Most Popular Development Platforms of Chicago Aldermanic Candidates

Spending six weeks reviewing the content, technology, and design of 349 candidates for political office can give you some real insight in the the current state of the art of community-level Web development in politics. Here’s a look at the top ten tools that the campaigns of Aldermanic candidates use to make their Web sites:

Custom HTML — 29 candidates

One thing I was surprised to see, given the number and quality of free development platforms out there, was that so many Web sites that appear to be written in Custom HTML. I actually love this fact, and it was a central reason why I started this project. There is so much professional, boilerplate Web development out there in the political world that it is refreshing to see real choices made by real people in real text editors. It basically takes 3,500 votes to get elected Alderman in Chicago. That means 3,500 basements and 3,500 cousins and 3,500 friends of friends who know a guy who does HTML. I love this shit.

WordPress — 26 candidates

The most popular Web development platform among the candidates is WordPress. It is super-flexible, has a large community of developers creating plugins and otherwise supporting it, and the core product is constantly updated. It is also a personal favorite (this site is made on it I have about 20 WordPress Web sites in the wild). One interesting thing I saw was that the majority of the WordPress installs were with their 3.0.1. release, which means they were most likely first created between July 29 and November 30, 2010. Planners user WordPress?

Blogger — 6 candidates

Six of the candidates use Blogger, which is owned by Google and is brought to you by the same people who created Twitter. It’s super-easy to get started with it, so it’s a great way for a candidate to get online at 2 AM w/o any help. The Blogger template has space for a site description. Probably the best use of this field is from 39th Ward candidate Lyndon Johnson, who has this:

WHO SHOT JFK? In November of 1963, a President was assassinated. A new President emerged and his name was Lyndon Baines Johnson. In November of 1964, a child was born and his name became Lyndon Johnson. My name is a direct result of this tragedy and I will be forever linked to this American story…

GoDaddy– 6 candidates

The GoDaddy Website Tonight product is used by six candidates. This is what happens when you click on too many things when you are buying your URL. GoDaddy is notorious for that– they are the best site for domain purchases, but not for anything else. It’s sort of like a wet/ dry vac slash leaf blower– stick with one or the other.

Joomla — 6 candidates

Tied with Blogger and GoDaddy was Joomla. I’ve never really understood the appeal of Joomla. Seems overly-complicated for most tasks. I get the impression that it is very powerful if you know what you’re doing. I personally like working with tools that are very powerful when you *don’t* know what you’re doing.

Microsoft Office – 5 candidates

I was surprised to discover that five campaigns thought it was a great idea to use Microsoft Word as a Web development platform. It is not. Microsoft Word is software for making printed documents. Having said that, it’s better than nothing, and at least they are using tools at their disposal, so I appreciate that.

Wix — 3 candidates

This one was news to me– I have never heard of Wix before noticing that 3 candidates are using it. It is a drag-and-drop Web site builder based on Flash. Apparently over  6,000,000 Web sites have been built with it, which kind of blew my mind. Also, one of the most amazing Aldermanic Web sites ever was made with Wix.

The remainders

I was a fan of Squarespace from the start, though it never caught on. Richard Gonzalez in the 41st ward has used Squarespace to good effect. Richard Lopez in the 15th uses iWeb– I had never heard of that. I love his engaging videos. Two candidates use Network Solutions, a GoDaddy also-ran (though, according to The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg used Network Solutions to buy his URLs back in 2004).