Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 3 (en francais)

Ken Dryden
Big Red enters the race, and I do mean BIG.
No entry page, French offered, although it might be a little hard to find at first. Another Joomla Open Source Content Management System(CMS) installation with a custom template. Professional look and feel. The front page contains Ken's slogan "A Big Canada" with a link to his vision. One problem though, is many people won't find that link. With the very red front page and the small little arrow underneath, it kind of blends in.

Menus are straight forward, broken up into two sections - Get Informed and Get Involved. The Get Informed section works well. It also includes an actual real live blog. A Wordpress Joomla mod complete with permalinks, moderated comments and trackbacks. You must register with the site in order to comment. News Centre is very well done. If you register with the site, you can comment on the posted news stories using a Joomla component called AKOcomment. Almost like a blog.

The Get Involved section starts off with Join Team Dryden. Filling out this form also registers you with the website, providing a Username and Password. You will receive an email shortly after registering with links to donate, info on how to be a delegate, and a (insert link here) link to the Liberal party join page.

Join the Liberal Party is a confusing page. Info on why to join and what the process for delegate selection is, just no info or links on exactly how to join the Liberal party. The very bottom of the page provides a link to the Become a Delegate page, where if you are very diligent, you can find a link to the Liberal Party online membership form. There is a "Join Now" bar on the front page, but it kind of blends in with everything else red.

Two big 'Get Informed' and 'Get Involved' sections on the front page with nice pictures but what do they do other than take up space? Considering their prominent placement, I tried mousing over them, expecting a link to take me some where.

When you surf to other pages, the big header is replaced with a smaller one. In the top right there is a small form for Email, name and a subscribe button, but what are you subscribing for? The site, emails, newsletters, 12 issues of Liberal Life magazine?

Donating is impossible unless you register with the site. I could find no link or menu item to a donation page other than the link I received in the registration email. Not sure if this is by design or by omission..

Volunteering - Join Team Dryden, register for the site. Lots of opportunities to do so. Makes for good email/name collection.

No RSS feeds - should be a no brainer for both the Blog and the site. Joomla itself is feed enabled by default.

Policy (Issues) - easy to find and lots of it.

Privacy Policy - extensive policy available, although it opens a new instance of the site in a window in order to view it.

Overall a good start. Obviously the site's goal is to inform and engage with it's users.

6.5/10

Google Link Search - 0

Google Search - #2 (Stephen Harper gets top spot again.)

At least as things stand now, this rounds out all the candidates currently declared for the race. (I'm not going to bother with Ashley). So here is my final ranking for the first round.

1. Bob Rae 7/10
   
2. Scott Brison 6.5/10
   
3. Ken Dryden 6.5/10
   
4. Gerard Kennedy 6.5/10
   
5. Michael Ignatieff 6.5/10
   
6. Maurizio Bevilacqua 6/10
   
7. Joe Volpe 5/10
   
8. Stephane Dion 4/10
   
9. Carolyn Bennett 3/10
   
10. Martha Hall Findlay 0/10 - Donation Page still not fixed.
    

Next up will be an Accessibility test on each site along with freshness reviews every few days. All ten reviews are now included on the original review page.


Liberal Leadership Candidates Website Review - original review

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 1

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 2

Rob Cottingham - other reviews on the candidates websites