I guess Frank doesn't really want the job

Well, I promised that I'd put out a review of the by-election websites for the various candidates in Guelph, but I've run into a snag... it's kinda hard to review and compare the websites when one of them seems to be offline.

Took a peek at all four of them... well, at least I tried to. I went and got screenshots of them all, but ran into this when I tried to check out Liberal candidate Frank Valeriote's website, frankvaleriote.com...

Guess maybe he decided he didn't want the job after all!

(and just in case any trolls want to accuse me of any funny business, that's a straight up screenshot... no Photoshoping whatsoever)

Interestingly though, if you try typing in the URL (which was working just the other week, I checked), you'll actually get a Google link to his nomination website, called "Putting Guelph First". You see as I reported several months ago, that was his original campaign slogan... which he then had to hurriedly change after it was exposed that he had shamelessly ripped it off from a former Guelph municipal candidate... who just also happened to be the President of the CPC's Guelph riding association at the time. (the old website is accessable via Google's cache here)

Anyway, this looks like campaign blunder number two for Team Dion's man in Guelph. First, it was ripping off the slogan from a local Conservative. Now, his second, is having a dead website when folks are starting to poke around and look into the various local candidates. Strike Two?

In this day and age, loads of people look into their local candidates via the internet. Not having yours up and running this late in the game is just bad optics.

Anyway, maybe they're just ramping things up, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt... I'll check into things next week, and see if they've got their site back up. If and when they get things fixed up, I'll post my reivews sometime after that.

UPDATE: Yes folks, I do know how to use Google... Google is my friend! But letting one of your website just go dead, when all you have to do is set up a 301 redirect (which costs them nothing), is just bad optics. I happened to have the old URL saved, and had checked it just last week... you'd think whoever is doing their web stuff would at least know how to implement a 301 redirect. The post was intended to poke fun at Team Dion/Valeriote in Guelph for missing that.

Besides, their competition seems to have figured it out... gloriakovach.com & gloriakovach.ca

But just in case my Dion/Valeriote Liberal friends in Guelph don't know how to do it, here's some helpful hints. (also easy to find via Google)

But thanks for driving up the hit counter Red Tory. ;-)

UPDATE III: Some people are trying to accuse me of lying, trying to say that I must of had a connection problem or something. But here's the problem for the folks that are saying that... 1) I've tested this from multiple ISP's, and 2) THE REDIRECT IS STILL NOT DONE PROPERLY!

That's right folks... if you go to www.frankvaleriote.com, it works... but go to frankvaleriote.com the top level of the domain, and the link is DEAD as a doornail.

Thus, they haven't set up the redirect at the top level of the domain correctly.

More proof? Try a couple ping requests, as I did...


They all respond just fine... EXCEPT for the top level of the domain.

In comparison... the same test on the Liberal Party website works just fine... you get Ping replies from BOTH the (www.liberal.ca) level and the top level (liberal.ca) of the domain.

My bottom line still stands... the folks running Frank's site don't have a proper redirect set up. Which isn't in and of itself a huge deal... it's just a simple mistake, one that anyone could make. I'm just pointing it out.

UPDATE IV: One thing I've learned today... people need to chill out a little bit. The post was just pointing out a simple web administration error on the part of Frank's team... just a minor thing, but I thought it was funny. Just funny, not a huge deal, so I even pointed out how to fix it. Now folks are going way over the top and accusing me of treason in the comments... I really think way to many people are wound up way too tight on this one. As a result, comments for this post are closed... because people don't know how to behave and not make things personal.