Both the Illinois Republican Party and the Illinois Senate Republicans unveiled new websites this week. Both are visually appealing, well-designed and give the user the impresssion that the Illinois GOP is using technology effectively - especially in comparision to the old Illinois GOP website.
Both sites use YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, which are all effective Web 2.0 social networking tools. The Senate GOP site even appears to have been built using Drupal, the same very powerful software we use here, and looks to feature some type of forums.
But both websites lack a key feature that is so fundamental to modern online communications that the omission makes me wonder if anyone in either organization has been paying any attention to news and politics on the internet for the past several years. I was astonished when I noticed it, but neither site has an RSS feed, which means that I cannot subscribe to their content as I do for the News-Gazette or Barack Obama, IlliniPundit.com or any Blogger website.
It's such a fundamental error that I really don't know what else to say about it, really. In this day and age, how in the world can you even roll out a news/politics website without a feed?
(Hat tip: Capitol Fax Blog)
Also on the IL Rep. website, it's not completely up-to-date. For example, I didn't see McLean County listed under "central counties, nor did I see Livingston county listed.
IP,
Are there any ideas on any of the sites?
Instead of hawking the tollways off to AuSpainian profiteers, why not expand them to all IL interstates, "securitize" them, and transfer the securities to pension funds.
Forget about my aggressive education reforms. Why not promise IL homeowners permanent ,substantial property tax relief and an "aquisition based" property tax system. (they re-assess only when work is done or the property is sold.
All the websites in the world are worthless if you are brain dead.
I heard McKenna talk about supermajorities for tax increases and other ballot initiative ideas, but there isn't a Republican in the legislature who would run on such an obvious idea.
"We aren't Democrats" isn't a strategy.