AldermanicWebsites.com– a Comprehensive Take on Chicago Political Web Sites

Here’s something I worked on over Christmas vacation: AldermanicWebsites. It is a fun/ manic little Web site that “contains links to and reviews of the Web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and other Web referencia for each of the 349 people who filed nominating petitions to run for Alderman in one of the cities wards.”

Here’s some more copy/ paste explanation:

You can read the detailed notes on the evaluation criteria here. The best political reporting Web site in Chicago, Early and Often, provided lots of the early info that feeds this site.

For each candidate in each ward, we link to the campaign Web, provide a screenshot of the homepage. We’ve got the first sentence of their bio and their slogan if they have one. For each Web site, we provide one thing that is unique about it.

The next obsession is the stars in campaign imagery, covering whether they use stars in their design and whether the star is the unique six-pointed star of the Chicago flag.

There’s links to any Facebook, Twitter, and EveryBlock accounts maintained by the candidate. There are some amazing discussions going on among neighbors and candidates.

If you’re looking for info on a particular candidate, your best bet is to search for the candidate’s name in the search form on the right.

If you’re interested examples in particular technologies used by particular candidates, the Quick-See pulldown menu is your best bet.

For instance, you can see all candidates using the WordPress Web development platform, all candidates using PayPal to collect contributions, or everyone who uses Contact Contact to send out mass emails.

Same goes for wards– just choose the ward your interested in (the 24th is super-lively) and you’ll see all candidates. The Ward list is in alphabetical order (when the ward number is spelled out). That’s a little goofy, I know– what can I say; I have limited skills.

If you’re just interested in the highlights (and low lights), I would stick with the “Analysis” links. That’s where I boil down all of the sites into some upshots.

I like the Analysis best– so far I’ve got five posts there, covering everything from good stars and bad stars to remarkable sites and popular Web development platforms. And you’ve realy got to view source to see anything.

Here’s project documentation and here’s a post I wrote when I wrapped up the project.

Here’s a complete set of all screenshots from all websites: