Alachua Voter Guide

I thought I’d take a navel-gazing moment here to let you know about the State of the Website. I check my hosting company’s stats once in awhile, and it was gratifying to see that he had hit 500+ visitors per day on both October 20 and 21. Before that, we hit 360 on the 19th, and we’d been consistently over 200 unique visitors for the previous six days. Thank you, visitors!

We are doing a little bit better a little bit earlier than usual, but it’s been surprising to see what search terms have been bringing in the traffic: David Gildart. We have had over 2,000 visitors this month who came as a result of Google searches, and almost 600 of our visitors used the Soil and Water Conservation Board’s Seat number 2 candidate. I can only presume that people are getting their sample ballots from the Supervisor of Elections and head directly to the Internet for the candidates they know the least about. Once they get here, they can find the rest of them.

I think it’s important to note that Mr. Gildart is the only candidate in ANY race to interact with the voters on this site! He has left comments in response to voter comments. I wish this were happening in every race. After all, this IS a blog, and interactivity is one of the most attractive features of blogging. This is NOT a newspaper in which I talk down to you, and you are stuck with whatever I say. Candidates can post their own articles whenever they want with no limits. This blog could turn into The David Gildart Show if he ever decided to; as could any other candidate who wants to distinguish him or her self.

The next most searched for candidates, who are then found here, are Denise Ferrero, Kevin Riordan, Mary Ann Gosa, and Lorraine Sherman. All have numbers below 50, making Mr. Gildart the virtual winner of “Candidate Idol”. And for what it is worth, the domain name candidateidol.com is already taken. It’s not an actual website, but someone has bought it and is holding it.

You may have noticed there is now a link to articles for Alachua Together on the right sidebar. Alachua Together is a blog in the tradition of Alachua Voter Guide: free exposure for local business people, tradesmen, artists, and holders of garage sales. The difference is that any one can register as a user and I will grant them Author permissions within 24 hours. Then they can promote whatever they do or sell or want to trade. I want it to become a major go-to destination for all people who try to buy locally.

I have noticed that we no longer get those pesky error messages about the website not connecting to the database. I wish I could take credit for fixing that, but I can’t. I am just grateful it’s stopped happening.

Thanks,
Don Marsh