Secrets In Websites II
Presidential Campaign Analysis
My analysis of DNC and RNC websites as part of “Secrets In Websites” early in the year was (surprisingly) a rather popular topic, so I thought I’d do a little analysis of the popular presidential candidates for the geeks who found that interesting. It’s a little long as there are quite a few candidates out there.
It’s an interesting analysis but I wouldn’t base much on it. I don’t know if a candidates use of open source vs. a proprietary vendor says anything about their positions on patents, copyrights, DRM, net neutrality, or not. I do however think the content and depth of their site says a little bit about how they view the internet as an effective medium to reach potential voters.
I decided to take the time to do the research simply because it’s interesting to see high profile uses of technology, especially open source and I know I’m not the only one.
This is accurate as of Nov 24, 2007 (see “Data Collection” below for more info).
Disclaimer:If you post a comment that’s beyond the technical scope of this post, it will be deleted. This isn’t a politics site, and I don’t have the patience or time for it. My blog, my rules. No exceptions.
This is just a list of data I collected as described at the bottom of the page. This site is not an endorsement for or against any candidate or party by myself or my employer.
Democrats
Backend
| Candidate | Platform | Framework/Frontend |
|---|---|---|
| Hillary Clinton | Microsoft-IIS/6.0 ASP.NET | Unknown |
| John Edwards | Apache on Unknown | Arcos for CMS. |
| Barack Obama | PWS/1.1.29 (please tell me that’s not Personal Web Server!) | PHP |
| Joe Biden | Zope/(Zope 2.7.8-final, python 2.3.5, linux2) ZServer/1.1 | ?Python?/PHP |
| Chris Dodd | Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) PHP/5.2.0-8+etch7 | PHP (looks like Drupal) |
| Mike Gravel | Apache/2 on Unknown | PHP (looks like Drupal) |
| Dennis Kucinich | Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) | PHP/5.0.4 |
| Bill Richardson | Zope/(Zope 2.7.8-final, python 2.3.6, linux2) ZServer/1.1 | PHP (looks like Drupal) |
Front End
| Candidate | Markup | Layout | Charset | HTTP Compression | Syndication Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hillary Clinton | HTML4 Trans | CSS | UTF-8 | No. | ATOM | |
| John Edwards | HTML4 Trans | CSS | UTF-8 | No | RSS2 | |
| Barack Obama | HTML4 Trans | CSS | ISO-8859-1 | Yes | – | |
| Joe Biden | XHTML Trans | CSS | UTF-8 | No | RSS2 via (not via <link/>). |
|
| Chris Dodd | XHTML Trans | CSS | UTF-8 | No | RSS2 | |
| Mike Gravel | XHTML Trans | Mostly table based layout | ISO-8859-1 | Yes | – | |
| Dennis Kucinich | XHTML Trans | Mostly CSS based | ISO-8859-1 | No | – | |
| Bill Richardson | XHTML Trans | CSS | ISO-8859-1 | Yes | RSS2 |
Etc
| Candidate | Analytics | Notable Library Usage | Other Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hillary Clinton | Google Analytics in the <head/>. |
Prototype (commented out), SWFObject. | – |
| John Edwards | Google Analytics on the bottom of the page. | Prototype | Interestingly, John Edwards has a rather prominent note about the use of Creative Commons Licensing in the footer. The only candidate to do so. |
| Barack Obama | Google Analytics on the bottom of the page. | – | – |
| Joe Biden | Sitemeter on the bottom of the page. | SWFObject | – |
| Chris Dodd | Google Analytics in the head of the page. | jQuery | Chris Dodd seems to be part of the whole “drop the ‘www’” campaign. The only site that insists on redirecting to the non www URL. |
| Mike Gravel | – | – | – |
| Dennis Kucinich | – | – | – |
| Bill Richardson | Google Analytics on the bottom of the page. | Prototype, SWFObject | – |
Republicans
Backend
| Candidate | Platform | Framework/Frontend |
|---|---|---|
| Rudy Guliani | Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS) | PHP/5.1.6 (CakePHP) |
| John McCain | Microsoft-IIS/6.0 | ASP.NET |
| Mitt Romney | Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) | – |
| Fred Thompson | Microsoft-IIS/6.0 | ASP.NET/PHP/ WordPress (with podpress plugin) |
| Mike Huckabee | Microsoft-IIS/6.0 | ASP.NET/ColdFusion |
| Duncan Hunter | Microsoft-IIS/6.0 | ASP.NET |
| Tom Tancredo | Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) | PHP/5.2.1 TypePad (Blog) |
| Ron Paul | Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) | PHP/5.2.5 (MoonPHP) |
Front End
| Candidate | Markup | CSS | Charset | HTTP Compression | Syndication Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rudy Guliani | XHTML Strict | CSS layout | UTF-8 | No. | RDF (FeedCreator 1.7.2) |
| John McCain | XHTML (NO DOCTYPE) | CSS | ISO-8859-1 | Yes | RSS2 |
| Mitt Romney | XHTML Trans | CSS | ISO-8859-1 | No | RSS2 |
| Fred Thompson | XHTML Trans | CSS | UTF-8 | No | RSS2 (via feedburner) |
| Mike Huckabee | XHTML Transitional / CSS layout | UTF-8 | No | RSS2 | |
| Duncan Hunter | XHTML (No Doctype) | CSS | ISO-8859-1 | No | – |
| Tom Tancredo | XHTML Trans | CSS | ISO-8859-1 | No | Atom (found on blog) |
| Ron Paul | XHTML Trans | CSS | UTF-8 | No | Atom /RSS (on blog with atom first) |
Etc
| Candidate | Analytics | Notable Library Usage | Other Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rudy Guliani | Google Analytics and Quantcast on the bottom of the page. | Prototype, Scriptaculous | Interestingly has a Mobile CSS on the home page. Also no real “blog” since the blog mostly seems to point to other places. |
| John McCain | Hitbox on the bottom of the page. | – | Seems to have markup generated with Dreamweaver. See notes below on that. Also seems to be using a page scraper to static cache the home page as “PageScraperService” is seen on the bottom. |
| Mitt Romney | Omniture on the bottom of the page. | mootools | See notes below about analytics |
| Fred Thompson | Google Analytics (strangely loaded via SSL) in the head of the page. | JW FLV PLAYER | – |
| Mike Huckabee | Google Analytics on the bottom of the page. | SWFObject, Prototype.js, Scriptaculous | – |
| Duncan Hunter | – | ypSlideOutMenu | Seems to have markup generated with Dreamweaver. See notes below on that. |
| Tom Tancredo | Google Analytics and Quantcast on the bottom of the page. | Prototype, Scriptaculous | – |
| Ron Paul | Google Analytics on the bottom of the page. | Unobtrusive Flash Objects, Simple AJAX Code-Kit | – |
Notes
Dreamweaver: Surprisingly, there are a few sites in the mix that seem to have been made with Dreamweaver. The telltale sign is the following code:
-
function MM_swapImgRestore() { //v3.0
-
…
-
}
Analytics: I included this because I found it particularly interesting. For a few reasons:
- Some use free services like Google Analytics (boy does Google know a lot about all the candidates traffic), some go open (Quantcast) and some apparently use server logs only.
- Positioning of the analytics code in the footer, which ensures a pageview means the entire page loaded, vs. the top where it’s possible a pageview is counted and a full page didn’t load but shows intent better. Both practices are common on the web, it’s a matter of preference.
- Some I saw even used Quantcast. This was very interesting as they give a fair amount of data regarding the traffic. For example Rudy Giuliani’s traffic is currently:
fairly wealthy, more educated, slightly more female than male crowd.
- Most sites included a privacy policy, though a few were either hard to find or don’t exist. I didn’t think this was worth including in my breakdown.
Data collection method: The data for this blog post was mostly done on the evening of November 24, 2007 by myself. The character set was however Firefox 2.0.0.x interprets the page. HTML validation was checked by submitting to the W3C validator. All other analysis was done by eye. Some things were a little bit of a judgment call, such as CSS layout. I didn’t generally penalize if a table was used, it depends how it was used, and the context. I viewed source on all of them, and spent some time looking around while collecting data. I didn’t view every page on every site, since that would drive me insane. Most of the data is based on the homepages unless otherwise specified.
Hope you enjoyed my web analysis
Pages: 1 2
Tags: akamai, analytics, barack obama, bill richardson, campaign 2008, chase, chris dodd, css, democrat, dennis kucinich, duncan hunter, facebook, firefox, fred thompson, global crossing, Google, hillary clinton, html, joe biden, john edwards, john mccain, microsoft, mike gravel, mike huckabee, mitt romney, Mozilla, mtv, myspace, popurls, redhat, republican, ron paul, rudy guliani, secrets in websites, stephen colbert, tom tancredo, twitter, wordpress
January 11th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
http://www.panic.com/extras/ri.....arning.gif warns about IE 6 and under.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Interesting post. I do have one suggestion, though. Change your table styling to make it easier to differentiate between rows. They kind of blend together at the moment.
January 12th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I can confirm that Chris Dodd’s site uses Drupal while Bill Richardson’s does not, even though it looks like it does. The giveaway is the absence of jQuery and the CSS stylesheet paths.
January 12th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Robert, thanks for doing this, especially the Presidential Campaign Analsyis section. I’ve started doing something similar so many times, but failed to complete the task.
Everyone…be sure to look at “Page 2″ for the campaign analysis. I know I almost missed it.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
As kourge said, Bill Richardson’s site isn’t drupal powered.
Drupal is PHP based CMS
As
Zope/(Zope 2.7.8-final, python 2.3.6, linux2) ZServer/1.1
I’m wondering how it can be a drupal powered
BTW, nice article.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Conditional stylesheets or header information in webpage contents is due to follow of non standards in browser designs.
To easily view what is contained in header or page contents you can use web tools like : http://tools.khrido.com/
January 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
DUGG!
http://digg.com/design/Secrets_In_Websites_II
January 12th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
themegarden.org: Seems different parts of the site are powered by different things. For example the action subdomain seems PHP powered. Evident by a PHP Session cookie.
January 12th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
[...] Read the whole article: Secrets in websites, Part II [...]
January 12th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Hah! I was very interested to see that the democrats lean more toward open source, and the republicans lean more toward licensed software like .net
Keen observation!
January 13th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Sorry man! It’s popular right now on digg
January 13th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Secrets In Websites II…
This story has been submitted to Stirrdup. Your support can help it become hot….
January 13th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Wow, wish they had the same thing for google search engine optimization.I placed this with extra secrets especialy how to get to first page google on my blog, http://www.opentopix.com/topic.....n-websites
January 13th, 2008 at 9:54 am
“other websites code” should be “other websites’ code”.
“the site BrowseHappy under it’s wing” should be “the site BrowseHappy under its wing”.
Please either:
1. Learn how to make the possessive, particulary of “it”;
2. Eliminate all apostrophes. That way you’ll be wrong, but consistent.
Either way is fine.
January 13th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Gravel is using a Drupal site too (http://www.gravel2008.us/CHANGELOG.txt) Or at least the CHANGELOG.txt-file of Drupal
January 13th, 2008 at 10:35 am
You call those funny?
Small minds get amused by small things…
January 13th, 2008 at 10:41 am
“Disclaimer:If you post a comment that’s beyond the technical scope of this post, it will be deleted. This isn’t a politics site, and I don’t have the patience or time for it. My blog, my rules. No exceptions.”
Censorship on a political website? **** you.
January 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am
[...] «w00t» Tags: No Tags [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 11:23 am
[...] Secrets in websites. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am
yea i know i do this sometimes to my websites… its fun
January 13th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Wow, could you please have a header to this post that says “for geeks only.” What the **** is a code?
January 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Jo Wouters: updated. Yes that looks like Drupal.
January 13th, 2008 at 11:51 am
MySpace isn’t running ColdFusion (Adobe’s app server), but they are still running CFML (the language). Many (perhaps all?) of their CFML servers are now running BlueDragon.NET (from New Atlanta). It’s a native .NET implementation of the same scripting language as Adobe’s ColdFusion.
January 13th, 2008 at 11:53 am
myspace still uses coldfusion but not adobes flavor. If i am not mistaken they use BlueDragon which compiles into .net code. Adobes CF compiles into java. So, that would explain why myspace is reporting as a .net server.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Delicious Delicacies for bots… humans just ignore ;-).
January 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Why is the use of Dreamweaver surprising?
January 13th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I’m not sure if leaving the HTML in this comment will work, but here goes:
SARS preparedness in Harvard.edu (http://www.harvard.edu, line 516):
<!–
–>
Digg debug code: (http://www.digg.com line 555)
Wikipedia leaving messages for their SysOps team (http://www.wikipedia.com line 3):
Arstechnica showing their thoughts on IE < 7 (http://arstechnica.com line 15)
January 13th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
There’s system called “Moodle” designed as a CMS for teachers. All of its library files are called “somethinglib.php”. There’s an unused library called “womenslib.php” that redirects to the Wikipedia entry.
January 13th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I’ve been told Obama is running Movable Type.
January 13th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
[...] collection of web-site nosey-ness is evidence here that web devs do have a sense of humour! Well, almost. Nice to see the geeks at [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Great article.
“Copper eh? No fiber in your data center? I won’t judge, as long as your bandwidth is plentiful.”
Every person that connectes to the internet via phone line will be using copper wire.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Wow some of these are really interesting lol
January 13th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Patrick Weigel: Please either 1) apply for a grammar police license or 2) get a life and mind your own **** business. No one cares about typo’d apostrophes.
OT: Love the article!
January 13th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Found elsewhere on the web:
“PWS stands for Panther Web Server which is our own cache-server built completely in-house by the Panther team - it is NOT a web-server (per se), and it is certainly NOT any variation of a Microsoft product. As you guys pointed out, our software runs on Linux and we are a CDN that is distributed network with more than 45 locations worldwide.”
Found in the comments of this link: http://blogs.sun.com/chengfang.....istmas_day
January 13th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Secrets In Websites II…
robert.accettura.com have hit Digg with Secrets In Websites II | Robert Accettura’s Fun With……
January 13th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
The global crossing thing is normal, it’s actually the port that is used during the cross-connect to the other provider. Ten Gig 1/4…
If you look around you’ll see most providers do that.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Here’s another GREAT one, one a band’s website.
http://www.themarsvolta.com/video/
January 13th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
[...] Accettura se ha puesto a esa labor, indagando ése y otros aspectos técnicos de esas webs. En su informe final podemos conocer no sólo los posibles CMS, sino también el resto de tecnologÃas usadas en sus [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
[...] comments in famous websites! You’ll laugh read more | digg [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
[...] read more | digg story [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
[...] Secrets In Websites Interesting, funny things in websites’ code. (tags: HTML webdev humor fun) No Comments Leave a Commenttrackback addressThere was an error with your comment, please try again. name (required)email (will not be published) (required)URL [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Said NO NO NO to Micro$oft
January 14th, 2008 at 1:41 am
The chase one drives me crazy. I got in the habit of putting in a fake id/password the first time and their error page is on https. Doesn’t really make a difference, but it makes me feel just a little bit better about putting in my password on their site.
January 14th, 2008 at 4:31 am
[...] Het is grappig om te zien dat ook de bekende websites gebouwd zijn door mensen zoals jij en ik. In de code kom je dan ook wel eens verwijzingen tegen die gewoon humor zijn. Vooral IE heeft het te verduren. De voorbeelden zijn te vinden op: http://robert.accettura.com/ar.....bsites-ii/ [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 5:38 am
[...] Digg & Secret in Websites [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Obama appears to use jQuery as well:
January 14th, 2008 at 10:22 am
<script src=”http://www.barackobama.com/js/jQuery.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
January 14th, 2008 at 10:24 am
[...] you’re a web geek, you might find Robert Accettura’s article Secrets In Websites II a bit of a hoot. Never underestimate the power of the comment, especially when they’re left [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 11:34 am
[...] XML [Show Styled Code]: [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
A few comments:
Infrastructure/Platform: Microsoft
I’ve also been wondering about this, especially a few years ago… I never thought Windows sounded like a good choice for DNS’s. Now I know.
Myspace.com/strong>
I’ve noticed this before when I’ve been getting errors. I was surprised the first time I got an ASP.Net error on Myspace.
Global Crossing
Actually, Ethernet is not just twisted pair cables. Using a 10 GB optical link for ethernet is nothing terribly remarkable. Being network consultants I’m almost surprised they don’t have a wider pipe than that.
Also a comment on the list of presidential candidates. I think PHP doesn’t belong under Framework/Frontend, but rather Platform. It’s a small thing and it doesn’t really matter, but I took note of it.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Hmm, another comment not directly related the article.
I’m annoyed by some pages that promote non-IE browsers. Instead of positively checking if IE is used, and ocmplain if it is, they check for FF and complains (Shows a switch message) if it FF is not being used. For me as an Opera user that is annoying.
If you wonder, Opera stopped identifying itself as IE some years ago, so it’s not that. But when it happens, I can of course ues mask as FF, and all is fine.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:42 am
[...] web da parte dei vari candidati alle primarie negli Stati Uniti. Un’analisi interessante. Qui il post. PS: guardate anche la prima puntata della serie «Secrets in Websites», il link è [...]
January 15th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
[...] Secrets in websites, part two. [via Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage] [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I like the Firefox ones, there cool.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
[...] Secrets In Websites II | Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage (tags: webdesign cool programming) [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
[...] Secrets In Websites II | Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
What about on Wordpress’ comments template:
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
[...] Todos odian a IE - Que no te digan, que no te cuenten, usa Firefox o morirás de alguna enfermedad vinculada con tu falta de genialidad. Como ves acá, varias páginas tienen ataques al explorador de Microsoft en su código fuente, por si a alguien lo quedaba alguna duda de que NADIE quiere el IE. Fuente [...]
January 25th, 2008 at 2:01 am
[...] Secrets in websites: programmeurs met gevoel voor humor [...]
January 26th, 2008 at 12:38 am
I find myself doing the same thing with my code now as well. Putting funny things in knowing not many people will read them. Kinda like a ‘hello’ into the future.
- Dwayne Charrington.
http://www.dwaynecharrington.com
February 4th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Great observations!
February 4th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
[...] But if you are a web geek you will probably get a kick out of these stats, just like me. Check out Roberts page for the complete [...]
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:10 pm
DOTTED - http://www.newsdots.com/cool/s.....bsites-ii/
March 6th, 2008 at 1:24 am
Hey, no secrets hidden on your own site?
March 12th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I saw the little wordpress smilie on one of my blogs and couldn’t figure out what in the hell it was or where it came from … let alone how to move it. At least now I don’t think I’m quite as crazy
March 31st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
[...] comments in famous websites! You’ll laugh :)read more | digg story Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can [...]