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Updates: Support for government publishers

2024

28 October 2024 published amendments

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Updated 'Whitehall publisher accounts' and 'Training' sections to include guidance about requesting training to access Whitehall Publisher.

15 July 2024 published amendments

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Updated 'organisation' section with what to include when requesting a new organisation page.

29 January 2024 published amendments

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Updated guidance about Whitehall Publisher accounts and training. GOV.UK leads and managing editors can request a new Whitehall Publisher account through GOV.UK Support as the 'Writing and Publishing on GOV.UK' training is currently paused.

2023

7 November 2023 published amendments

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Updated 'How your request is prioritised' to reflect clearer definition of small changes (previously 'quick fixes').

3 November 2023 published amendments

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Added information about when and how to request a content service review.

6 September 2023 published amendments

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Added a new section for organisation pages as this content was previously missing

30 January 2023 published amendments

Feedback

Removing out of date reference to 'beta'.

2022

1 September 2022 published amendments

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Added information to the 'Whitehall publisher accounts' section on how to submit a request to reset 2-step verification on a user's account .

20 January 2022 published amendments

Help with content quality

Removing Help with content quality section as GDS no longer spot checks content from other government departments.

11 January 2022 published amendments

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Reworked to make guidance clearer.

2021

10 November 2021 published amendments

How to contact GDS

Clarified under ‘Emergency support requests’ that you can only request emergency GOV.UK support if the public or government is facing immediate and significant financial, legal or physical risk.

24 May 2021 published amendments

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Added a new Brexit checker section in ‘Request a thing’ which explains how to request a new action in the Brexit checker or amend an existing action.

20 April 2021 published amendments

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Clarified rules around requesting a short URL

2020

10 November 2020 published amendments

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Updated the other opportunities to learn information in the 'Training' chapter and added a link to the content community service manual page.

Removed out of date bullet point about requesting a new publishing account in the 'Whitehall publisher accounts' chapter.

2019

27 August 2019 published amendments

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Change in the 'Request a thing' chapter in the 'Organisation or agency name' short URL request section. Short URLs for organisations should usually be words or an acronym (if that acronym is well known).

7 August 2019 published amendments

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Removed references to ‘campaign pages’ as they are no longer available on GOV.UK.

2018

31 October 2018 published amendments

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Changed references to ‘high-profile groups’ to ‘sub-organisations’.

17 October 2018 published amendments

How to contact GDS

Link to emergency contact details on Basecamp removed as this is no longer in use.

26 September 2018 published amendments

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Removed guidance about policies because they're about to be retired from GOV.UK.

7 August 2018 published amendments

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Added guidance to the ‘Request a thing’ section that explains the difference between Whitehall and mainstream content with some examples.

23 July 2018 published amendments

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Added guidance on how to request a topic. Removed guidance on how to request a sub-topic (specialist sector).

14 June 2018 published amendments

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Updated training section - information about summer training review and available GOV.UK training course.

2017

22 December 2017 published amendments

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Added new content on how to request a featured slot on the GOV.UK homepage.

19 December 2017 published amendments

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Updated training section - training is now held at GDS and added the new split advanced content design courses.

5 December 2017 published amendments

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New process for how publishers should request Welsh-language translations from GDS

28 November 2017 published amendments

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Updated training requests section - training will be held at GDS in Aldgate from January 2018.

23 October 2017 published amendments

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Added 3 new content design training courses.

18 July 2017 published amendments

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Removed bullets in blog section about how to run a blog, that information is accessible through the link.

13 July 2017 published amendments

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Added information about managing your organisation's accounts as an organisational admin in the Whitehall publisher accounts section.

2 May 2017 published amendments

National emergency publishing guidelines

Changed heading structure to better reflect the order in which someone following the process would need the information.

Guidance on emergency homepage wording has been clarified and examples of wording are presented more prominently.
General edits for style and clarity - including splitting up long paragraphs, using more plain English and adding numbered steps.

Removed reference to the GDS Operations Manager as this role is now performed by a different team.

Removed link to the Digital Communications Basecamp group, which no longer exists.

Replaced reference to GOV.UK ‘government team’ with ‘Programme team’, which now performs this role.

6 April 2017 published amendments

Where to get help and advice

Expanded this section to include 2 other ways to get content advice, plus a link to the style guide. Also renamed it from 'Government content community'.

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Created a new section: 'Change mainstream content'. This describes how to request a content change in a way that will get it completed more quickly.

14 February 2017 published amendments

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Changed the 'request a thing > campaign' guidance in light of the new campaigns platform.

2016

29 September 2016 published amendments

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Added section on technical support requests

19 September 2016 published amendments

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Removed references to Google analytics training, as GDS no longer run the course.

22 August 2016 published amendments

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Added guidance on requesting a Welsh-language translation of mainstream content

20 May 2016 published amendments

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Updated to include changes to available training

4 May 2016 published amendments

Government content community

Removed information on content clinics as these are not happening at the moment

23 February 2016 published amendments

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Completed section on requesting analytics permissions and reports

3 February 2016 published amendments

Government content community

Content clinics guidance added.

How to contact GDS

Updated standard response times and removed link to outdated PDF.

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Updated to explain what requests managing editors and user managers can make.

2015

29 October 2015 published amendments

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Added section on validating user needs

27 October 2015 published amendments

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Requesting a downtime message has been added to ‘Request a thing’.

28 May 2015 published amendments

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Added information on how to request a change to policy pages.

10 March 2015 published amendments

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Guidance on requesting a blog updated.

12 January 2015 published amendments

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Request a topical event page advice updated.

9 January 2015 published amendments

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Added information on requesting training.

2014

1 December 2014 published amendments

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Added how to request a sub-topic.

Help with content quality

Section added explaining how the Government Digital Service carries out spot checks of GOV.UK content, to help improve content quality.

29 October 2014 published amendments

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Moved the responsibilities section of 'Request a blog' to the Blogging section of the content manual.

6 October 2014 published amendments