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The Hug Newsletter
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Welcome to the second issue of our newsletter. As a result of feedback we received from the first edition we have dropped the HTML email version of the newsletter as it's clear that the way different email client software "renders" HTML email varies far too much to be reliable. So if you previously subscribed to that version you will now get a plain text email with a link to the newsletter on our web site. You can change your subscription options by clicking here.
The Hug have devoted a lot of time since Christmas to helping Make Votes Count with their campaign for the General Election. Make Votes Count is the coalition that campaigns for a referendum on a more representative voting system. It has brought together all the organisations campaigning for reform. These are: Charter88, Christian Socialist Movement, Electoral Reform Society, Fawcett Society, Green Party, Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, the Liberal Democrats, New Politics Network, and Plaid Cymru. Make Votes Count also has over ten thousand individual supporters.
In the run up to the General Election we designed a web site for them using
our Opus content management system. The web site
included a host of features such as:
An important feature of the site was a constituency home page for every constituency in the UK showing the results last time and the candidates this time. Visitors could identify their own constituency by entering their postcode. A chat room system then allowed them to talk with other supporters in their constituency.
They could also sign a petition demanding a referendum on proportional representation for the UK election, to be presented to 10 Downing Street after the election. Finally they could email all the candidates in their constituency telling them that they'd done so. Thousands did this, bringing a variety of responses from the candidates!
Having got a campaign web site up and running the next question was how to
get people to visit it and Make Votes Count had our help there too.
We created a second site for them called "VoteVote!". It was a fun site based on an American site called DemoChoice. It let visitors create and vote on polls using the system known as Single Transferable Vote (STV) or, in the case of a one winner poll, Alternative Vote (AV).
We took the original DemoChoice code and redesigned the HTML it produced to create a web site with a similar look to the main site.
We also worked with Make Votes Count to publicise both sites elsewhere on the Internet by posting to Usenet news groups such as uk.politics.announce and uk.politics.electoral and talked to the BBC for the "Daily Politics" show on BBC2 which got both the campaign and The Hug a free plug.
The web site can be found at
http://www.votevote.org
After the General Election a real groundswell has developed for voting reform
and Tony Blair announced a review of the different voting methods used in
elections in the UK. This is currently being undertaken by officials at
Lord Falconer's Department for Constitutional Affairs.
Make Votes Count wanted to help keep the pressure on so we re-designed the web site for them with the help of MVC volunteers.
Using our Opus content management system meant that much of the existing content could be retained, but now all re-branded with a new "template" to give the site a very different look including latest postings in the forums, the campaign news and the blog. The site also offers RSS feeds.
The web site can be found at http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk
Hopefully it's going to get lots of hits this Wednesday evening (27th July)
when its address is advertised as part of a party political broadcast on
electoral reform at the end
of Channel 4 News.
We've enjoyed working with Make Votes Count and that seems to have been true for them too. Their Director, Nina Temple said:
Working with The Hug was a pleasure and an education. Paul Oldham was endlessly patient in translating our campaigning aspirations into a deliverable website. As the campaign for voting reform built up alongside the general election campaign, he was always willing to help us expand the ambitions of the site, enabling us to react very quickly to events. He was also more than willing to collaborate with a new wave of web enthusiasts who came on board after the election when the media briefly focused its attentions on the failings of the voting system.
In our last newsletter we talked about syndication of web site content via a technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Syndicating your news via RSS lets readers keep an eye on your web site's news without having to visit it on the off chance that you've posted something.
One type of content which is popularly syndicated is the web log or "blog". It's essentially an online diary, a place to sound off about the world, but it's becoming increasingly popular as a tool for organisations to get their message out. As we mentioned above Make Votes Count have used it as part of their campaign with their blog being written by members of staff plus their director, Nina Temple, and their chairman, Lord Lipsey.
What separates a blog from the sort of news page that many web sites have, including several of our customers' Opus based sites, is the ability to allow visitors to comment on the blog entries. Thus you enter into an open discussion with visitors about the site content.
It's also very common to find blogs cross linking to each other, so readers of one blog will move on to another, and another. They're thus a powerful tool for viral marketing campaigns.
As part of our work for Make Votes Count we enhanced Opus to support blogging. If this is a feature you would like to add to your site then do talk to us.
The latest addition to The Hug is this little fellow. He's a
red panda,
also known as a firefox. Red pandas live in southern Asia and inhabit
forested mountain slopes. They feed on bamboo, but also eat acorns, roots,
berries, lichens and occasionally eggs and young birds.
He's an appropriate member of The Hug to mention here because he is the logo for the Firefox web browser.
Firefox is a free browser which you can download from the Net. It's available for both Windows and Linux. If you're a Windows user you can use it instead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Firefox is considerably more secure than Internet Explorer and has a host of new features including the ability to stop those annoying popup ads in their tracks with Firefox's built in popup blocker. Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business.
Over 72,000,000 people have now downloaded Firefox and that includes The Hug where Firefox is now our preferred browser for web browsing and developing web sites (it has some powerful tools for web site developers too).
Visit http://www.getfirefox.com for more information (and a chance to buy your own firefox at the Mozilla store!).
If you want to know any more about the items above, or there's anything else we can help you with, do get in touch.
4 Church Lane, Milton, Cambridge, CB4 6AB | Tel: +44 1223 863 463 | Fax: +44 871 433 1634 | mail@the-hug.co.uk