Hosting the beta of GOV.UK
Design rules are the basis for every decision we have made in the development of the beta of GOV.UK and hosting is no exception. The key design rule is not to be locked in to a single supplier and to...
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Where are those APIs you promised?
All of the editorial content on GOV.UK is available in full via an API. It's the same API we use to communicate between the editorial tools and the apps that produce the pages you see. As I said...
View ArticlePulling the servers' strings
We're already talked about why we chose Amazon Web Services for hosting the beta of GOV.UK, and how we approached some of the decisions that came with it. Cloud hosting gives us the flexibility to...
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Building with APIs
I’m James Stewart and I’m one of the Technical Architects working at GDS. Over the past few months I’ve been mainly focussed on the publishing tools and platform that underpin GOV.UK, and in particular...
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Coding in the open
We talk a lot about Open Source at GDS. GOV.UK is built on open source software and, to a degree, built as open source software. It's a topic we care passionately about because it helps us maintain our...
View ArticleAPIs for all
Update: we've blogged more recently about the current state of APIs on GOV.UK. Last week I talked about GOV.UK's APIs and how we use them to build and monitor the site. Now it's time to say a little...
View ArticleThe software we've used to build GOV.UK
We’ve relied on a lot of software to help us build GOV.UK. From tracking the work we need to do in each sprint to managing the logs produced on our servers, we couldn’t build it without using tools...
View ArticleTools over Content
I've talked before about various aspects of how we build software at GDS, and especially for GOV.UK, but I'd like to take a step back and about one of our early design rules: "tools over content". Many...
View ArticleSharing ideas
At the start of the month I went out to Sebastopol, California, for Foo Camp. It was a feast of good conversations; a great opportunity to share and get feedback on the work we're doing at GDS, and to...
View ArticleWhen is it ok not to open all source code?
This post is now outdated. For a more up-to-date post, see 'Don't be afraid to code in the open: here's how to do it securely'. To meet the Digital By Default Service Standard, digital services have to...
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