There’s a great site for finding social groups in your area called GroupsNearYou.com. Just type in your location or postcode and it shows you what’s close by.
Now you can provide that very same ease of use to your own local blog. I’ve just finished the first phase of a new GroupsNearYou plugin for WordPress. It provides blog owners with a new widget which, once configured, will show the groups in your area.
If you run a local blog there’s a good chance you might be on Twitter, as my some of your neighbours. This creates a ‘back-channel’ that can often go unseen. So in the interests of enhancing local blogs with this back-channel, below is a video which shows you how to add both your own tweets and the results of a Twitter search to your WordPress blog.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please leave them in the comments section below.
Instructions – adding someone’s tweets
In the WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Widgets
Drag the Twitter widget onto the sidebar
Add the twitter account name you want to show
Configure the remaining options to change the display
Click Save
Refresh your blog and you should see the new widget on your sidebar
If you’ve not heard of WriteToThem.com before, it’s a great site by mySociety which makes contact politicians really easy, whether that’s your local councillors or your MP, regional assembly member or MEP.
To make it even easier for readers of your own blog, I’ve just finished the first phase of a new plugin for WordPress. It provides you with a new widget based on WriteToThem.com which will provide an easy way for your readers to get in touch with their politicians.
TheyWorkForYou.com is a great site built by e-democracy charity, mySociety. It provides an easy way for citizens to keep an eye on their MP. You can sign up for e-mail updates whenever your MP speaks in the House of Commons, for example.
So wouldn’t it be cool if you could also put this stuff on your local blog for all your readers to see and keep up to date with? Well, know you can!
I’ve just finished the first phase of a new plugin for WordPress. This first version provides you with a new widget. Once configured, the widget will show the latest activity from your MP and is available both as an addition to your blog for the benefit of your readers but also as a dashboard widget so that you can see the latest updates everytime you log in.
The sites above are only a very small sample of the hyperlocal sites that are out there. For a more exhaustive list please have a look at the excellent Openly Local Hyperlocal Sites Map. We may update this list from time to time but recommend that if you run a hyperlocal site you add it to the Openly Local Map.
