admin's blog

Working with your campaign's design team

Our core skill set at CampaignFoundations.com is about protecting the integrity of your data. We gladly consider handling in house database work and application development and integration projects, tasks which lean on our provision of systems and database administration and application development skills.

We leave content creation to the candidates we serve, the ones on the front lines, listening to the voters and building collaboration for Green-Justice changes in public policy.

There is something else we leave to others as well.

Submitted by admin on Sat, 2009-09-26 20:47.

Open Source After 'Jacobsen v. Katzer'

Although the open source movement has been active for more than a decade, it is only in recent months that such a copyright license actually has received the imprimatur of enforceability -- from an unlikely court (the Federal Circuit) construing a perhaps unlikely license (the Java Model Railroad Interface for model train software). Open source licensing, of course, is the innovative (if controversial) tool that makes source code available to the general public on conditions (of varying severity) to guarantee continued public access to works derived from the original. Such licenses can require licensees to disclose source code and distribute derivative works royalty-free. Well-known open source licenses include the Creative Commons License, Apache License and Sun Community Source License. Perhaps best-known is the General Public License, now in its third version, which governs Linux, MySQL, and other major software products. It is perhaps also the most feared for its requirement that any source code compiled with any GPL-licensed source code be publicly disclosed upon distribution -- often referred to as "infection."

Submitted by admin on Tue, 2009-04-07 13:59.

Diagnostics for your computer

I got a call from a Green who said that following complete scans (she used WinClamAV, which has been highly recommended to me) and some AdAware knockoff, that she had been able to recover use of her machine and restore her desktop, only to find that her 'E' and 'S' keys now seem disabled. This was my advice to her about how to diagnose the issue, determine if she needed a registry cleaner or a new keyboard. I wrote:

I'm urging you download and keep handy a copy of Knoppix (http://knoppix.net/get.php). Its a rescue / diagnostics / desktop work environment Live Boot CD.

As with other live boot CDs, Knoppix will provide you with a working desktop including access to your hard drive and mature office suites and internet and other tools suitable for both office work and diagnostic and development work. It will auto configure itself to your hardware. It boots up in a couple of minutes.

Submitted by admin on Sun, 2009-01-25 16:56.

Neatness Counts

It is important that if we're to move someone to take action, that we show them the respect of not asking them to work too hard to read what we send them. How often have you received an email which was filled with mispellings, grammar and syntax errors or was poorly formatted or was otherwise difficult on the eyes to read and digest? Did you take the time to get through it? Did you appreciate having received the message? Did you spend your energy taking the action it urged?

Those who subscribe to the lists we host for your organization or campaign are no more tolerant of a poorly formatted message than you are. Many of them may be less tolerant.

To be effective, please take the time and energy to ensure your communications project the highest standards of professionalism which your candidate, issue, members and constituents deserve. The results will be worth the energy.

Submitted by admin on Tue, 2008-09-02 23:53.

Provide Multi-Lingual Content on Your Site

When we set up your website, if you prefer, we can provide you with the capability to provide multi-lingual content to the voters who browse your site. Providing multi-lingual content requires that we patch the base code to accomodate this requirement. That also means that the core code running your site will be somewhat older and more difficult to upgrade as new versions come out. But if your community speaks Spanish and English, or French, Farsi, Tonga or Tamil or some other language, this can be an obvious trade-off to make.

Your website won't automatically translate your content for you. That still takes real live humans who know both languages involved. But we can provide a framework for you to publish your campaign's content in the multiple languages which make sense in your community.

Submitted by admin on Wed, 2007-09-26 02:49.

Letting the Voter Talk Back to You

The utility of hosting a website in the interactive web is the ability to get feedback from the users of your site. Perhaps the simplest way to do that is with a contact form. Of course your site comes pre-configured with donor, subscription and volunteer forms if you want them. But the Contact module permits you to quickly set up a contact form and have user feedback appropriately routed within your organization to the key campaign supporters who are ready to followup with the voters of your district.

Here is how to do this.

Submitted by admin on Fri, 2007-08-10 09:19.

Preventing Graffitti on your Site

Security is a concern whenever you share your data and web applications over the internet. The user privilege system for the drupal content management system and our other applications is a part of the answer.

But these days one does not have to have political opponents to attract 'graffiti artists' who will vandalize your website. Spammers, those same folks who fill your inbox with unsolicited and unwanted email also write scripts which create user login accounts on content management systems, authenticate those user accounts by email and then use them to post commercial advertising with links to their clients' sites. Its all designed to boost their rankings in the search engines.

But you can stop these robots from spamming your site. And your hosting package includes all the tools you need to do so.

Submitted by admin on Thu, 2007-06-28 17:27.