Comments on: Number 10 Downing Street web site

By: What they have figured out at the digital Downing Street « Bente Kalsnes’ blog

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:56:02 +0000

[...] clean site, where it is easy to find things. It is still in beta, almost half a year after it was released, and is running on WordPress (open source software), the same platform as my blog. New Media Maze [...]

By: gloria baldock

gloria baldock — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:14:51 +0000

I have tried to get the press local gonvermentto do some thing about the unfait Council tax band that the press nor the Government respond
I live in Poole with the stinking rich at one end and the very pooor at the other Yet there is no tax Band for the ulti milion houes I pay£2.000 LESsLIVING IN A VERY SMALLHOUSE some distanc fron the seaThey have water frontage and masses of land. We even have to pay in winter to park at the BEACH The local Councils say we should be willling to pay A £1 plus for the privilage The Council Concervative majotiy have had to close a very popular leisure centre becouse they could not afford to subsidise them.Why do mulit millionaires get away with it . toThe Councilors did grant a rise to thereselves of 60% They also have had great benifits from the delvelopers.

Please help the great devide in Poole
When will the poor of Poole gety a fair deal\/

By: gloria baldock

gloria baldock — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:07:59 +0000

I have tried to get the press local gonveremetn to do some thing about the unfait Council tax band that thepress nor the Government respond
I live in Poole with the stinking rich at one end and the very pooor at the other Yet there is no tax Band for the ulti milion houes I pay£2.000 LESs LIVING IN A VERY SMALLHOUSE some distanc fron the seacWe even have to pay in winter to prrk at the BEACH The local Councils say we should be willling to pay A £1 plus for the privilage The Council Concervative majotiry have had to close a very popular leisure centre becouse they could not afford tosubsidise them.Why do mulit millionaires get away with it alOh to be stinking rich The Coucilors did grant a rise to thereselves of £60 tha tsays it all and they have made profit for all the developers.
When will the poor of Poole gety a fair deal\/

By: Jeremy Clulow

Jeremy Clulow — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:16:51 +0000

Using WordPress is a good thing; using WordPress with sloppy code and launching such a presitgious website as a “Beta” is another. Given the reported 6 figure budget there is no excuse for this. The Government has very comprehensive guidelines on standards on its own websites. Have the developers not read them? See:

http://www.webswonder.co.uk/wordpress-release-10-downing-street

By: John Lilburne

John Lilburne — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:12:21 +0000

@ Bobby

Section 508? I’m glad it passes the US govt’s standard but it doesn’t pass the WAI test which is somewhat more international in nature. It also fails WAVE.

By: Bobby

Bobby — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:35:10 +0000

//The site fails all the standard tests of … accessibility.//

Nonsense. I just tested it for Section 508 compliance and it passes.

What they have done, though, is rename all the url’s, so incoming links are now broken. Perhaps the site was designed by the same idiots who did the Electoral Commission makeover?

By: John Lilburne

John Lilburne — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:24:36 +0000

Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, etc.. I guess it ticks all the Web 2.0 boxes. Now here are ten things we didn’t know last week:

1. The Wordpress code needs to be tidied up. The orphaned code comments need to go for a start.

2. The copyright page is a mish-mash of nonsense; it gives permission “to download materials”. Duh, if you don’t want something to be downloaded then don’t put it on a public Web server, a device made specifically for that purpose.

3. It also gives permission to “establish hypertext links to this site”. Duh again. No permission needed, it’s the WWW.

4. The site fails all the standard tests of valid code and accessibility despite claims of “aims to achieve overall compliance”. Improve your aim, Gordo, because you didn’t even come close to a bronze medal on this one.

5. It seems to claim copyright for all the material which would surely include Wordpress, a GPL licensed application (and no doubt the associated plugins). Busted.

6. The Wordpress theme used for the site claims to be “adsense ready” so can we expect related Google ads for cheap ID cards and scrapped hospital IT systems soon?

7. The design enforces horizontal scroll bars at 800×600 pixels. Not good for usability. I can’t begin to imagine what it would look like on a mobile

8. The typeface selections are weird to say the least. In a font-family, Arial is not a substitute for Times Roman and Sans Serif is not a substitute for Georgia; amateur-hour style sheet howlers.

And is the choice of Georgia as the typeface for the headers a subtle dig at the Russians? I think we should be told.

9. A beta site. Ho ho ho, more Web 2.0 coolness. Official publications that represent the nation’s image to the world shouldn’t be tested in public. Can we expect to see the Queen opening Parliament in a half-finished dress so that her loyal user base of 60m subjects can contribute feedback about the sewing? Displaying pages with unformatted content just looks plain amateur and not Web 2.0 Cool.

10. Continued on Page 94…

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:15:57 +0000

Not those crazy Russian Sp@*!%~S again, who knows?

By: Harry

Harry — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:58:41 +0000

Hmm — currently down!

By: Watching Them, Watching Us

Watching Them, Watching Us — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:34:13 +0000

All it says is:

Internal Server Error – Read
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Reference #3.1655293e.1218558659.15e3ebda

Is this just the usual Government IT cockup, or is it the result of a Russian or Chinese “cyber attack” ?