Philip John

  • Northcliffe’s Local People: It’s not working, let’s shift the risk

    Good news! Northcliffe has realised that it’s Local People network model is flawed and has decided to try and shift the risk onto naive entrepreneurs instead. Maybe I’m just being optimistic given my well-known loathing of Local People but it’s as if Northcliffe have decided that  receiving £7k for each new Local People site is much…

  • WordPress Author Bio Shortcode v1.2 plugin released

    I finally got round to updating this quick-release Author Bio Shortcode plugin. The main changes are background stuff and making sure it’s compatible with the latest version of WordPress (v3.2.1 as I type). One important feature is that I’ve locked in compatibility only to v3.2.1 and older. If you’re using a version of WordPress prior…

  • WordPress Plugin: Author Bio Shortcode

    I’ve just written a quick and simple plugin. It provides a shortcode which, when inserted into a post or page, will print out the bio of the author as provided in their profile. You can download from WordPress.org now. Any issues/requests, use the comments below.

  • A quick rant about Local People

    Yes I’m biased because I run Lichfield Live which is obviously a competing service but I’m still gonna whinge about Local People. This week Lichfield Live launched a business directory, in part because the alternative is so out of date! Today I’m annoyed because they’ve decided to be all community-hugging and have the residents of…

  • WordPress – can it cope to power a whole council’s main website?

    Thanks for writing this up, Simon! Seeing as I work with the folks at WPMU DEV (who make the Network Theme) I can answer the licensing question… It’s GPL licensed so once you’ve downloaded it you can do as you please within the confines of the GPL, just as you can with WordPress itself. For…

  • Filming Council Meetings: For and Against

    At yesterday’s LocalGovCamp I led a session which attempted to come up with a good round-up of the arguments for and against filming of council meetings. We did a good job and there’s still room for more additions. I’ve used the excellent wrangl.com to show what we came up with and allow the debate to…

  • I commented on Council meetings – blogging and web-casting

    I’ve advised councils on this and found that their main concern is representation – they don’t want the words of councillors or officers taken out of context. When I approached Lichfield District Council about filming their meetings for hyperlocal site Lichfield Live, they welcomed me with open arms on the condition that the video was…

  • Council meetings – blogging and web-casting | Local Democracy

    I’ve advised councils on this and found that their main concern is representation – they don’t want the words of councillors or officers taken out of context. When I approached Lichfield District Council about filming their meetings for hyperlocal site Lichfield Live, they welcomed me with open arms on the condition that the video was…

  • I commented on Arrested for filming a public council meeting

    Excellent deconstruction of events. You’ve strayed from saying anything more than the council and Police “should be ashamed” but isn’t it a bit more serious than that? As more and more community bloggers are attempting to hold power to account shouldn’t the decisions made by the council and Police here be challenged? Otherwise, is the…