mycouncillor update August 2008
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
