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📅 Daily Note: October 10, 2025

I newslettered earlier.

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i’ve been enjoying Lloyd’s recent ponderings about blogging.

I’m also really enjoying the way this blog works these days, posting little nuggets that can get pulled into a aggregated post on a daily basis (or when I remember to hit the switch). Each of these ‘microposts’ exists as a separate item in the database, so you could see them all in one place, or even subscribe to the RSS feed for them. Massive thanks again to Steph for making this magic work for me.

I am aware that it’s very link-heavy, and I don’t write much here other than pointing to other people’s stuff. I’d like to write more and reading Lloyd’s stuff has been encouraging!

All this is possible because of open platforms like WordPress and standards like RSS. I don’t really understand what the ‘fediverse’ is, really, but it strikes me that there are two simple things that people need: somewhere to write, and somewhere to read.

I wonder if thing that blogging lacks is what we get with a lot of the walled gardens, which is the that the reading and the writing is in the same place. People like me are happy finding one service to subscribe to blogs in, and another to write posts in. But should WordPress (say) have an inbuilt aggregator? After all, we don’t read and write emails in different apps.

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This blog now has a ‘dark mode’ option – there should be a moon shaped button floating around somewhere on the screen that lets you toggle between the default, rather bright, style; and a much darker, easier on the eyes one.

Very easy to do thanks this WordPress plugin.

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Not come across Digital and Data essentials for senior civil servants before, but it looks a sensible list, and one that could be easily adapted for local government use.

Perhaps as a Skillstats thing? 🤔

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Our daughter Jade took a photo of me to start using on the internet – replacing the rather catfishy one where I have hair and look hopeful. Have spent part of the day updating various accounts and web pages with it.

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Great stuff from Emily Webber on ice breakers.

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📅 Daily Note: September 23, 2025

Building understanding of software markets in local government from the Local Digital team:

We’ve also identified through roundtable discussions and feedback from partners that managing effective procurements and successfully exiting technology contracts is a challenge, particularly where internal capacity or capability is limited.

With local government reorganisation, new unitary authorities will need to consolidate systems, migrate data, and harmonise business processes at an unprecedented scale. This will also impact technology contracts and procurement activities.

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Foundational Specification to support the procurement of social care Case Management Systems:

The Department of Health and Social Care has released a Foundational Specification to support the procurement of social care Case Management Systems (CMSs). Developed in partnership with BetterGov, the Specification is the outcome of a multi-stage consultation process involving a wide range of stakeholders. Its primary aim is to simplify the procurement journey for Local Authorities by providing a clear and consistent guide—helping to reduce the time, cost, and resources required when selecting new CMSs.

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Endel – via Matt Mullenweg – is an interesting idea, offering “[p]ersonalized soundscapes to help you focus, relax, and sleep. Backed by neuroscience.”

I definitely work better when I have the right music playing – but £60 is too steep when i already have Apple Music and a bunch of suitable playlists identified.

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Why WordPress Lost the Cool Kids (And How to Win Them Back):

Here’s what nobody talks about: WordPress is actually modern. REST API, GraphQL, headless implementations, React-based editing. It powers complex applications and handles millions of visitors. But everyone still thinks it’s “just for blogs.”

The platform regularly outperforms competitors on speed, but gets labeled as “slow and bloated.” Enterprise teams at Sony and Microsoft chose WordPress deliberately—these aren’t legacy installations.

WordPress has Full Site Editing and visual builders that compete with Webflow. They just feel hidden behind confusing historical interfaces.

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Another newsletter sent. Am pleased to be getting back into a fortnightly rhythm.

Some delivery issues though, need to have a look at my DNS records to ensure I have them set correctly.

If you’d like to sign up, you can do so!

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It isn’t altogether obvious how to send an email to the attendees of an upcoming Zoom meeting, without exporting their details and sending a normal email, which seems sub-optimal.

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📅 Daily Note: September 9, 2025

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The hidden fundamentals of digital transformation in healthcare: how to roll out nationally in a local system – by Jane Maber on the dxw blog:

There’s no question that the technical challenge is real. Designing digital services that work for a national screening programme in a local environment isn’t easy.  You have to integrate with diverse existing systems, handle local variation and consider patient safety.  Not to mention managing, and often decommissioning, legacy systems alongside.

But what’s become increasingly clear is that technology alone doesn’t drive transformation. As more decision-making power is devolved to Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), national teams can’t assume one-size-fits-all delivery. Success is really all about the people impacted by the new product – the admin and clinical staff who use it, and the screening participants who experience it.

Change doesn’t land just because it’s technically sound. Or even operationally sound for that matter.  It lands because people trust it, understand it, and feel part of it.  So development needs to be done in partnership, and the quality of the relationship with those partners is critical.

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I stopped sending out my email newsletter this year – it lost its place on my todo list in the madness of moving house and so on.

However, am minded to kick it off again, but wanted to move away from Substack for a variety of reasons including nazi-friendliness and increasingly user hostile behaviour.

So, taking some advice Steph gave me a while ago, I’ve moved to Email Octopus, who seem very friendly and the system is easy enough to use. I’ve also changed it to be Localise branded – I’m terrible about marketing my company so thought this might be an easy way of reminding people how I earn a living.

If you’re curious, you can sign up on the landing page.

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Have updated my about page which was very long in the tooth!

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WordPress and email

I’ve been moving a few of the sites that I manage away from a simple shared hosting arrangement onto something a bit more proper, with Steph’s advice (this blog, being incredibly simple albeit with a fairly hefty archive going back to 2004 or something, remains on the shared hosting for now). The new ‘platform’ is made up of using SpinupWP to manage the setup of the servers and WordPress itself, which is all hosted on DigitalOcean, with all the benefits that come from having this kind of control over the environment.

One area that has been causing me some worry is around sending emails out of these sites. The emails that WordPress sends, like password resets etc, can be a bit flakey in getting delivered at the best of times, but to make it more complicated, SpinupWP doesn’t install a means of sending emails itself, you have to configure your own, using an email sending provider like Amazon SES or Mailgun. It sounds complicated – and it is, in a way – but there are plugins and things to make it easier.

I’ve played with a few ways of doing it, but think I have settled on one, that I will now move all the sites onto over time. I’m going to be using the WP Mail SMTP plugin to get everything set up and working, and linking it up with SendLayer to do the actual emailing. When setting these things up, you need a domain to use, and each one needs configuring in SendLayer. To make life easier for myself, I have registered a specific domain to use for this, and so emails will come from sitename@davesemaildomain.notreal, which hopefully will keep things simple.

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