Today is day 257 of this lead news item on the News Page of the Scott County Republican Web Site.
Rick Perry, Herman Cain try to do campaign damage control
Day 257 of that lead post. Useful? Informative?
Continuing the emphasis on timeliness and utility at a glance, the site’s home page features an invitation to the “upcoming” July 10th Grand Opening of the SC Republican Headquarters, a notice now 21 days past its expiration. And no doubt the “2012 Caucus Info” page, also prominently placed, is a big help in relaying information to students, and the media about what the Party is up to.
In fairness, the social media links are more up to date, even if they are, by the medium’s nature, “high-school yearbookish” in features and appearance. We find the emphasis on “social media” wanting as far as presenting a steady, reliable, lasting, searchable, authoritative, resource center and community Internet presence.
Ironically, the same Scott County Republican Administration was distraught at the suggestion that the Web page provide a mere edited calendar of events of interest to Republicans, including outside organizations as long as their mission is compatible with the Republican platform. They have instead apparently decided to emphasize a medium that propagates, by its nature and format, not only useful matters, but unavoidably prior to editing or removal, decidedly un-Republican even anti-Republican organizations and events contained in “friends” posts.
An example of a fairly well structured Web page presence that is kept up to date and that provides a useful tool to propagate their message is provided by our sworn political enemies (fair warning). See the Quad City Progressive Action Web site.
We bet that the QCPA probably has people paid one way or another to keep it’s site current. We appreciate and sympathize that the local Scott County Republican administration does not. But Web sites are now the portal to the community. The “jewel” county organization of Iowa hardly has a shiny Web page presence. It clearly deserves some administrative attention in this very active time.
Our site is structured differently with different purposes. We remain amateurs using a standard Web page template suitable for our purposes. We operate on a shoestring. However all manner of additional features are available as add-ons, plugins etc.
It is our understanding that the Scott County Executive Committee paid money for the design of the current Web page. We think it not particularly viewer friendly and has little impact compared to other Republican county Web sites we have seen. Unfortunately it also suffers from the inattention that many or most suffer from. As it stands now it has significant short comings as a portal to the community to the level of embarrassment.
I remember laughing with a few people about this at the county convention in March. It is August now and this is just embarrassing. It’s been 9 months since the “news” link has been updated. And what’s the most clicked on link when people go to their county Republican web sites? Probably news. What the hell else would you go there for?