Slides from a presentation by INN Director of Technology, Adam Schweigert, at WordCamp Philadelphia 2014.

1. LargoA Responsive WordPress Framework
for News Websites
Adam Schweigert
Director of Technology,
Investigative News Network
adam@investigativenewsnetwork.org
Twitter: @aschweig

2. “We, representatives of nonprofit
news organizations, gather at a time
when investigative reporting, so
crucial to a functioning democracy, is
under threat. There is an urgent need
to nourish and sustain the emerging
investigative journalism ecosystem to
better serve the public.”
— The Pocantico Declaration, 2009

3. Today: 86 Members

4. Today: 86 Members
http://InvestigativeNewsNetwork.org

5. The Problem
• Many members have little or no
technology resources
• INN wants to help but we’re a relatively
small organization, too
• Not feasible to provide one-on-one help
to every member
• Most members have websites, but…

8. Our Solution: Largo
• WordPress-based
• Optimized for News Publishers
• Responsive design – Looks good on any device
• Easy to setup, customize and extend
• Curated list of plugins that work well together,
solve common publishing problems
• For INN members: hosted platform that they
don’t have to maintain
• For others: open source parent theme, plugins,
support docs (and soon) paid consulting

9. Benefits
• For Publishers
– Dramatically reduce cost of developing and launching a website
– Remove technical barriers to allow you to focus on content
• For Readers
– Clean, fast-loading, beautiful reading experience on any device
• For Developers
– A robust toolkit for building news websites
• For INN
– Framework allows us to build and launch sites quickly and
provide better support to our members
– Common backend enables new distribution and content
syndication possibilities
– When INN (or a member) builds a new feature we’re better able
to share with the entire network

10. Where We Are
(~1.5 years into the project)
• About 30 sites in our network using Largo
• Around 65 non-INN sites (that we know of) using the open source
version
• New version (0.4) shipping July/August
– More visual, less “newspaper” looking page layouts
– Implementing WP Theme Customizer API to make it easier to preview
layout/design changes
– A number of architecture, performance and security enhancements
• Simultaneously turning our focus to better documentation, training,
scalability
• Beginning to offer consulting to non-members as an additional
revenue stream

11. Example Sites
INN Members
• http://aspenjournalism.org
• http://ctmirror.org/
• http://kycir.org
• http://thelensnola.org/
• http://nmindepth.com/
Non-Members
• http://theuptake.org/
• http://www.sanjoseinside.com/
• http://dohanews.co/
• http://studentreporter.org/
• http://www.yellowstonegate.com/

12. Contribute!
Github: http://github.com/inn/largo
– Other INN themes, deployment tools, docs, etc. at: http://github/inn
– All of our child themes are also open source:
https://bitbucket.org/projectlargo
Use Largo for your own project
Contribute Code (or documentation)
Get in Touch
adam@investigativenewsnetwork.org
(or: largo@investigativenewsnetwork.org)

13. Questions?
Adam Schweigert
adam@investigativenewsnetwork.org
Twitter: @aschweig
Largo
http://LargoProject.org
http://github.com/inn/largo
Twitter: @LargoProject
INN Tech Team
nerds.investigativenewsnetwork.org
Twitter: @INNnerds