As you will be aware we have been reaching the limit on capacity at the existing shared server that the MyCouncillor sites reside on, so have invested in a dedicated server for ALDC. This will give us vastly increased capacity for your websites and avoid any similar problems in the future.

We have already copied the whole system to the server and tested it, but on Monday we need to make the changeover.

What this means for you
- From Monday morning you will not be able to post new material on your websites for a short period (the system will not let you). This will allow us to take an up-to-date copy of your websites and move it to the new server. 

- At the same time we will “tell the internet” where the websites are now hosted. This normally takes effect within the same day and after that happens you will straight away be able to post to your website (and the system will let you do this). The longest that it can take for a new address to filter around the world wide web is 48 hours, but its most likely that the change will happen for you on Monday.

- Visitors to your website will notice no difference. They will be able to visit the site throughout the process - the only difference is that you won’t be able to add new material.

- Site users who “point” another website address (e.g. joeblogs.org.uk) to their site need to do nothing, your address will automatically point to the new server.

- The small number of features that have been temporarily disabled (in particular ward sharing) will then be swiched back on again and we’re back to normal!

Hope this is OK with everyone, it shouldn’t cause too much inconveninece. We’ve deliverately chosen a Monday morning as this is probably a quite time for most people.

If anyone has any problems as the process happens please do let us know straight away.

Many thanks

Tim Pickstone and David Ball - ALDC.

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.

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

Tell us what you think!

The MyCouncillor system is approaching its 1st Birthday this summer, and we are planning a series of updates and improvements to improve the system. So we’d like to know what you’d like to see, from your experience of using the sites over recent months.

Some things are already definitely planned, based on what you’ve already told us. This includes:

- an “online poll” that you can set yourself to ask people a simple question about a local issue
- an “online petition” where people can sign up to a simple petition, which will help us gain more useful email addresses and phone/mobile numebrs!
- an automatically updated “Lib Dem News” page automatically included in the sites

But what else would you like to see? We’re really keen to hear back from site users about what would make the system more effective for you on the ground.

If you could send these to tim.pickstone@aldc.org before the end of June 2008.

Many thanks!
ALDC

Happy Christmas to all MyCouncillor users - hope that you have a good festive season

Just a few things new developments to update you, if you get a spare moment over the holiday period.

Comments: Comments are now turned ON as default on all new “posts” on your websites. 

Bar Charts - there is now a facility to have a “bar chart” on your website 

Videos - we’ve enabled “java scripting” - this has many uses, but one of the easiest is that you can put a Video on your site

New White Theme - we’ve developed a new “White Theme” for those of you who want a cleaner look to your website.  

Comments: Comments are turned ON as default on all new posts. However, to avoid SPAM and avoid abusive language or other abuse a comment has to be “approved” by you before it appears on your website. When you log into your admin section it will say that there are some comments waiting to be approved - click on “comments” and approve or remove as you see fit. Don’t be afraid to have some critical comments - but similarly don’t feel you have to publish rubbish from our political opponents.

You can turn comments OFF on a post, but clicking on the “discussion” tab on the right of the screen and “unticking” comments.

Bar Charts I don’t need to tell you how important bar charts are on our Focus leaflets. “Party X can’t win round here” is one of the most important messages we need to get across to persuade voters that the Lib Dem’s can win round here! Bar charts are now available on the mycouncillor system - go to “manage” then “bar charts” and follow the instructions.

The bar chart will appear underneath your photo and address in (what is normally) the right hand column of your website.

Take a look at the bar chart on Vic D’Albert’s website: (www.vicdalbert.mycouncillor.org.uk)

Please note, that for the moment we’ve only got one line of text above or below the bar chart - so you need to keep it short (e.g. “Conservatives cannot win”) - we’re working on making the text longer which will be of use if you’ve got 4th parties that you need to mention in the by-line.

New White “Theme” We’ve developed a new “white” theme for people who prefer a slightly cleaner and “trendy” (?) look to their website!

The new look can be selected from choosing “Presentation” and then choosing the theme “White 1.0″. If you don’t like it you can always change back!

The basic theme has a Lib Dem bird - see Donal O’Hanlon: (www.donalohanlon.mycouncillor.org.uk)

Or you can substitute your own picture - Tim Pickstone’s chosen a local scene on his site, but you could also choose a campaigning picture: (www.timpickstone.mycouncillor.org.uk)

Video We’ve now allowed what’s known as “JavaScripting” within mycouncillor pages and posts. There are a number of potential uses for this and we’ll be showing you more of these in the coming months. If you’re familiar with how HTML works (HTML is the programming language for websites) then feel free to experiment and let us know how you get on!

For now, a really easy use is the ability to post a “YouTube” video on your website. YouTube (www.youtube.co.uk) is the fairly standard platform for hosting short video clips on the internet. If you look at Richard Baum’s website: (www.richardbaum.mycouncillor.org.uk) - you’ll see that he’s put on the short video made by Nick Clegg to announce his new leadership. To do this you need to put the following code onto a posting - but you need to have “code” selected rather than the regular “visual” tab when you’re writing your post.

Here’s the code:

<object width=”425″ height=”373″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/gzO5G4zb6zo&rel=1&border=1″></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/gzO5G4zb6zo&rel=1&border=1” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”373″></embed></object>

You can do this with any YouTube video (select “menu” when you’re watching a youtube video, then “embed”, then “copy to clipboard” and then paste it into your “code” section of a new post. Why not try making your own video?! Most digital cameras nowardays have a video option, and it doesn’t need to be long. Jamie Luke Dobson (www.jamielukedobson.mycouncillor.org.uk) has made an excellent video of himself to promote his campaign around lighting in a local subway. We believe there are problems with this scripting if you are using FIREFOX as your internet browser. It does work fine in both Internet Explorer (on a PC) and Safari (on a Mac).

Hope this is useful - more on its way to improve the system even more in the new year!

Don’t forget you can look at the 15 most recently updated sites at: www.mycouncillor.org.uk to see what other people are doing with their sites.

Best wishes

David Ball & Tim Pickstone ALDC

Sites of the Month! You might like to look at the following sites to see how the system is being used in different parts of the country.

Martin Redbond (www.martinredbond.mycouncillor.org.uk) is a good example of a site which is regularly updated with local news and information. Mark Foster (www.markfoster.mycouncillor.org.uk) is a good example of an ALDC member who is not (yet!) a councillor using the site to campaign in his local area. Its often easy to forget to use photos in your stories.

Andrew Morris (www.andrewmorris.mycouncillor.org.uk) makes good use of photos on his new site. Lloyd Harris (www.lloydharris.mycouncillor.org.uk) from Herts uses good old Lib Dem “clipart” to good effect on his!

Remember you can see the 15 most recently updated sites on the list at www.mycouncillor.org.uk

Recent Changes

Hit Counter: A “hit counter” has been added to the system so you can see how many visitors you’ve had to your site. The counter records unique visitors each time they visit the site (the whole site, not an individual page). If someone comes back to look again the same day that will be recorded as another visitor. The hit counter can be viewed in the admin screen under “manage” then “hits”. Its quite remarkable how quickly a site can start getting vistitors. Richard Baum (www.richardbaum.mycouncillor.org.uk), who updates his site daily, has so far had 8500 vistors in November - over 300 visitors a day!

Links with Categories: It is now possible to “categorise” your links which, if you have a lot of links, can help make the left hand part of the site less cluttered. Tim Pickstone (www.timpickstone.mycouncillor.org.uk), has done this on his site where links have been divided into “local council”, “personal links” and “useful links”. You can add whatever categories you like!

Making a post “sticky”: Many users have asked us for the facility to make a “news post” stay at the top of the page. This might be useful if you have a very important story that needs to be at the top of the site, or if you want to have a short welcome to your site always at the top. We’d urge you to use this sparingly, as there is a danger that it makes your site look like it is never updated! To do this when you are writing or editing a “post” go to; “custom fields” down towards the bottom of the edit page. In the “key” field write “sticky” and in the value box write “true”, then press “add custom field”, then save your post. We will be adding these new features to the Manual shortly, together with an index page.

What’s Coming Next We’ve got a few changes in the pipeline for the rest of the year.

Comments: Many of you have asked for the facility for “comments” to posts. This is being made available as an OPTION shortly - we’ll let you know when.

Bar Charts: We’re currently working on a “bar chart generator”. Particularly as the election time nears, many people will want to have key election messages on their website, so a bar chart facility (as an option) will be available to put this on your site.

Improved Themes: We’re also working on a new theme based on a cleaner white background, and also improving the existing themes to take account of some of the new facilities. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you need any help getting your site going. Email or phone David Ball at ALDC on 01422 843 785 or email david.ball@aldc.org Good luck with your sites!

The system provides free website for ALDC members:

- eight different templates
- add your own pages
- add news stories
- add photos, videos, clipart
- manage your own links, categories and archives
- websites work for Councillors or campaigners/candidates
- share content with other ward colleagues or across your whole council group

Apply for a site
Sites are available free of charge to members of ALDC. You can apply by filling in the Online Registration Form or download a registration form here. If you are not a member of ALDC you can join here.

Technical Support
Download a current MyCouncillor manual here.