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I wanted to build an atomic counter to keep metrics of site visits and actions. Originally I started storing all the log messages and I was going to write some queries to summarise it. However, I decided that I didn’t need all the underlying data, at least not in this format, it’s stored elsewhere, so…
Content Management, Information Governance, Information Architecture, Content Models… People throw around these terms all the time and for many the use of “Content” and “Information” are almost synonymous. But actually they’re different and here I’ll give you some simple definitions.If you asked the editor of a newspaper or website what was the difference between information…
Can you use Drupal as a document repository? There’s no reason why not and in fact it has many benefits. I was lucky enough to be invited to give a talk at the Drupal Show and Tell in London last week where I described a recent project we’ve delivered. This was for a Local Authority…
The Government Service Design Manual (https://www.gov.uk/service-manual) is a useful resource of managing your digital projects. If you’re familiar with Agile methodologies and some of the DevOps principles you’ll probably find that it covers the same ground. However it is very well presented and written in clear non-jargon terms so it’s worth a look. The only…
I was lucky enough to attend the AIIM Forum London this week. In many ways though it felt like the ECM market hasn’t really changed over the last few years. But is ECM actually holding back Digital Transformation?From the sessions Sharepoint is still the default for Document Management, and it still ends up a mess…
You can’t get away from Agile these days, it’s everywhere. I sometimes put my Local Gov hat on and go to events where you get surrounded by Agencies telling you that Agile is the best thing since Mr. Hovis started wielding a knife. They make out that it’s some secret which only they know and…
The third part of my AWS Primer covers the AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) which is a key component of the platform. For anyone who’s planning to do the certification there are likely to be a lot of questions about it.When I was learning it I decided to draw myself a diagram covering all the…
S3 is the Content Repository of AWS. Technically it’s called an Object Store but it amounts to the same thing. It’s a way of storing your files (objects) in a secure manner with encryption and version control. Below is a diagram with my notes on S3 and there’s a link to a PDF version as…
Below are my notes on the AWS service Route 53. Route 53 is the AWS DNS service. It’s named after port 53 which is the DNS port. Route 53 is not a regional service it is set up on the Global region only. It’s more commonly used for public domain names but can also be…
I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Local GDS workshop held, last Friday, at the Government Digital Services (GDS) headquarters in London. The workshop gave a great insight into the Standards developed and being used by the GDS team and led to many discussions about whether they could be applied to Local Government….
