Chris Taggart has just launched a new feature for his OpenlyLocal project which matches the massive wealth of accessible council information with articles from hyperlocal web sites.
Using the well-established pingbacks system used by many blog platforms, including the very popular WordPress, Chris’ site will now show any hyperlocal articles written about a certain councillor alongside other information for that councillor.
Now, don’t get worried about having to understand what a ‘pingback’ is – you don’t need to know. Here’s how it works;
- You write a post about a certain councillor.
- Within that post you add a link (preferrably the councillor’s name though it doesn’t strictly matter) to the OpenlyLocal page for that councillor.
- When you publish your post, your blog automagically tells OpenlyLocal about it.
- OpenlyLocal makes sure that your site is in it’s directory and then adds your link to that councillor’s page.
To test this out, I linked a few recent articles about Lichfield District Council leader David Smith on The Lichfield Blog. As a result, you can see those articles on the OpenlyLocal page for David Smith.
It’s important to note that this also works for councils, committees and meetings. So you can link to the specific council meeting your reporting, or just from general reports about your local council.
So why is this good?
It means that all those articles and posts you write about your councillors don’t just stay in a hyperlocal bubble of your community. It means that your efforts are syndicated and can seen by a wider, interested, audience more easily.
It also means that your readers can follow the link through to OpenlyLocal and see raw information about their councillors and what they’re up to, strengthening the ability of the community to hold their representatives to account. That’s good democracy, folks!
This also represents a move for hyperlocal towards that traditional local paper model of news & information. Of course, at the moment it’s all on the OpenlyLocal site but the hope is that you can replicate a similar connection on your own site, display information on a councillor alongside any articles about him or her by using the yet-to-be-released OpenlyLocal plugin for WordPress. A plugin that will, of course, be pre-built into the Journal Local platform.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, now that’s good! I’ve always thought pingbacks were pretty useless really, but this is a really nice use for them!
Sadly this doesn’t seem to be working on Ning Chris.
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Hugh, that isn’t surprising – Ning isn’t primarily a blog platform and so probably doesn’t use the pingback system. Did you add the link into a blog post, or another area of your site? If you can provide the page where you added the link we can take a look.
Here’s a blog post where Liz linked to Gina Adamou’s OL page – http://www.harringayonline.com/profiles/blogs/secret-diary-of-a-voter-of
Okay, unless Chris has some sort of moderation system in place (which he doesn’t, other than checking the site is in the hyperlocal directory – which you are) it looks like Ning just doesn’t ping other blogs. I’ll make sure Chris sees this and can check for sure.
On another note, have you got any plans for moving off Ning considering their recent announcement?
Hugh
No I had a really good search for any info on Ning & pingbacks, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to set it up. May be able to set up manual ability to submit links to OpenlyLocal. Will have a think
Thanks guys.
We already pay Ning for several “premium” services. If they really hiked the prices, yes we’d move. But a big issue we have is investment of time. The time we’d take moving everything is very off-putting.
I’ve added the ability to manually submit related articles to OpenlyLocal for those who can’t do pingbacks. It still uses the same principles, i.e. it goes and looks at the submitted page, checks that the link is there, and that the page is from an approved hyperlocal site.
It just means that if your site doesn’t support pingbacks (e.g. a home grown website/blog you can still add related links manually.
To add your related link go to http://openlylocal/related_articles/new
One thing to note, if your site requires registration in order to view the post (e.g. protected Ning communities) this won’t work, as the system goes to check whether the link is there and gets presented with a login page.
Thanks Chris. No way of our giving you a sign-in?
I’ve got a personal sign in. The prob that giving a sign-in to the system, would add a huge level of complexity to it (it’s not just the signup you’d have to store for each similar website) but also info on how to fill in the form, etc, etc.