Category Archives: Web design

Why councils shouldn’t run Google AdSense ads

Posted on 25 February 2010 by Adrian Short

Shortly after Nottingham City Council presented at the Google local government conference last year and announced their £15K windfall from AdSense, I took a close look at their site to see what kinds of ads were being served and how … Continue reading →

Posted in Web design | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Worst practice: 10 ways that Sutton Council’s website (still) drives me nuts

Posted on 7 August 2009 by Adrian Short

UPDATE 1 March 2010: Let’s see how the site’s doing seven months after I originally published this article. Someone famous once said that the true definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the results … Continue reading →

Posted in Sutton, Usability, Web design | Tagged , | 11 Comments

Why I’m throwing down the gauntlet to our councils over RSS feeds

Posted on 14 April 2009 by Adrian Short

You’re free to republish this article under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK licence with credit and a link to Adrian Short / Mash the State Today I connected 66 councils to their citizens by making it easy to subscribe … Continue reading →

Posted in Citizenship, Web design | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MPs’ expenses: Forget fiddling the rules, give us live data and real transparency

Posted on 1 April 2009 by Adrian Short

What a squalid mess our system for reimbursing MPs’ expenses is. Whether it’s Mr Jacqui Smith’s much-publicised solo viewing habits, the inevitable confusion among highly-paid, highly-skilled representatives about first and second homes, or the shameless London MPs claiming for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Web design | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

DDAM: Don’t discriminate against machines

Posted on 30 March 2009 by Adrian Short

I’d like to emphasise a point that Emma Mulqueeny has alluded to in her seven principles for digital engagement and which I also made in passing in my previous article on building local news mashups. The web is rife with … Continue reading →

Posted in Web design | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Adding Twitter autodiscovery to your website

Posted on 27 March 2009 by Adrian Short

There are various lists of UK councils which use Twitter floating around. I assume that some are compiled manually and others by screen scrapers. Given that the rel=”alternate” attribute of (X)HTML’s <link> element is already semantically broken by the widely-adopted … Continue reading →

Posted in Web design | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Technosocial scenarios for Sutton: 3: Starting a chess club

Posted on 10 March 2009 by Adrian Short

Brian loves chess but finds it hard to get a decent match with an opponent at his level. He’d love to start a local chess club but doesn’t want to take the risk of setting something up and having too … Continue reading →

Posted in Sutton, Web design | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Technosocial scenarios for Sutton: 2: Street faults

Posted on 10 March 2009 by Adrian Short

Early one Sunday morning, Mark walks to the newsagent for his paper. He almost literally trips over a metal street bollard that has been uprooted from somewhere and dumped a couple of doors down from his house. He scans the … Continue reading →

Posted in Sutton, Web design | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

bbPress forum software review

Posted on 26 October 2008 by Adrian Short

This modern and lightweight forum system from the makers of WordPress might be just enough for your needs. I explore its delights and shortcomings. Continue reading →

Posted in Web design | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

PHP forum bloatware comparison: bbPress, PunBB, SMF, phpBB

Posted on 26 October 2008 by Adrian Short

Four leading open source forum systems compared for bloat and joy. Continue reading →

Posted in Web design | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments