GovSite – an update
Whilst looking over dxw’s blog posts recently, I realised it has been some time since we’ve given an update on GovSite.
When dxw last wrote about Govsite we described it as a flexible theme we had developed and made available for anyone to use. GovSite has since come a long way and is now available as a product you can purchase on the Digital Marketplace.
Why GovSite became a product
From our experience, we know not all teams have large budgets or vast resources when it comes to their website. We witnessed this often preventing them from getting the site they needed in order to meet their user’s needs. dxw wanted to help fix this problem and we decided that developing GovSite into a software-as-a-service solution was the way to do it.
GovSite helps you to get a working website quickly as it doesn’t require any development. We’ve added lots of new features to make publishing content simpler and it’s customisable so you can make the site look your own. We host and maintain it on our ISO27001 accredited GovPress platform and provide support for bug fixes and any questions you may have when using it. This means you can focus on creating and publishing engaging content while we look after the rest.
What does it have?
GovSite uses the premium theme that we developed, as briefly mentioned in a previous blog post. To make it easy for users to add and publish content, we also developed some custom content blocks such as ‘banner’, ‘text’ and ‘full width image’ blocks. These are based on the most common page layouts and can be added and moved around the page as needed.
Further to this, we’ve added integrations with popular tools to make managing your site easier. These include EventBrite for managing events and MailChimp for newsletter subscriptions. Publishing documents, such as annual reports, is also easier with the document storage we’ve built in so you can update, version and collaborate on documents.
We used WordPress for GovSite because as a CMS it’s easy to use and comes with different user permission levels to help with editing and publishing content. We also customised the dashboard to provide more helpful information on how to get the most out of the site as well as links to content examples to provide some quick inspiration.
How do I find out more?
GovSite has its own website which gives an overview of all its features. From there you can also check out the demo site which provides an example of many of GovSite’s features in use. You can also find a more detailed specification on the Digital Marketplace.
If you think that GovSite might be an option for you, we’d love to hear from you.