The Wardman Wire

Garbo is away today, so I’ve stolen the slot to write about how the site will be developing.

This blog has gone through 3 stages, from personal blog to group blog to magazine style blog, which came in back in April. From the start we have been in a number of niches, and I want to build on that.

Magazine Theme

The “magazine” theme is settled and stable on the front page now, so the site will developing across a number of “channels” in our different niches - showing up as Tabs on the front page. Each has its own feed:

• All WW: Everything on the blog. The feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/mattwardman
• Comment: Longer, opinion articles. The feed is http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/category/comment/feed/
• Parliaments: Parliamentary reports and politics. The feed is http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/category/parliaments/feed/
• Media: Online Media and Technology. The feed is http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/category/media/feed/
• Regions: Wales, Scotland, Ireland, English Regions. The feed is http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/category/regions/feed/
• Review: Arts, Culture and Reviews. The feed is http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/category/review/feed/
• Campaigns: Campaigns that we are supporting. The feed is http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/category/campaigns/feed/
• Humour: Daily Cartoons, humour, satirical articles and other humour. The feed is http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/category/humour/

All feeds are listed on the Feeds page.

New Developments

There are a few features in already. Here are two:

• I’ve added a Mobile version of the site to the top menu bar. This is a very simple version build using Google reader, but it seems to work. The address is m.mattwardman.com.
• The Daily Papers Front pages are now sorted in format, and should appear each day - with a target time of just after midnight. At weekends they appear in the morning as that is when they are available from Sky. I have added a link to the top menu bar. They appear both on the front pages, and also in

New Contributors

Over time I plan to increase coverage within each of our existing niches. So - after my recent visit to the Senedd in Cardiff, I’m pleased to welcome several new contributors to the site:

• The Cynical Dragon had been blogging at incredible speed for a few months then stopped abruptly. Once he has had a break, he will be contributing here. Iain Dale classified him as left, but he claims that - on the contrary - he is simply right.
• Sanddef Rhyferys has very occasionally written here before, and blogs at Ordovicius. He is a Welsh Nationalist

I’m hoping that these two will be joined by a couple more before long, so that we will end up with a cross-party plus non-aligned team.

I’m also pleased to welcome 2 blogging veterans to be occasional contributors:

• Mick Fealty runs the Northern Irish blog Slugger O Toole, and has some interesting things to say about the use of the Internet to create and reinforce popular democracy.
• Mark Pack is the Head of Innovations for the Liberal Democrats, and is one of the linchpins (and lynch-pins) of Lib Dem Voice.

Wrapping Up

That will do for now. There are more developments, but this piece is long enough already.

The new contributors may take a few days to be up and running, since I’ve got to show them the ropes of how everything works here.