On Fundraising Widgets


Hi, Mister Campaign Fundraiser Technician?

Yes, you. I don’t care if you work in a campaign, or just sell your services to campaigns. I’m talking to you.

We at RedState.com do enjoy asking our readers to give money to candidates. When a good Republican needs help, we want to find that help. And one thing you guys have already figured out is that nifty website widgets draw attention and can fire up donors.

So please, when you make those widgets, design them to be flexible. Help us help you by making them resizeable, or at least available in a variety of sizes. Don’t make them a javascript which embeds unknown HTML and runs unknown code on our site, possibly conflicting with other code or even our ads, forcing us to take down the widget and helping nobody.

A Flash widget is best. Make it as easy on us to embed your widgets as Youtube makes it to embed their videos. With those, we can paste in the code, change the size if we want, and ship it. The easier and more reliable that process is, and the more compatible your widget is, the more likely it is we’ll be able to drive money to your candidate or client.

And I’m sure it’s not just us who has these problems. So by helping us, you’ll help others make your widgets work, too.

Thank you.


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17 Comments Leave a comment

Suddenly, last Summer again...not.

blooch Wednesday, July 1st at 8:51PM EST (link)

I’m as relieved as you are irritated, Neil. Thanks for the “500 error” explanation;)

“Lieutenant Dike wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions. He was a bad leader because he made no decisions.”

No, I think that was just very high traffic spikes

Neil Stevens (Diary) Wednesday, July 1st at 8:57PM EST (link)

When the Sanford thing hit, bam.

When the Franken thing hit, bam.

RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
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Oh...well, that's a good problem to have, I guess.

blooch Wednesday, July 1st at 9:10PM EST (link)

It does seem like “Recent Comments” has been cycling like a slot machine wheel recently.

“Lieutenant Dike wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions. He was a bad leader because he made no decisions.”

 

Neil, could that have caused this problem I've noticed

TNJim (Diary) Wednesday, July 1st at 9:35PM EST (link)

When I clicked on some diary headlines after the page loaded for that diary some of the more recent comments I saw in the comments table on the previous page were missing. In other words, a comment title on the previous page that was about 3rd or 4th from the top would be at the top on the new page, with the 3 or 4 newer ones missing. Sometimes a reload would bring them back, sometimes not. The problem would usually resolve itself over a short period of time

Activism: What to do after the TEA party rally. Unified Patriots

 
 
 

Neil, can you give some pointers to both good and bad widgets?

Brian Hibbert (Diary) Wednesday, July 1st at 10:34PM EST (link)

It might help to have some examples….

Candidate for Trustee of Illinois Central College
Socialism doesn’t work. It looks nice on paper, but it’s been tried and it’s failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.

Take back our party!
Check out Unified Patriots

I can only repeat what I said in the piece

Neil Stevens (Diary) Wednesday, July 1st at 11:33PM EST (link)

Give me something that’s a Flash embed into the site, like a Youtube video. Ideally with the size adj ustment that Youtube embeds have.

I’m told that iContribute does widgets like this.

A black box <script> embed is no good to us. Typically not configurable and if it conflicts with our other scripts we have to remove it. Or if it breaks our layout we have to remove it, too.

RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
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Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.

“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder

 

Oh and I won't point to a specific bad one...

Neil Stevens (Diary) Wednesday, July 1st at 11:33PM EST (link)

…because I don’t want to single out anybody on our side :-)

RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
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“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder

Fair enough. We don't want to harm good candidates.

Brian Hibbert (Diary) Thursday, July 2nd at 7:40AM EST (link)

It’s just sometimes helpful to have both good and bad examples. Thanks for the pointer to the good widget. I don’t know if I’ll be working on any campaign web sites, but if I do, I’ll use something like that one.

I hope you at least emailed the site administrators for the bad widgets.

Candidate for Trustee of Illinois Central College
Socialism doesn’t work. It looks nice on paper, but it’s been tried and it’s failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.

Take back our party!
Check out Unified Patriots

This article's getting emailed around (nt)

Neil Stevens (Diary) Thursday, July 2nd at 11:27AM EST (link)

RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
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5!

Brian Simpson (Diary) Wednesday, July 1st at 10:58PM EST (link)

Nothing worse than loading up my favorite website only to have the page not load properly because of some poorly written code by an outside source.


| My RedState archive |
Important principles may and must be inflexible. ~ Abraham Lincoln

 

I miss Slatecard.

Thrhheggeegwc Jjtkylkfofud (Diary) Wednesday, July 1st at 11:35PM EST (link)

Slatecard had a pretty nice widget setup that worked well. They’ve taken the site down, but it’s supposed to be back up sometime this summer.

Though it would be nice...

Thrhheggeegwc Jjtkylkfofud (Diary) Wednesday, July 1st at 11:36PM EST (link)

…if Slatecard would let you embed a widget for an individual candidate.

 
 

Now I know why RS is broken so often

peg_c (Diary) Thursday, July 2nd at 7:47AM EST (link)

My time is short and some days I have to give up. :-) I hope this gets fixed…

Government cannot be the solution when government is the problem.

Oops, I meant :-(

peg_c (Diary) Thursday, July 2nd at 7:47AM EST (link)

n/t

Government cannot be the solution when government is the problem.

 
 

You rock, Neil!

asleep06 (Diary) Thursday, July 2nd at 3:02PM EST (link)

Thanks for working the infrastructure.

Small is beautiful.

5 asleep06

mom2oneson (Diary) Thursday, July 2nd at 3:15PM EST (link)

Everyone give Neil lots of big hugs in Atlanta!!!!

 
 

And can I say something?

Neil Stevens (Diary) Thursday, July 2nd at 9:50PM EST (link)

The fact that we’ve had a mere two bursts of 500s lately, and that’s enough to get people to be commenting about all these problems, I take that as a good sign.

It means the site’s running so well you guys have higher expectations now. We’ve raised the bar.

RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
Read the RedState Posting Rules

Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.

“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder