Fine Gael’s New Website – thanks to the BBC (And Twitter!)
Posted by Maman Poulet on 16 Apr 2009 at 03:27 pm | Tagged as: Uncategorized
So a little bird tells me the new FG website is up. Not officially like but it’s up.
I have to tell someone so I told Twitter.
Twitter tells me it’s not what it might seem in space of minutes.
Read Steph for the full technical details on the rip off!
(Irish Twitterers Rock)
Update – Enda Kenny emailed website subscribers tonight
Having an online presence is now fundamental to success in Irish politics and as the country enters into election season Fine Gael is going live tomorrow (Friday) with its new internally designed and created website.
The new website has many characteristics, including FG TV, that make it more useful and more user-friendly:
· New fresh, up to date design
· All information compressed into one portal page for ease of access
· Visitors can customise the page layout and give preference to their subjects of interest
· FG TV allows for:
· Live broadcast facilities
· Direct interaction with the public
· Live streaming of events
· Video on demand
· Viewing interviews
· Review on location reports
· Public opinion to be heard on Vox-pops· There is a Search facility for each section allowing for more accurate search results
· All technologies are in-house including the design and creation of the website
· All third party services are provided by Ireland based companies
Fine Gael Leader, Enda Kenny stated: “Fine Gael is a party with a vision for the future and part of realising that vision is to interact constantly with the public, our members and the media. Our new website will I believe, prove to be an invaluable online tool in enhancing that direct contact which I believe is essential to political success.”
I think it was written in a hurry! ‘Ireland based?’ Irish based maybe? The technical quizzing continues at Steph’s. And someone’s telling me the bits in the code ala the BBC were removed this afternoon.
I’d be more concerned if they had put that .org site on http://www.finegael.ie – making it “official”… but yes, that’s quite the rip off.
They stripped the BLQ stuff out already!
Hats off to someone on P.ie who found this.
http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/PHP-XML/Web-portal-Ajax-PHP-mySql.html
Seems to have been posted by FG.
How can Enda Kenny claim the site was designed by an Ireland based company. Is this actually true?
[...] (thanks Stu). Had a chuckle to myself on the way to Handel’s Messiah at Christchurch reading the press release that went out to Fine Gael mailing list subscribers (which I have been since meeting Enda Kenny a [...]
A few more bits of the code were outsourced as well. lets see what they remove
It’s now showing the Apache server page. First the cowboys, now the indians…
Sounds like sour grapes to me
In an email last night in response to some queries that I emailed him about finegael.org, Ciaran Conlon (The FG Communications Director) said the site on finegael.org wasn’t the finished project, yet it seems to be precisely what is on finegael.ie now with a few tweaks. He also said what people saw on finegael.org may not necessarily be what people see on finegael.ie today – it’s clear that what was on finegael.org *is* now on finegael.ie – indeed the finegael.ie website seems to be pulling alot of code and content from finegael.org at present.
Quote:
“The site that some people have viewed at the .org address is not necessarily what people will see tomorrow.” – Ciaran Conlon
Ciaran Conlon acknowledged that the getafreelancer.com job-ad was indeed by FG – and that ad does ask for a website that looks like bbc.co.uk.
Ciaran Conlon also said the ad represented 5% of the final product, 5% or 50% is unimportant, an email in Enda Kenny’s name yesterday (posted by Suzy on this blog) said the site was done in Ireland in-house or by a third party. Yet this “5%” of work was done by someone in Russia. Thus what was sent on behalf of Enda Kenny appears to be incorrect, at least with respect to 5%.
Quote:
“2. The ad u refer wasn’t about the website design – which was done inhouse – but for some freelance programming for about 5% of the site.” – Ciaran Conlon
http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/PHP-XML/Web-portal-Ajax-PHP-mySql.html
The ad clearly asks for a design with bbc.co.uk as inspiration, and the gig was won by someone in Russia. I believe the quote above that says the ad was not for the website design is false.
“Quote:
· All technologies are in-house including the design and creation of the website
· All third party services are provided by Ireland based companies
- Enda Kenny”
Quote:
“The new website is not a direct copy of the bbc website.” – Ciaran Conlon
Quote:
“Coz I’m a person who lives and breathes CSS from 9 to 5 I decided to dig a little deeper and boy was I surprised to see that their developers didn’t even bother to change the class names in the CSS files”. – Iamsteph.com blog yesterday afternoon around 2pm.
I’m a bit peeved, I asked some questions, got a response, but I don’t think the responses were honest or truthful, nor do I think they accurately reflect what is the situation – I know that’s a strong allegation to make, but the commentary by iamsteph.com around 2pm makes it pretty obvious. For a party that is actively engaged in moves to become the majority coalition partner in the next Government, I’m disappointed, very disappointed.
[...] to self ….And I just thought I’d got the scoop on FG’s new website before the launch huh? I must continue to learn to never underestimate bloggers especially the non political junkie [...]
theres difference between design and content, obviously the russian guy didn’t take the video of pascal, but fg spokesperson is mudlling the percentages, the rip off was fine gael’s doing.
Without even looking at the code it is the most blatant rip-off I’ve seen. They’ve even used the exact same widths, margins and back-ground colours.
More embarrassement for our nation. I wonder how the BBC feel about it? I would be livid. FG ought to be ashamed of themselves.
[...] 4 hours after the initial revelation that there was BBC code all over the new FG website design Enda sent an email to members and subscribers – 6.26pm in the evening. It was rather hurried as I pointed to when I posted it on Thursday night. [...]
Why are people so surprised?
FF outsourced its website to a US company, yet is “doing its best to bolster the Irish economy” – even if their online presence is in the US …
FG ripped off the BBC – it would have been even more amusing if the “Republican party” had, but no matter …
The Greens spammed a load of bloggers.
I’m not sure what labour have done … Anyone?
Michele
[...] of talk on the blogosphere about this issue, including posts on Politics, and the original post on Maman Poulet. Steph, a web designer and developer whose blog may be found here observes: “Their [...]
[...] back to Mamapoulet: “Above all this incident is about the second biggest party in the state and another example [...]