NewMediaMaze announces the launch of the new official site of the Prime Minister’s Office, Number 10 Downing Street website, which can be found at number10.gov.uk.
The new site is a complete departure from the previous website, being much less text heavy and with a stronger focus on news from Number 10. With a brief to simplify the design and the ease with which the site can be updated, the decision was made to launch the new site using WordPress as a publishing platform. In addition to its ease of use and customisation, WordPress will also ensure the Number 10 site continues to feature prominently and immediately in search engines.
New Media Maze’s expertise of working with WordPress includes building the Arena Magazine web site on the same platform in recent years. New Media Maze handled the design, build, usability and porting of all data from the old to the new web site. Security and accessibility were also key considerations during the build.
Whilst number10.gov.uk retains much of its popular educational and historical content from the previous site such as ‘Prime Minister’s In History’ and ‘History of Number 10’, the new site employs a fresher design and simpler layout with the main navigation categories being News, Communicate, Meet the PM, History and Tour and Number 10 TV. The homepage features news from Number 10 and includes an initial video greeting from the Prime Minister.
As well as the latest news, Number10.gov.uk has a key emphasis on video and image content, this can be seen on both the ‘Top Story’ box on the homepage, which can be used to house either a video or an image, and through the new video channel, ‘Number 10 TV’. The site also pulls on Number 10’s feeds from Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.
Using the conventional reverse chronological structure of a blog, the site provides users with an easy search platform to find recently published content along with the freedom to search specific dates using the calendar search tool, and topic-specific content using the tags added to the posts.
New Media Maze’s Adam Phillips, who managed the project along with Jimmy Leach, Digital Director of Freuds at the time, adds “The new site provides a simple and effective means of updating and browsing the latest news from Downing Street. This has been an exciting, landmark project to work on. We’re really proud of the outcome and excited to see how users receive the new site”.
