6 ms·

“Make HTML Great Again”: Campaign site teardowns

47 points by dccoolgai 11y ago

wittekm 11y ago
My favorite is that Jeb Bush's website used a capitalized I instead of a pipe symbol, assuming it'd be sans-serifs. http://imgur.com/hc3LVwI http://imgur.com/hc3LVwI
- guidopallemans 11y ago
  Perhaps they wanted a pipe with serifs?
wnevets 11y ago
> Takeaway: “More WordPress. If you want to lose an election…” –Paul “This is the most important pattern we’ve found. All of the losers are on WordPress.”—Rich
- ryanlol 11y ago
  > Takeaway: “He uses the same technology used in drones to collect money from supporters.” –Rich This one really got me. > Takeaway: “This passes muster, I would say.” -Rich. Also, Ted Cruz may be the Zodiac Killer. http://www.zodiac-killer.com/ http://www.zodiac-killer.com/
whizzkid 11y ago
That was really interesting, If I was to vote on based on their webpage qualities, I think Hillary would get my vote there. Cleanness and text oriented navigation was nice. donation page flow was great. SSL all the way and direct to the point on links. great job. I really liked Trump's header though. Color choice and font was great, but the page load and mixed http and https between links was confusing to me. Whole page except navigation contains only "Make America great again" nothing else (made me smile). Rest of them was not interesting to me.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
loeber 11y ago
What this article didn't mention: Donald Trump's website is designed by Parscale (www.parscale.com). They don't list that site in their design portfolio.
- SimpleXYZ 11y ago
  Also, the platform is ExpressionEngine.
  - zyxley 11y ago
    EE?! shudder
    - wnevets 11y ago
      ExpressionEngine isn't terrible.
kevinkimball 11y ago
some of these they have marked as custom platforms are actually NationBuilder, like Trump http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-03/this-guy-helped-make-trump-possible http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-03/this-g...
jeffjose 11y ago
So using Wordpress gets 2 thumbs down?
hayksaakian 11y ago
not much substance in this article, it's just regurgitating the 'if you use wordpress you are bad' meme
jefurii 11y ago
They list themselves as the "high powered, capitalist web agency" that Bernie Sanders should be using.
- jupiter2 11y ago
  “You know what Bernie should have done? He should have hired a high priced, high powered, capitalist web agency, they would have probably killed it for him.” People are offended by this remark (Sanders Fans??) but it's just a joke. Funny too! It speaks to his ideals and the irony... if he had chosen to go this route. They also make fun of themselves with phrases like "high priced". Now... some of the comments about other candidates are downright snarky a bit mean-spirited! Yeah... there's an overall bias.
oldmanhorton 11y ago
Seems like this company is a custom web design company, so it is in their best interest to perpetuate the "Wordpress is bad" meme.
- drops 11y ago
  Their notes with "uh, this is such a mess, should've just hired THIS company instead" with a link to their own homepage is a pretty big giveaway too. I just hope it was done in a joking tone because unironically referring to themselves in a third person is as cringe-worthy as it gets.
gkoberger 11y ago
Don't upvote this. This is a shallow ad for their agency (which evidently doesn't do WordPress development). This article highlights the worst of the "webmaster" mentality – ignoring the end results in favor of things like validation errors and tools used. They trust Hillary as a politician because the source code has secret comments? Seriously? And then they trash Chris Christie for the same exact thing. And Bernie gets two thumbs down (and a shot at him for being a socialist... along with an ad for the authors) because he used WordPress? They call his site a mess but don't describe why. Bernie's site is impeccably designed and works well. I'm sad about this article. Design and the web play a HUGE role in presidential campaigns. I happen to believe that you can tell a lot about a candidate from their website. But this was a shallow, pedantic and opportunistic waste of a potentially great topic.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  When even Google doesn't care enough to pass validation https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co... you wonder if it matters. I once went through the Alexa top 10 or so, IIRC not one passed validation.
  - nevir 11y ago
    It doesn't matter any more, and hasn't for years. Browser tech has been moving faster than validators can keep up. Newly specced features are being polyfilled, etc. Browsers and search crawlers deal with this; probably time for validators to be about something other than the site's static assets.
  - bphogan 11y ago
    This is the "broken windows" effect in real life. "Google doesn't care, and these other sites don't care, so why should I care?" I have found that validation serves a very important purpose - to guide your development. I have lost count of the times I have encountered CSS with all sorts of extra junk because things didn't look right, and the reason for it was that the underlying HTML was invalid. Yes, the browsers are smart. But they are still guessing. If you leave out a tag, the browser will close it for you. Not always in the right spot. Invalid pages could also result in a DOM tree that's not quite right, so JavaScript could be affected. Developers should validate their pages just as they lint their code, to ensure quality. Of course, if you're using cutting-edge elements, they won't validate. But that's a little different story. It's not a reason to not validate, it's just a reason to filter out those errors.
dccoolgai 11y ago
One interesting idea they floated by in the podcast is that the general quality of the candidate's website (something technical that they themselves probably don't completely understand and have to lean on the experience of others - and know the "right others" to listen to) correlates in some way to what they would be like as president (managing things that they themselves don't completely understand and have to lean on the experience of others - and know the "right others" to listen to) which I hadn't really thought of before, but I might make a habit of reading source before I vote in the future.
foota 11y ago
I actually really liked Bernie's website.
insanebits 11y ago
I don't understand why custom solution seems to favourited by them. It's the same as saying your car is bad because it's running on the most popular fuel. As a web developer working daily on WordPress websites I would argue that it can be as fast as anything else. Because those websites are mostly static which means caching would make it load really fast. Assuming template itself is written well. So it doesn't matter what engine you're using, it's the matter of optimization. As for WordPress itself, the biggest problem in my oppinion is plugin compatibility. Yes you have thousands of plugins bus most of them doesn't work exactly/cannot be customized to a given requirements and you end up either modifying plugin and then maintaining them. Or just writing simplified version of it yourself. Which makes even more meaintenance overhead. Also it's not very good for big blogs with more than 100k posts. Because of the database schema used which is both it's strength and weakness at the same time.

47 points by dccoolgai 11y ago

My favorite is that Jeb Bush's website used a capitalized I instead of a pipe symbol, assuming it'd be sans-serifs. http://imgur.com/hc3LVwI http://imgur.com/hc3LVwI

guidopallemans 11y ago
Perhaps they wanted a pipe with serifs?

wnevets 11y ago

> Takeaway: “More WordPress. If you want to lose an election…” –Paul “This is the most important pattern we’ve found. All of the losers are on WordPress.”—Rich

ryanlol 11y ago
> Takeaway: “He uses the same technology used in drones to collect money from supporters.” –Rich This one really got me. > Takeaway: “This passes muster, I would say.” -Rich. Also, Ted Cruz may be the Zodiac Killer. http://www.zodiac-killer.com/ http://www.zodiac-killer.com/

whizzkid 11y ago

That was really interesting, If I was to vote on based on their webpage qualities, I think Hillary would get my vote there. Cleanness and text oriented navigation was nice. donation page flow was great. SSL all the way and direct to the point on links. great job. I really liked Trump's header though. Color choice and font was great, but the page load and mixed http and https between links was confusing to me. Whole page except navigation contains only "Make America great again" nothing else (made me smile). Rest of them was not interesting to me.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

loeber 11y ago

What this article didn't mention: Donald Trump's website is designed by Parscale (www.parscale.com). They don't list that site in their design portfolio.

SimpleXYZ 11y ago
Also, the platform is ExpressionEngine.
- zyxley 11y ago
  EE?! shudder
  - wnevets 11y ago
    ExpressionEngine isn't terrible.

kevinkimball 11y ago

some of these they have marked as custom platforms are actually NationBuilder, like Trump http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-03/this-guy-helped-make-trump-possible http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-03/this-g...

jeffjose 11y ago

So using Wordpress gets 2 thumbs down?

hayksaakian 11y ago

not much substance in this article, it's just regurgitating the 'if you use wordpress you are bad' meme

jefurii 11y ago

They list themselves as the "high powered, capitalist web agency" that Bernie Sanders should be using.

jupiter2 11y ago
“You know what Bernie should have done? He should have hired a high priced, high powered, capitalist web agency, they would have probably killed it for him.” People are offended by this remark (Sanders Fans??) but it's just a joke. Funny too! It speaks to his ideals and the irony... if he had chosen to go this route. They also make fun of themselves with phrases like "high priced". Now... some of the comments about other candidates are downright snarky a bit mean-spirited! Yeah... there's an overall bias.

oldmanhorton 11y ago

Seems like this company is a custom web design company, so it is in their best interest to perpetuate the "Wordpress is bad" meme.

drops 11y ago
Their notes with "uh, this is such a mess, should've just hired THIS company instead" with a link to their own homepage is a pretty big giveaway too. I just hope it was done in a joking tone because unironically referring to themselves in a third person is as cringe-worthy as it gets.

gkoberger 11y ago

Don't upvote this. This is a shallow ad for their agency (which evidently doesn't do WordPress development). This article highlights the worst of the "webmaster" mentality – ignoring the end results in favor of things like validation errors and tools used. They trust Hillary as a politician because the source code has secret comments? Seriously? And then they trash Chris Christie for the same exact thing. And Bernie gets two thumbs down (and a shot at him for being a socialist... along with an ad for the authors) because he used WordPress? They call his site a mess but don't describe why. Bernie's site is impeccably designed and works well. I'm sad about this article. Design and the web play a HUGE role in presidential campaigns. I happen to believe that you can tell a lot about a candidate from their website. But this was a shallow, pedantic and opportunistic waste of a potentially great topic.

ikeboy 11y ago
When even Google doesn't care enough to pass validation https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co... you wonder if it matters. I once went through the Alexa top 10 or so, IIRC not one passed validation.
- nevir 11y ago
  It doesn't matter any more, and hasn't for years. Browser tech has been moving faster than validators can keep up. Newly specced features are being polyfilled, etc. Browsers and search crawlers deal with this; probably time for validators to be about something other than the site's static assets.
- bphogan 11y ago
  This is the "broken windows" effect in real life. "Google doesn't care, and these other sites don't care, so why should I care?" I have found that validation serves a very important purpose - to guide your development. I have lost count of the times I have encountered CSS with all sorts of extra junk because things didn't look right, and the reason for it was that the underlying HTML was invalid. Yes, the browsers are smart. But they are still guessing. If you leave out a tag, the browser will close it for you. Not always in the right spot. Invalid pages could also result in a DOM tree that's not quite right, so JavaScript could be affected. Developers should validate their pages just as they lint their code, to ensure quality. Of course, if you're using cutting-edge elements, they won't validate. But that's a little different story. It's not a reason to not validate, it's just a reason to filter out those errors.

dccoolgai 11y ago

One interesting idea they floated by in the podcast is that the general quality of the candidate's website (something technical that they themselves probably don't completely understand and have to lean on the experience of others - and know the "right others" to listen to) correlates in some way to what they would be like as president (managing things that they themselves don't completely understand and have to lean on the experience of others - and know the "right others" to listen to) which I hadn't really thought of before, but I might make a habit of reading source before I vote in the future.

foota 11y ago

I actually really liked Bernie's website.

insanebits 11y ago

I don't understand why custom solution seems to favourited by them. It's the same as saying your car is bad because it's running on the most popular fuel. As a web developer working daily on WordPress websites I would argue that it can be as fast as anything else. Because those websites are mostly static which means caching would make it load really fast. Assuming template itself is written well. So it doesn't matter what engine you're using, it's the matter of optimization. As for WordPress itself, the biggest problem in my oppinion is plugin compatibility. Yes you have thousands of plugins bus most of them doesn't work exactly/cannot be customized to a given requirements and you end up either modifying plugin and then maintaining them. Or just writing simplified version of it yourself. Which makes even more meaintenance overhead. Also it's not very good for big blogs with more than 100k posts. Because of the database schema used which is both it's strength and weakness at the same time.