That must be a record time between posts. From October 2006 to July 2007. I’ve got a cheek…
Never mind, we are back on the starting blocks and here is a report on action do far…
Launched a new site in October then I more or less went to sleep for 6 months. A lot of ‘bedding in’, a lot of discovering limitations of new system and so on. But now we are fairly settled and we have just the usual problems:
- Content not being updated
- Business don’t even get web 1.0 let alone 2.0
- Not enough hours
On the upside the project is seen as a success and people actually listen to me when I start rambling on about design and provision and so on. But just last week I kinda woke up.
Yes, this is a good website but it’s a corporate website and that means it’s pretty much dead in it’s current form. It needs to move on already, it needs to become a service website and a publicity website and a networking website. In fact our mission statement says we must:
- Provide money for people to do the work
- Train people to do the work
- Tell members of the public about our work
So at the moment we, like everyone else in PSUK, have one site that kinda covers these things moderately well but certainly doesn’t excel at any of them. And I am just scared that now we have a website that works and people like that we are going to think that that is it – no, it’s time to move forward…
Here is a selection of things that are going to happen:
- I am going to start using e-commerce style campaigning to encourage growth on the public engagement side of the site
- Some media publishing (animations, movies etc) – I have flash skills and I am going to use them!
- Blogging is going to be explored
- I am going to start using 3rd party widgets inside pages
- I am going to look into using our very smart forms package as a way of engaging audiences rather than just taking input
- Exploring the idea of using a knowledge base
So, suddenly I am alive again…web criminals and people who think their shitty corporate site is good enough, be afraid, for I am The Public Sector Web Guy!
