When the Liberal Democrats initially came up with the specification for what would turn out to be their Fleet website system, simple bilinguality for the Welsh State and Welsh Local Party sites was a key requirement.
The need helped guide us towards Typo3 as a platform. It was designed for the job, which in this case was to make it simple to build in both English and Welsh languages and switch between them.
We’ve built Fleet for our Welsh sites to offer that option. We’ve worked with a translator and the Welsh Party so that the “scaffolding” of sites automatically translates between pages. However, we’ve also made it easy for site editors to create the rest in both languages – from menu items to full pages and news articles.
Context is also key, and its not just the text that can vary between versions. It maybe that there is a better picture to illustrate the Welsh language version of an article than the one used on the English version. You can change that too. And the descriptive text like alt tags, descriptions and even url click-throughs can also be set by language: brilliant!
We’re regularly asked why we don’t use automatic translation of content blocks from English to Welsh. Answer: it still sounds terrible. An automatic translation will generally give the “flavour” but also be absolutely obvious to a native Welsh speaker. Want a Welsh translation? You need a Welsh speaker!
Three members of the Prater Raines developer team took an epic journey (OK, maybe not epic, but we did have to catch 7 different trains) to Karlsruhe in the Black Forest to bask in the glorious sunshine* at the annual TYPO3 Developer Days conference.
* And a teeny bit of rain, thunder and lightning to keep us on our toes.
We learned about CSS, deployment, testing, time management and upcoming improvements to the platform and we met other TYPO3 developers from around the world.
Since we created our first “Email Your MP” website in 2018, the service has expanded to support multiple organisations but has remained relatively focused on national campaigns. The API behind it has expanded somewhat to include additional MPs, such as those Northern Ireland, but has remained relatively static in terms of scope.
That changed recently thanks to various development requests. Firstly, the Liberal Democrats needed a new version of their postal voting page. Secondly, a new client wished to use additional data, alongside MP contact details, as part of their campaign. The result? Two new API endpoints and changes to our Fleet and WordPress platforms to make use of them.
As Germany moves away from closed source software to a strategy using TYPO3 for all government websites, I joined Jana Höffner and Nikolai Jaklitsch at this year’s T3CON in Düsseldorf to discuss software in government and how Open Source is the only way to guarantee digital sovereignity, foster local talent and create a digital economy.
Prater Raines are delighted that we have been selected to develop “Fleet”, a complete new website platform for the Liberal Democrats.
Prater Raines have been working with the Liberal Democrats since 2002. In that time, we’ve provided up to 300 local party websites through our custom built Foci service. So building on this expertise, we’re excited to be working alongside the Liberal Democrats on Fleet, their next generation website service.