Report to Members, February 2012
ALDC Update November 2011 – January 2012 (a PDF version of this document, is available here). Background This report covers the three month period 1…
New Staff Members and Update for Members
ALDC has recently completed a recruitment process for new staff members to join the team at ALDC. The new staff will be starting during March…
Christmas Opening Times
The ALDC Office will be open until 3.00pm on Friday 23 December 2011, and re-open at 9.30am on Tuesday 3 January 2012. Messages on the…
Read All About It! 19/8/2011
Recommended reading for Liberal Democrat councillors and local campaigners from the last seven days: In national news that affects local government: PFI schemes have come…
Sheffield Highlights
ALDC had a busy weekend at in Sheffield at the Federal Party Conference. Although a lot of members will have spent time campainging in their…
MyCouncillor gets an Upgrade
MyCouncillor, the websitge platform for Lib Dem councillors and local campaigners provided by ALDC has been getting an upgrade in the last few weeks. Since…
The “ALDC News Feed” and RSS Feeds
One of the issues that many of us face is that its difficult to find time to update our sites regularly week in week…
MyCouncillor Issues – FURTHER UPDATE
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…
Sidebar 1 and the “About Me” Box
“Sidebar 1” is the part of your myCouncillor site which traditionally has your picture at the top. (In older themes on the right, in more…
Linking your MyCouncillor site to Twitter
Show Twitter on your MyCouncillor site A new feature in MyCouncillor is the ability to add your “twitter” feed to your myCouncillor site easily. See…
New MyCouncillor Themes
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…
Google Analyitics to track visitors to your site
Google Analytics is a powerful tool which enables you to monitor how many people are looking at your website. It is significantly more powerful than…
New WordPress Dashboard
The new version of WordPress (WordPress 3) is now being used as the system which operates the myCouncillor websites. The “Dashboard” – what you see…
Happy Christmas from ALDC
Please note that the ALDC offices will be closed from 3.00pm on Friday 24 December 2010, and re-open on Tuesday 4 January 2011 at 9.30am.…
MyCouncillor Major Upgrades
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…
Issue of the week – ‘Lib Dems Saving Our Post Offices
This week’s issue is the ‘Lib Dems Saving Our Post Offices’. Following the announcement by Liberal Democrat Ed Davey MP, the Post Office Minister, of…
MyCouncillor Guides – Contents
Getting started ALDC member to blogger in six easy steps Basic tips and customisation Adding your own photos to your blog posts Customizing your MyCouncillor…
Adding a “Yes to Fairer Votes” button on your site
The 2011 council elections will be on the same day as the “Yes to Fairer Votes” referendum. We should be promoting this campaign now by…
Issue of the week Wear it Pink campaign
29th October 2010, is this years ‘Wear it Pink’ day, this is in support of Breast Cancer Research. We are supporting this campaign and have…
Issue of the Week – HS2
This week’s ‘Issue of the Week’ is the announcement of the High Speed Rail Link2 (HS2), which will see a new high-speed line from London…
Issue of the Week – Autumn Conference
This week heralded our autumn conference in Liverpool, over 7,000 people attended; to help you communicate this, we have produced the following material: Words and…
Issue of the week – Allotments – Landshare
This week’s issue is to promote the website ‘Landshare’ which is aimed at people who want to grow fruit and vegetables but don’t have a…
Issue of the Week – Pakistan Flooding Appeal
Something a little different for this week’s issue, but one of the biggest news issues of the last 10 days, the horrific disaster of flooding…
Liverpool Highlights
Autumn Federal Conference 2010 takes place in Liverpool, Saturday 18 – Wednesday 22 September 2010. If you’re not registered already and would like to go…
Chris White: don’t hammer the little people
There were two articles in The Sun the other day on public sector pay. One was headed ‘£240k boss search axed’ and was a reference…
MyCouncillor Server Problem 29 March 2010
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…
Richard Baum: How to get banned from tweeting, in one easy step
A significant number of my colleagues presume I am mad for having a second job as a Councillor. This number has grown significantly since I…
Chris White: Kill puffins and paint horizontally to save money
Local newspapers in western Hertfordshire exploded on Friday evening with news that the county council had lost a court case. It was chasing an invoice…
Chris White: My first lap dance hate mail
I got my first lap-dancing related hate mail the other day. The writer (who was not anonymous) suggested that I had nothing better to do…
We must defend the arts against right-wing cuts
Keynes was both a serious Liberal and a serious man. His work in two world wars and their aftermath is the stuff of legend. His…
MPs should keep out of local rag debate
MPs were debating what are sometimes called ‘council newspapers’ last week. None was supportive. At first sight it is easy to see why. Administrations…
Home truths on gritting
Three things happened at Christmas which I found depressing. Firstly, after explicit instructions to the contrary, a relative who shall remain nameless (though not blameless…)…