MyCouncillor.org.uk

Update for MyCouncillor Users, October 2008

New Features
We’ve been busy adding new features to the MyCouncillor website system over the summer, which some of you have already noticed and started to use! Here’s the first few:

- Lib Dem News
An extra “Lib Dem News” page has been automatically added to your “pages” on the left hand side of your website. This is a regularly updated feed of national Liberal Democrat party news taken from the national Party. If you’re in Scotland or Wales, you can amend your news feed to feature Scottish or Welsh Lib Dem news instead. To do this, you need to log in, go to “manage”, then “aldc” then “news feed”.

- Lib Dem TV
Also added to your front page is a small video box. This is the current Party video from the Party’s YouTube site. This will be updated regularly. If you don’t want this (or any of the other front page features) they can be deleted in the admin section.

New Templates

Two new “templates” (website designs) have been added to the seven we’ve already produced. You can see an orange version of the site “in action” at:
http://www.adriansmith.mycouncillor.org.uk.
There is also a “green” version:
http://www.anngarner.mycouncillor.org.uk
To change your template - log in, go to “presentation” and choose your new theme. The new themes are called “Stylevantage 1.0″ orange and green. You can change your template at any time.

How To Gudes

  
In September we produced the first in a series of “How To Guides” for the MyCouncillor system. These are on:
- Getting Visitors to your Website, and
- Using Photos

The gudes can be opened by clicking on the above links, or alternatively they are available in the ALDC members website at www.aldc.org.

We hope you find these guides useful to develop your websites - we’ll be producing more in the coming months - but please tell us what subjects would be most useful to you!

Server News
Some people may have noticed that the system had a short period of downtime overnight on Wednesday. We’re really sorry about this, basically the system has been so successful that the orignal technology is having to be upgraded. The good news is that we are moving to a significantly larger “dedicated server” at the end of next week which will mean that this sort of thing doesn’t happen.  This move may mean that for a day we cannot post on our sites, but we’ll let you know in advance.

In the meantime, to reduce the pressure on the system for the next week we have temporarily disabled two features: “ward sharing” of articles (across more than one website in a ward) is only used by a small number of users, but is now temporarily turned off. We’ve also turned off the “top 15 sites” feed to the ALDC website - again this is only for one week.

 I hope that this update is useful for you. In the next month we’ll be telling you about the other new features that we’ve been adding over the summer.

Best wishes

Tim Pickstone and David Ball - ALDC.

Dear “mycouncillor” website user.

Just a few things we need to update you with this Month.

Lib Dem Blogger of the Year Awards
In recent years awards have been given for Liberal Democrat “Blogger of the Year”. Nominations for this year’s events close on 31 August 2008.

The categories for the awards are:
This year’s awards are:
- Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st August 2007)
- Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office
- Best use of blogging or social networking by a Liberal Democrat
- Best posting on a Liberal Democrat blog (since 1st September 2007)
- Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog
- Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year

There’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a good representation of Councillors and campaigners using their “mycouncillor” sites in the awards. So, if you think your website is something to shout about , you can send in your nominations by email to ecampaignteam@libdems.org.uk. You’ve not got long as nominations close on 31 August 2008.

Full details from Lib Dem Voice here

MyCouncillor Updates
Many thanks to the many people who sent in suggestions for improvements that we could make to the system this summer. We have now commissioned this work, and it will be completed in stages over the next three weeks. The improvements that are on the way are:
- a better “hit counter” which better shows who is looking at your website
- a spam filter, which means we won’t be getting so much of that spam annoying us on the “comments” section
- an online “poll” which gives you a list of email addresses of people who’ve participated
- a Lib Dem news feed page (with an option to have this as Welsh news or Scottish news).
- a new page layout for people to choose
- some minor tweaking to various layouts and wording to address a number of issues that people have raised.

We’ll let you know when these come online.

MyCouncillor Hosting Package
Many of you were (understandably) very frustrated with the downtime the system had in late July. We have had a number of discussions with the company that hosts the mycouncillor system, and it seems that we are rapidly outgrowing the original hosting arrangements that we had for the system.

What this means is that we will be moving to a “dedicated leased server” for the system. This will mean a greater level of reliability and better support if anything ever goes wrong. This move will be taking place in September - you won’t notice anything, but it will give us a better starting point for further developments in the future.

Help and Advice
We currently working on the first of two “How to” guides for the mycouncillor system (on Photos and promoting your site). These will be emailed to you, and will also be available at the Federal Conference in Bournemouth.

There is a training session on Councillors websites at Bournemouth (on Tuesday afternoon) where I will be joined by Mary Reid (2007’s Blogger of the Year). We’re also available to give one-to-one advice and support from the ALDC stand in Bournemouth.

If there is anything we can help you with in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact either myself, or David Ball (david.ball@aldc.org) on 01422 843 785.

Best wishes

Tim Pickstone
ALDC Chief Executive
tim.pickstone@aldc.org