not performing to its optimum capabilities and this is one of the drivers in the sites redevelopment and the continual improvement process.

So far, the project has included infrastructure replacement and installation of the latest release of our corporate CMS - Open Text Live Link Web Content Management Presentation Server.

We are currently working on a total redevelopment of the website’s code base, look and feel. The website is being totally recoded to meet the WCAG 1.0 AA standard and will include some new functionality. The redevelopment has been focused around accessibility, usability and findability - this includes improved site search and navigation.

The new site will have a Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) based layout. The presentation, content and behavioural layers will be seperated to aid in future maintenance and development. This also reduces the impact of bandwidth constraints on the site as the CSS’ are cached locally on the client and not reloaded on each page refresh. All the xHTML code is currently validating successfully using the W3C HTML and CSS validation tools as well as meeting all of the priority 1, 2 and 3 WCAG 1.0 automated checkpoints. The templates have been tested in all of the popular user agents as recorded in our analytics data as well as different operating systems and at varying screen resolutions. Different font sizes can be selected by the customer as well as text-only and varying contrast pages managed through the implementation of dynamic frameworks.

The new site will adopt a fixed width design, text-to-speech functionality and improved navigation based around the Local Government Navigation List (LGNL). Customer satisfaction will also be measured with the implementation of Govmetric. Naming conventions will be implemented that will aid in improving the organic search engine optimisation and search results. The content will be no further than three clicks from the landing page, certain information, as such as licensing, will be contained in more than one section. Customers will be advised of services not provided by the Local Authority and redirected to the website containing this information.

The new site is due to be launched next year with a public beta available prior to the go-live.

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]

Weekly Review: Week Ending 28th November 2008

Published
by
Phillip
on Fri November 28, 2008
in Reviews and Weekly
. 0 Comments

This Week:

  • Held a brief meeting with the Head of Physical Education at Flegg High School to discuss the Sports Festival and future website improvements.
  • Provided advice on the implementation of a new departmental website for Flegg High School.
  • Attended Corporate Web Board to advise on progress with website redevelopment.
  • Written 4 blog posts and played around with my new Samsung NC10 Netbook.
  • Developed templates and continued progression towards corporate web project requirements.
  • Worked on integrating our eGMS metadata tool into our CMS.

Next Week:

  • Attending my first online Open University Tutorial - diary posting to follow shortly afterwards.
  • Investigate and resolve a replication failure incident.
  • Testing content authoring tools and undertake version release upgrade on our Corporate CMS.
  • Continue template development for Flegg High PE ONLINE.
  • Continue working on the Web Project.
  • Catch up with the contents of my RSS feeds and OU study sessions.
  • Starting work on my first Computer Marked Assignment and second Tutor Marked Assignment.
[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]

Weekly Review: Week Ending 21 November 2008

Published
by
Phillip
on Fri November 21, 2008
in Reviews and Weekly
. 0 Comments

This Week:

  • Started posting journal entries for my Open University Course. The next will be posted shortly.
  • Wrote posts about the global reduction in spam, Wordpress 2.7 Beta 2 upgrade and my predictions for Google in 2009.
  • Found out that my ReadWriteGov write up is to appear in the next British Computer Society Newsletter.
  • Spent the vast majority of my work time integrating our new corporate website templates into our Content Management System. Dynamic Frameworks have been implemented for content sharing and medium switching for text-only, contrast and print options has been added. Site navigation and breadcrumb is being integrated into the templates. Content page template is nearing completion and landing page is currently being prepared.

Next Week:

  • CMS user roles and permissions will be set and templates finished; continue with the ongoing template development. Investigate integration of our e-GMS metadata tool within the CMS templates.
  • Attend Web Management Board and update on development progress.
  • Prepare for CMS software upgrade and investigate work-flow implementation.
  • Start Part 3 of Block Two of my study, focusing around device-to-device communications and commence working on my First Computer Marked Assignment and next Tutor Marked Assignment.
  • Configure my new Samsung NC10 netbook.
  • Commence redeveloping the Flegg High PE ONLINE theme to include widgets and standards compliant code.
  • Look at Social Media tools for engaging students and prepare for integration of Twitter into PE website.
[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]

Read Write Gov

Published
by
Phillip
on Tue October 28, 2008
in Conferences
. 2 Comments

Tomorrow, a colleague and I will be travelling to Peterborough City Council to attend the first Read Write Gov event, hosted by Dave Briggs. The event takes place in the afternoon and the speaker line up consists of Dom Campbell and Steph Gray, in addition to Dave.

The subject of the conference is something of a personal interest - social media within local government.

Whilst on my two-and-a-half hour return train journey, I’ll have plenty of time to reflect upon the afternoon’s events and activities. I will endeavour to post comments, views etc shortly after.

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]