As advocates of openness, we at OFE try to live by our own principles as much as possible. We like to think that openness is not just a vague concept, but a guiding principle that inspires not just the positions we take, but also the way that we work. And this includes the tools we use to communicate online. We have been busy over the past few months brainstorming ideas, testing new concepts and discussing within our community what we could do to offer more transparent, relevant and impactful information about what we do, and today we’re proud to present the results of this process.
A new and improved website
We are rolling out a new website, which you are probably browsing right now. It was built using Free / Open Source Software in the form of WordPress and as before, all content we produce on it is available in CC-BY-SA. Without going into too much technical details, here are some of the new features that you can expect to see :
We like to think that openness is not just a vague concept, but a guiding principle that inspires not just the positions we take, but also the way that we work. And this includes the tools we use to communicate online.
- We’ve completely rethought the sitemap so you can find the exact information you’re looking for more quickly.
- The new site is fully responsive, so it remains just as accessible on mobile devices as on desktop.
- We now have a functioning RSS feed for OFE news so you can read our content with news aggregators.
- We’ve added a bunch of metadata to our library items in the form of categories and tags, making it much easier to find a specific OFE document.
This could not have been done without the help of the great guys at OpenApp, who are also providing us with hosting, and to who we are immensely grateful.
Blogging is back
We have occasionally written blog posts in the past, but as any successful blogger knows the key is in publishing content on a regular basis. So we’ve decided to give it a proper go, and will aim to do a blog post every week or every fortnight. These will be very different in style compared to our press releases – they will be much less formal and won’t necessarily reflect the official OFE position, only that of its author. Another key difference is that blog posts will be open for comments – we think that’s an important part of the process and welcome feedback, questions and diverging opinions alike. We’re also looking into the possibility to have guest blog posts so if you’re interested please get in touch.
All your OFE news bundled in a monthly newsletter
To complement these new tools, we are also launching a monthly newsletter, which will include OFE news items and documents published, as well as an excerpt from our Public Policy Review, a monthly policy monitoring service that is part of the benefits that we offer to our members and partners, as well as to other organisations on a commercial basis. Click here to subscribe to this newsletter.