Week six: LFW hyperfocuses on public institutions, and the new LFW.com is live

Every Friday I write down what LFW actually did that week. Week one, week two, week three, week four, week five.

This is week six, and our email newsletter subscribers see it first.

Sign up if you haven't already, and stay tuned for more updates.

Hyperfocusing on public institutions

This week we made a business strategy decision: LFW is hyperfocusing on public institutions.

• Counties, cities and towns
• Utilities and transit agencies
• Courts and libraries
• Public schools and universities

It comes from five weeks of bidding on government contracts: 36 proposals since mid-September. When a government needs a website, it says so in public, in writing, with a deadline.

The numbers backed it up. A chamber of commerce we bid on in September received 65 proposals for one website, against 5 for its RFP the year before. Of the five answers we've had so far, three were no's from nonprofits and associations.

It also helps our marketing. The classic advice is to pick a niche, and it's true in person too: I used to answer "what do you do?" with a list of nonprofits, arts and culture, professional services and policy institutes.

Now it's "I make websites for governments." Or the longer version: "for governments all over the world."

Besides the United States, LFW has sent proposals to public bodies in:

• Canada
• England
• France
• Norway
• Wales
• Germany (an expression of interest)

An expression of interest is a short first reply asking to be considered. The town then invites the firms it wants to send full proposals.

The new LFW.com is live

The new LFW.com, built around that decision, went live on Friday.

It starts with what residents come to a public website to do, and shows how LFW helps. Here is the homepage before and after.

LFW.com

Before After

Who we serve has a page for each of 15 kinds of public institution, with 21 example sites we built. All of them are fictional, and each says so.

Anyone at a public institution can sign up free. Once we confirm where you work, the account checks your site's uptime every minute on up to five domains.

It also checks up to 25 pages every week.

The sign-up page lists the gift and ethics rules for 56 states and territories, so you can check that a free account is fine where you work.

LFW Academy is live

LFW Academy is free training for the people who run public websites: six courses and 41 lessons, by role.

Each lesson is a short video or an exercise you do in your browser on a working copy of the WordPress screens. No account is needed to start.

The six courses so far:

• Cyber Basics for Public Service, 8 lessons
• Accessible Content Basics, 7 lessons
• Running a Public Website Day to Day, 8 lessons
• Shared Accounts and Offboarding, 6 lessons
• Emergency Notices on Your Website, 6 lessons
• Writing for Residents, 6 lessons

LFW.com in Portuguese

LFW.com now reads in Brazilian Portuguese, alongside English, Spanish, French and Italian. We held it until the new site was translated, so Portuguese readers get the new site, not the old one.

Português is in the language menu at the top of every page.

Why Portuguese: Brazil alone has more than 5,500 municipalities, and Portuguese is an official language in eight other countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.

Two security releases in one day

On Wednesday, PHP and Node.js both released security fixes.

PHP fixed two critical vulnerabilities, known as PHP2Shell.

LFW.com does not run on PHP, so we were never exposed. We used the morning to check our servers anyway and took down an old demo nobody used.

Then we wrote up what we'd do on a site that runs WordPress or Drupal: PHP2Shell: what we checked, and what we'd do.

Governments told organizations what to do that morning, and several in Europe took sites offline. The post collects their advice and offline pages.

Node.js fixed ten vulnerabilities.

LFW.com runs on Node.js, and we ran an affected version. We patched it the same day and checked for signs of exploitation. We found none.

The full account, with times: Node.js Brotli vulnerability: we patched it and found no sign of exploitation.

While both stories were live, a red bar at the top of every page on LFW.com linked to them.

The Weekly Recap, by email

The Weekly Recap now has its own page, and you can get it by email every Friday.

The sign-up is one field. You confirm once by email, and every email has a one-click unsubscribe.

We built the sign-up, confirmation and unsubscribe pages ourselves and send through Amazon SES.

Eleven proposals out

Eleven proposals went out since last Friday's post, plus one expression of interest:

• A community radio station in California
• An airport in England
• A regional planning commission in Virginia
• A school district in Texas
• A village in France
• A park district in Minnesota
• A regional planning board in New York
• A city in California
• A park district in Washington
• A city in Alberta, Canada, for an employee intranet on SharePoint
• A city in Washington, for a new website and intranet
• And an expression of interest to a town in Germany

Four no's

This week we got four:

• The village in France
• A public health district in Georgia
• A legal aid nonprofit in California
• A brand project for a nonprofit in Pennsylvania

Two of the four were nonprofit projects. We won't bid on those anymore, but a Friend of LFW can still ask us for a website, nonprofit or not.

Mimosa Bar at WeWork Rosslyn

Thursday morning, WeWork Rosslyn set up a Mimosa Bar on the 9th floor: muffins, mimosas and a "Must be 21 to enjoy" sign.

Next week

Next week, proposals go out to a regional commission in Georgia, a legislature in the Pacific and a national museum in France.

If you know someone who runs the website for a public institution, I would be grateful for an introduction.