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How Not To Run a Campaign Website
Soong writes "The blogsphere has been going crazy today about the technical difficulties being experienced by the Joe Lieberman for CT Senator web site, joe2006.com. MyDD outlines the story so far and has continuing updates. A reader at DailyKos digs deeper and finds some shamefully exposed ports. A front page story there has the money quote: 'Joe's site shares one server with 73 other sites. They pay $15/month for an overcrowded server, and then they blame others when it goes down?' kos also mentions that 'My hosting bill is now over $7K per month.' While this has immediate consequences for Joe Lieberman's campaign since his site went down Sunday night/Monday morning and the election is today, it makes me curious to see an expose on what exactly we're getting from various vendors when we buy into sub $100/month hosting plans."
The fact that Joe Lieberman couldn't keep his website running is a good metaphor for why he lost this challenge by someone who even a few months ago was a nobody.
I think it's particularly interesting that political websites all across the US have been sluggish and crash-happy for most of the day. The amount of interest in this single campaign (a primary, ffs!) crashed not only Joe Lieberman's site, but forced Kos to run a stripped down front page, completely b0rked the official results page, and has slowed down just about any place with breaking news about this race.
I know it's inane to speak of the Power of the Web. The web's not doing anything; it's just people doing what they've always done - showing curiousity whenever something catches their interest. The difference here is that the medium has changed, and this particular medium has created the ability to generate political clout for those who know how to use it. I don't mean that in the Goebbels 'Big Lie' sense - quite the opposite. This campaign in particular has shown that on the Internet, all lies are shallow. And that's a direct challenge to American Politics as it's practised today.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
No -- it really doesn't take a lot to put up a website. It doesn't even take any kind of admin at all -- competent or no. Just like they'll let anyone with a basic driver's license rent and drive a 26' cargo truck, they'll let anyone with a credit card buy a domain name and rent server space. Is it a good idea? No. Does it happen? Constantly.
...of course, blaming these problems on the opposition is SOP for any politician's minions these days, it would seem.
$15 is high-budget stuff for a lot of these folks. (Heck, I have several domains sitting on an old Pentium Pro box on a friend's static-IP DSL connection. Websites can be -- and are -- done on the cheap all the time.)
I find it quite easy to believe that using such a low-end server was an oversight by an underpaid or volunteer staffer who just didn't know better -- or didn't think.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Personally, I have to poo-poo the media on this. The Leiberman's website goes down, the liberal blogosphere takes notice and investigates almost in real time. One notable fact uncovered was other domains on the same box were serving pages just fine. This more or less rules out a denial of service which would have brought down the entire machine.
Hours later CNN and others are running stories with the Leiberman campaign accusing Lamont of unethical behavior. Give me a break! What a free pass CNN gives to Lieberman for a late smear. Two sides to a story (i'll accept the premise) perhaps, but one is obviously using the chance (perhaps a 'wired' one at that) for a cheapshot with no time on the clock. Reporters and editors should check with their local geek before becoming such avoidable pawns in a serious contest about the future of the USA.
Fortunately, it appears this didn't push the election.
It mostly is...
Even though I know feeding the trolls is a lousy idea, here I go again..
The reason that this election is such a big deal is that a very senior senator is in a very tight race with someone from his own party. The democratic voters in Connecticut are tired of having Bush's lapdog taking up their seat in the senate. I wouldn't ordinarily throw names like that around, but what else do you call some who's voting record deviates from the President's wishes in less than 1 percent of his votes? If he was smart, he would have switched parties before this election. It's not unheard of, and he'd actually have a chance at winning. His opponent, Ned Lamont, has a lot of big groups behind him, including MoveOn.org. Lieberman is so afraid of losing his seat that they brought out the big dogs and had Bill Clinton campaigning for him in Connecticut. This is not your average race.
You may be right about the democrats saying 'goodbye to '08' though. This race definitely shows that democratic voters are tired of the democrats attempting to be republicans. Democrats, and even republicans, that want to win this fall will need to go against the President and distance themselves from him.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
So here are a bunch of loyal Democrats that turn to Sen. Lieberman's website in order to show their support, get tips on registering/voting, donate some time or money, even. The site is 'friend-dotted', and what does Joe do?
Does he move site to a better server? Does he upgrade the hosting plan? No, he turns to his base and says (paraphrasing here) Fuck you assholes for crashing my website; you all hate me; the other guy is a jerk that sicced yall on my tubes. Then he demands Lamont cry 'I am not a thief' over the incident.
I am not a Democrat, but I am amazed at how Sen. Lieberman keeps biting the Koolaid base hand that feeds him.
I guess if you give fuck you to your base, the base lobs that fuck you right back at ya. Hence his loss today.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Democrats saw Leiberman as too close to President George W. Bush, not necessarily the Republican party.
Yes, but Democrats tend to see the entire Republican Party as too close to President Bush, also.
gerrymandered districts (which is a serious cancer on democracy spreading throughout this nation so _wake up_)
Oh, I'm awake. But as long as the power to define districts belongs to the people who have the most to lose or gain from redistricting -- and also the power to change the laws that say who has the power to define districts -- how is anything going to change?