Day: December 21, 2015

How WordPress is affecting law firm websites

December 21, 2015 Joyce Varghese Leave a comment Lawyer Tools, Resources

WordPress is identified as the best software in terms of digital publishing and managing content. As of November, the popular management system has reached a notable milestone: it powers about 25% of the internet. Statistically, 1 in 4 websites run on WordPress.

This is due to the ease-of-use. It’s great for people that have blogs, small businesses, personal portfolio sites, and basic retailers. Pool all of that together and it entails a great portion of the Internet.

A recent post by Lauren Nguyen of Pantheon, a website management platform, highlights the broadening applicability of WordPress, drawing on a survey of thousands of agencies in their partner network. “We see a trend of enterprise customers across all industries turning to WordPress. Historically, big companies have relied on proprietary enterprise CMS solutions. However, many are getting wise to the fact that open source CMS can give marketing teams the flexibility and agility they need to iterate and improve faster.”

WordPress is known to be simple to use and navigate through but people still list some issues. It isn’t ideal for complex websites, which characterizes law firm websites. However, earlier this year, WordPress announced that what it calls its “JSON REST API” will be part of its core. This allows the WordPress CMS to interact with basically everything — other sites, other software, other interfaces. Opening up with new possibilities will give WordPress the ability to connect with the more complex website and gain even more popularity.

For law firms, this means that:

1. They would be able to better integrate their publishing efforts.

Large law firms agree that publishing independent digital publications is ideal. They run on building reputations and audiences around that specific niche. Using WordPress API, publishers can pull their blogs onto the main website, and run the blog on a separate website. Using WordPress as an underlying CMS will remain a viable choice.

2. Website development companies can lay a custom background over the top of WordPress. 

In the future, as WordPress advances from being a simple CMS and into a full-featured platform, the traditional interface becomes optional. If a company wants to build a custom interface geared towards elaborate law firm websites over the top of WordPress, they can do so.

Article via Above the Law, December 16, 2015

Photo: W for WordPress via Kristina Alexanderson [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Brazil suspends Whatsapp for 100 million users

December 21, 2015 Abby Shulman Leave a comment Business, Citizen Justice, Court, Government, Privacy, Social Media

Brazil’s government recently banned the Facebook-owned communication service Whatsapp for 48 hours after the company refused to hand over user data to authorities. Whatsapp is used by 100 million Brazilians, many who prefer the app to standard texting and calling. As a result, the ban was met with outrage. Some called for the impeachment of Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff; others immediately switched to an alternative messaging service, Telegram.

Law enforcement has been in conflict with Whatsapp for months due to Facebook’s refusal to hand over user data from a suspected drug user. The irony, however, is that Brazil condemned the NSA in 2013 after Edward Snowden exposed the surveillance agency’s data collection practices.

In a 2013 speech to the U.N., President Rousseff asserted, “My government will do everything within its reach to defend the human rights of all Brazilians, and to protect the fruits borne from the ingenuity of our workers and our companies.”

Following Snowden’s leak, Brazil even committed to a $185 million project to construct a fiber optic cable transporting data to and from Portugal while bypassing the United States, so that U.S. authorities could not intercept information. U.S. businesses were prohibited from participating in the project.

In response to the suspension of Whatsapp, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: “I am stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp.”

Article via Washington Post, December 17, 2015

Photo: Visita de Dilma Rousseff via La Moncloa Gobierno de Espana

[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]