October 2010

In October we completed the second phase of the new Consumer Focus website.  Earlier in the year we made the move from an external proprietary content management system to a WordPress system managed in house by CF Labs.  The second phase of work involved a complete restructure of the content and a refreshed website template.

As with the new CF Labs in September, we used WordPress 3.0 and built new templates for each of the Consumer Focus Nations (GB, Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland).  New areas were created for advice, policy work and publications.

We launched the site just in time to hear rumours that Consumer Focus was to be abolished in the Government’s “bonfire of the quangos”.  It turned out that the rumours were true.  The intention is to transfer some of our functions to Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland.  Even now, 4 months later, we still don’t know exactly when or how this transfer will happen.

November 2010

November was a quiet month – mostly spent finalising work on three projects that were due to launch before the year came to a close.

At the end of the month we launched the second phase of the Consumer Focus Energy Price Comparison (EPC) Service.  The EPC acts as a mini-price comparison system and gives you a rough idea of the price to expect when shopping around for an energy supplier.  Consumer Focus inherited this system from our predecessor Energywatch.  Earlier in 2010 we’d shifted the system to a new data supplier and rebuilt it so we could manage it in house to save money.

The second phase of development involved producing a brand new front end to make the system easier to use.  We gave it the CF Labs treatment and integrated it with the Consumer Focus website design.  We cleaned up the code, added a bunch of features and created bookmarkable URLs for every search.

Coming up…

• Community post offices
• Rating energy suppliers

As this recap covers such a long period of time, I’ve split it across several posts. First up is July, August & September.

July 2010

Throughout July I spent time working on the recently launched StayPrivate.org website.  As users sent in feedback we evaluated and tweaked the interface to reduce problems.

August 2010

As with July, plenty of time was spent evaluating and implementing changes to StayPrivate.org following user feedback.  Late in the month we blogged about some of the issues users were having and the reasons behind them.  We also launched a revamped FAQ to answer as many of the common questions as possible.

A large number of other projects also took up time during August –all of which launched before the end of 2010.

September 2010

In early September we launched a new website for CF Labs to showcase our work and host our blog.  The existing website included a heavy focus on ideas for potential future projects but we decided to change the focus to projects that had already been completed.

As the CF Labs site was built using WordPress, we developed a new template to take advantage of all the new features added into WordPress 3.0.  We used Custom Post Types to provide a page for each of our projects which includes an introduction to the work and associated images. We also used tags to show the latest three blog posts related to each project.

Also in September I stumbled across a fantastic open-source tool (Tweet Nest) for creating a searchable archive of a user’s tweets.  In the past, I’d used various methods to create such an archive but none of them worked as well as this.  You can see a working example using my tweets at http://tweetnest.daibach.co.uk.

I’m considering using this tool to create an archive of tweets from the various Consumer Focus twitter accounts.

Coming up…

• Launch of new Consumer Focus website
• Consumer Focus is abolished
• Comprehensive Spending Review
• Comparing energy prices

In line with guidelines for civil service and other public sector employees, I will be curtailing my blogging and tweeting activities until after the election. If I do post anything, it won’t be about work.

You can view copies of the guidelines on the Cabinet Office website.

To find out more about the UK General Election and the voting process, take a look at the Electoral Commission and Parliament websites.

* Photo Credit: Houses of Parliament, London, UK from Isofarro (Flickr)

I always have high hopes for the evenings – maybe go to the gym (and make use of the membership that is dutifully being taken out of my bank account every month), maybe finally get around to doing the blogs I keep meaning to write, maybe getting the Govilon history website finished.  However, by the time I get home, I’m always so tired, these things rarely happen.

I think part of the problem is the commute – an hour and a half each way.  If the traffic is good, I can do the journey to Cardiff in just over 45 minutes, but at peak times it takes up to an hour and a half.  The train is just as bad – always overcrowded and now that we’re well into winter it is frequently late.

Just before I went away on holiday, I worked some extra hours to cover for a workmate on paternity leave.  This meant I was getting into work an hour earlier than usual, and leaving an hour later.  The difference in the traffic was amazing.  I could leave the house at half 6 and be in the office for 7.  Leave the office at half 6 and be at home by 7.30.  Just the half hour difference in the morning gave me a whole extra hour at work.

When my colleague is back in the office, I’m going to try and move my hours so I start earlier and leave earlier.  Maybe then I might be able to get through some of the things I want to do in the evenings.

So, here is a quick – and completely uninteresting – update:

July
- Attended Charlie’s graduation and graduation ball
- Went to an extremely wet Global Gathering in Stratford-upon-Avon
- Worked full time at a web development company in Cardiff as I have for every summer since Y10

August
- More working at said web development company

September
- Charlie & I spent a few days in Paris
- I moved into my new place in Swansea
- Charlie moved into her new place in Cardiff
- Discovered that the university had pretty much forgotten about our course and we had to organise it all

October
- Finished organising the course – although many important details still haven’t been sorted out
- Lots of boring university work
- Lots of web development work

November
- Even more boring university work
- Lots more web development work

So, as you can see, it’s been a pretty boring few months with lots of work but nothing particularly interesting happening. Never the less, I am intending to get back into the habit of blogging regularly.

Hopefully my next blog entry should be a bit more interesting.

I really can’t be bothered to write more than a few lines for entries at the moment – then again, don’t think anyone is reading it anyway! I might write a bigger entry tomorrow if I have the time.

Oh, on another note – I noticed that my update the other day somehow broke my website feed so apologies to anyone reading this on Facebook – you might have been spammed with several entries at once!

Of course, you can always tell when I am supposed to be revising for exams, my website gets a makeover.  I’ve also split the media section into Photos and Music, just because the section was getting rather large.  This is only stage 1 of my plans for this site though.  The next stage involves: a better homepage that includes the blog and latest photos; refreshed content in the links / feeds sections; and actually adding content to the current projects areas.  After this is done, I am planning on converting the website to ASP.NET.

Anyway, should really get back to revision, well, maybe later.

Blwydden Newydd Dda x