Just to update people on some of the current issues that are being resolved from the recent upgrade to MyCouncillor 3. Thank you to everyone who has raised issues so far - we are working on everything as fast as we can, but this is where we are now:

ALDC News Feed

The ALDC News Feed is being turned on today (Friday). This will hopefully help with people who are not able to update their site regularly.

As we said in an email on Friday, you can turn this off if you don't want it. Follow these simple instructions here:  

Hits Mk 2

To clarify the questions we have received around "Hits Mk 2".

Hits Mk 2 was turned OFF earlier this year, because it was putting significant pressure on the myCouncillor server when we were running the older version of WordPress. It is now there as a historical record only. 

Hits Mark 1 has worked throughout, but is a fairly crude measure. We're recommending that people use Google Analyitics to monitor uses of their site, which gives a great deal of data on who looks at your site and what they look at. See these instructions here. 

Current issues that are being worked on:

Comments on MyModernist theme don't work
We will fix this shortly. 

Issues with the "type the words" box not being shown in comments. 

Things that are fixed - let us know if there are still problems

The "Read More" button is now fixed. 

HTML in posts and pages - this now works. Please note that if you are inserting HTML code you must stay in the HTML edit mode and NOT use the "visual" edit more - otherwise you'll corrupt the HTML. You can still use "preview" to look at your post before its published. 

Spam Comments - now blocked

Apostrophe in site strap line - Fixed  

Area/Ward level users not able to navigate up and down to Cllr/Ward/Area.

Archives not being grouped by year on a couple of Themes.

Picture reformatting in some posts - some unusual reformatting and resizing. 

As part of the upgrades to the MyCouncillor system introduced last week we have introduced a number of new "themes" the for myCouncillor site: 

"Multifarious Golden" and "Multifarious Aqua" are our two new standard themes that we'll be using when we set new sites up: (the names of these things come from the WordPress themes they're based on!!)

See them in action here:
Steve Beasant; Les Bonner, Bury Liberal Democrats

If you prefer something a bit more plain, then you might like "MyModernist" and "MyDojo":

See them in action here:
Tim Pickstone, Wilf Davison

TO CHANGE YOUR THEME, CLICK ON "APPEARANCE" ON THE DASHBOARD - AND CHOOSE WHICH THEME YOU WOULD LIKE! 

All of these new themes include a couple of new features: 

- the "Get Involved" buttons, (shown here) which make it easier for people to contact you and interact with the Party or electoral system

- an automatic Twitter feed (see below)

These new features have been rolled out onto seven of the existing themes. 

HOWEVER, we're getting to the stage where there are TOO MANY themes to manage effectively. (Every time a change is made every theme has to be updated). 

We are proposing the to PHASE out some of the oldest themes which are: 
"Fixed Width" (Yellow and Orange); "Banner Image" (Yellow and Orange) and "Black and Orange" / "White and Orange Bird". 

These will still work, but not with new features. Over time we'd like to discontinue them. 

Other themes are all fine, and will work with the new features. 

Major changes are being made to the MyCouncillor System this weekend

Over this weekend we will be upgrading the MyCouncillor system to a more up-to-date version of "WordPress". 

WordPress is the operating platform that the MyCouncillor system runs on. Since we launched the system three years ago WordPress has been updated a few times. It's now time for us to catch up. 

There are a number of other changes that are also happening at the same time, some of which I know people have been waiting (patiently) for for some time. 

Just to be cautious, we're NOT going to be introducing these changes to you this weekend - we just want to make sure the change to the new WordPress works fine first, but we will then tell you more about each of the new features one by one over the next couple of weeks. 

What will happen this weekend: 

On Saturday morning you will be locked out of the myCouncillor system and will not be able to make any changes to the system. 

Members of the public will be able to view the sites as normal. (It may be that there is some disruption, possibly over a period of hours, the length of which is dependent on the volume of activity that the system is experiencing (with "hits" during the day). 

Assuming everything goes to plan, on Sunday morning you will be able to use the system as normal. 

The "back" end of the system will look different - everything that used to be there is still there, but it just looks a little more up to date!

We will be monitoring this throughout the weekend, as will our technical people. 

Any problems don't hesitate to email me: 

tim.pickstone@aldc.org 

ALDC's popular "MyCouncillor" website system is getting a major upgrade in December. MyCouncillor provides free websites for Lib Dem councillors and local campaigners (who are members of ALDC!). 

The MyCouncillor website server suffered a period of downtime over the middle of the day today. This was as a result of a SPAM problem at the site's hosting agency. 

We think everything is working again now, but please report any issues as soon as you notice them. 

Many thanks.