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."

Comments

No!

[lymond01]

It's a series of tubes. Tangled up tubes. Those democrats went and treated it like a truck...you can't do that! It's not something you can just dump things into. It's just tubes.

Swamped

[grcumb]

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.

Re: Swamped

[Black Parrot]

> 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.

Such a metaphor would seem to imply that his loss was due to cluelessness. AFAICT it's actually because >0.5 of the Democratic voters in CT think he's a Republican in all but name, and wanted a change more than they wanted the perks of having a senior legislator.

Re: Swamped

[Ray Radlein]

I dunno -- it seems to that me not just holding opinions with which the overwhelming majority of your constituents disagree (not only about the war, either, of course -- for instance, his statement that Catholic hospitals should be allowed to refuse emergency treatment to rape victims was even disagreed with by something like 3/4 of the Catholics in Connecticut), but loudly and publically announcing those opinions on national television as often as humanly possible, might begin to fall under the umbrella of "cluelessness."

Re:Swamped

[Ray Radlein]

Interestingly, when the Lieberman web site went down and the initial unfounded accusations started flying, his opponent, Ned Lamont, added a prominent link to Google's cached version of Lieberman's site as a public service to the voters of Connecticut.

Re: Swamped

[rthille]

If I force fed you in a particularly humilitating and degrading way a virus or bacterium which would incubate in you for 40 weeks, causing you health issues, loss of work, even death and a hospital refused to give you a known 'cure', you'd call it a 'treatment' too, rather than just a contraceptive.

buncha saps

[DeadPrez]

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.

Re:Usual Netcraft Info (and no, nobody's dead)

[robdavy]

The Planet is actually one of the largest providers of dedicated servers in the world and has quite a reputation for quality. They're not cheap either - no sub-$100 dedicated boxes from them...

Current text is even more funny

[jawtheshark]

I just clicked on the link and I got the following (hilarious) text:

UPDATE ON THE ATTACK ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE

STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH: "For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman's website and email has been totally disrupted and disabled, we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the US Attorney and the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney and the campaign will be filing a formal complaint reflecting our concerns. The campaign has also notified the State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review."

"We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."

Re:CRAAAAAAAAACK GOES THAT KOOKY DEM PARTY

[aero2600-5]

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

Re:No - that's bullshit

[megaditto]

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.