How Not To Run a Campaign Website 114
Soong writes "The blogsphere has been going crazy today about the technical difficulties being experienced by the Joe Lieberman for CT Senator web site, joe2006.com. MyDD outlines the story so far and has continuing updates. A reader at DailyKos digs deeper and finds some shamefully exposed ports. A front page story there has the money quote: 'Joe's site shares one server with 73 other sites. They pay $15/month for an overcrowded server, and then they blame others when it goes down?' kos also mentions that 'My hosting bill is now over $7K per month.' While this has immediate consequences for Joe Lieberman's campaign since his site went down Sunday night/Monday morning and the election is today, it makes me curious to see an expose on what exactly we're getting from various vendors when we buy into sub $100/month hosting plans."
No - that's bullshit (Score:1)
I don't know any admins stupid enough to fall into category #1, so I'm tending to believe it's #2.
Please.
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:1)
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:2)
yea all too often they have true idiots running things like that..
i was colocating with a place in DC.. good bandwith and good price.. but i left after two years because they had the dirtiest network i had ever seen...
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
$15 is high-budget stuff for a lot of these folks. (Heck, I have several domains sitting on an old Pentium Pro box on a friend's static-IP DSL connection. Websites can be -- and are -- done on the cheap all the time.)
I find it quite easy to believe that using such a low-end server was an oversight by an underpaid or volunteer staffer who just didn't know better -- or didn't think.
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:1)
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:1)
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:2)
For system administration, for instance, I tend to set it quite high: Any system adminstrator worthy of the name should be able to do system-level development as well -- debugging everything from applications to drivers and other kernel-level code as necessary. The poster may set their standards similarly, in which case semi-competance is likely to be more than enough for the kind of evaluation being made.
So -- completely disc
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:2)
You're right. That is setting the bar pretty high.
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:1)
It's high, yes -- but I don't think unreasonably so. System administration involves taking potentially complex pieces -- both hardware and software -- and making them work together as a complete system. Making things work, the job of a sysadmin, is arguably harder than
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:2)
You need one more part to that analogy- If you were in charge of moving something very valuble across the country VIA that cargo truck, would you get some idiot off the street to do it? No, you'd probably go with an experienced trucker or company, and that's what Lieberman should have
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
99% of the time its going to be incompetence.
I vote incompetence.
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor [wikipedia.org]
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Does he move site to a better server? Does he upgrade the hosting plan? No, he turns to his base and says (paraphrasing here) Fuck you assholes for crashing my website; you all hate me; the other guy is a jerk that sicced yall on my tubes. Then he demands Lamont cry 'I am not a thief' over the incident.
I am not a Democrat, but I am amazed at how Sen. Lieberman keeps biting the Koolaid base hand that feeds him.
I guess if you give fuck you to your base, the base lobs that fuck you right back at ya. Hence his loss today.
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:2)
Re:No - that's bullshit (Score:2)
That hosting company is not alone - I've seen the sam
Not everything is as it seems (Score:3, Interesting)
As for cheap hosting plans - we host clients anywhere from $12.75/month to 100 times that - some sites need a lot of capacity, most don't. But, virtually across the board, many people have no idea how much bandwidth they really need until it's too late.
Any reasonable hosting company should have noticed the domain name and made arrangements for such a high profile site. Of course, this assumes that the engineers at the hosting provider were neutral...
Re:Not everything is as it seems (Score:2)
AFAIK, for most of these places it's almost, if not totally, completely automated.
Fact of the matter is that, vulernarable or not, hacking someone elses site is BS and only a complete d1ck would do it.
It comes down to a first ammendment right. When you hack, deface, or DOS someone's site because you disagree
Re:Not everything is as it seems (Score:2)
No! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No! (Score:2)
In all fairness, that's an easy mistake to make...
Re:No! (Score:1)
Swamped (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that Joe Lieberman couldn't keep his website running is a good metaphor for why he lost this challenge by someone who even a few months ago was a nobody.
I think it's particularly interesting that political websites all across the US have been sluggish and crash-happy for most of the day. The amount of interest in this single campaign (a primary, ffs!) crashed not only Joe Lieberman's site, but forced Kos to run a stripped down front page, completely b0rked the official results page, and has slowed down just about any place with breaking news about this race.
I know it's inane to speak of the Power of the Web. The web's not doing anything; it's just people doing what they've always done - showing curiousity whenever something catches their interest. The difference here is that the medium has changed, and this particular medium has created the ability to generate political clout for those who know how to use it. I don't mean that in the Goebbels 'Big Lie' sense - quite the opposite. This campaign in particular has shown that on the Internet, all lies are shallow. And that's a direct challenge to American Politics as it's practised today.
Re: Swamped (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a metaphor would seem to imply that his loss was due to cluelessness. AFAICT it's actually because >0.5 of the Democratic voters in CT think he's a Republican in all but name, and wanted a change more than they wanted the perks of having a senior legislator.
Re: Swamped (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Swamped (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Swamped (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they ought to go flip burgers or write AJAX code or do something besides work in the medical field under a professional oath and state-sanctioned license.
Re: Swamped (Score:1)
> No, they ought to go flip burgers or write AJAX code or do something besides work in the medical field under a professional oath and state-sanctioned license.
You really don't get this whole freedom thing, do you?
Re: Swamped (Score:2)
If your religion is really that important to you, are you really going to be happy with a career that conflicts with it so frequently? Geez, first they shove that evil-ution stuff down your throat in pre-med, then, before you know it, you're being asked to help rape victims.
Should you be "free" to drown your kids in the bathtub, if the Invisible Sky Fairy tells you to? No? Gee, maybe there really ought to be limits to freedom.
Re: Swamped (Score:1)
Wow, you really don't get the freedom thing. Do people really need you to te
Re: Swamped (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Swamped (Score:2)
Worse than being a Republican (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Worse than being a Republican (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but Democrats tend to see the entire Republican Party as too close to President Bush, also.
gerrymandered districts (which is a serious cancer on democracy spreading throughout this nation so _wake up_)
Oh, I'm awake. But as long as the power to define districts belongs to the people who have the most to lose or gain from redistricting -- and also the power to change the laws that say who has the power to define districts -- how is anything going to change?
Re:Worse than being a Republican (Score:2)
Does that surprise you? Have they done something I'm unaware of which would make that belief incorrect? Like Lieberman, the Republican's have almost entirely abandoned their duties to oversee the executive branch. The congress during Clinton's years spent hundreds of hours investigating Clinton's Christmas card list while they don't spend more than two days worth of effort to investigate the startlingly serious a
Gerrymandering is a risky tactic (Score:2)
Gerrymandering can definitely backfire, though, especially in an environment of shifting and/or unpredictable voting patterns.
Gerrymandering works by concentrating your opponents' voters together in as few districts as possible, and distributing your v
Re: Swamped (Score:2, Informative)
actually, just a cursory glance [washingtonpost.com] at his voting record for the past couple of months indicate lieberman has sided with the GOP on just 2 issues: the war in iraq and illegal immigration. everything else has been a lock-step march with the democrat party. btw, hillary clinton [washingtonpost.com] also voted with the GOP on the illegal immigration ammendment (S 2611), and also supported the war in iraq. would you also consider
Re: Swamped (Score:2, Interesting)
"George Bush's favourite Democrat" The kissing video from the floor of congress, I don't know of any other Senator that has been favoured in that manner. Lieberman's opposition to the democrtic parties attempt's to stop Bush's nominees to the Supreme court, not his words - his votes, which actually matter.
His directive to Democrats to stop criticizing the president "cause we're at war."
Geez and sheesh if maybe we had all been encouraged to look closely and crit
Re: Swamped (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Swamped (Score:1)
Of course, he's a career politician, so it's probably both.
Re: Swamped (Score:2)
Angry liberals forced out the only good man in the whole Democratic party because he didn't walk in lock step with their angry liberal commie plans. Sean Hannity told me.
This idea that Joementum lost through the standard democratic primary process is just liberal spin. Angry liberal spin.
Re:Swamped (Score:2)
I only ask because:
A. It would solve some of their bandwidth problems
B. There are lots of rules against valuable freebies when it comes to politiking
Re:Swamped (Score:5, Interesting)
Usual Netcraft Info (and no, nobody's dead) (Score:2, Troll)
There's not a whole lot of other information. It was paid for by the "Friends of Joe Lieberman" (so he didn't even use his own funds for it), and the hosting company was The Planet Internet Services. Anyone buying the services of a company with a name that pretentious almost deserves problems. Oh, the ISP is
"Friends of Joe Lieberman" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Usual Netcraft Info (and no, nobody's dead) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Usual Netcraft Info (and no, nobody's dead) (Score:1)
And they definitely deserve their reputation. Their technicians are helpful, their connection reliability is great and overall I've only had good experiences with them.
Cheers,
ND
It's theplanet.com's fault (Score:4, Interesting)
Then 2004 arrived. AOL and other ISPs started blocking email sent from phpwebhosting.com servers. I managed to work around the problem, but I had no idea what had happened in the background. Then one day, I noticed that instead of one of my domains going to phpwebhosting.com's server, it was going to theplanet.com's. After more research it appeared that theplanet.com had taken over phpwebhosting.com, or at the very least phpwebhosting.com was just reselling theplanet.com's stuff.
At the end of 2004 things started to turn bad. One client's site was down for 5-6 hours a day for an entire week. No warning, no appology, and no responce to the trouble ticket. Then all of the clients started to be blocked again by AOL. Then worse my personal account could not recieve email. Since all of this started just before X-mas, I gave them a week to reply to the trouble ticket (in the past it was normally only 24hr or less). Then I raised the level of the ticket and asked for an update. Since New Years was just around the corner, I gave them another week to do something. Nothing happened. At this point, I started to get phone calls from people asking why my email was bouncing. The ticket was already at the emergency level, so I again asked for an update. Still nothing by the end of the first week in Jan.
I began the really annoying task of seeking out a new webhost. Meanwhile the clock was ticking on the trouble ticket. The 2nd week in Jan was gone and I had found the place I would move some of my clients (other's I decided to set up on their own servers). The end of Jan, I finally moved the last of my domains from phpwebhosting.com (which I think is now controlled by theplanet.com). Over a month had gone by and there was still no answer to the trouble ticket.
I can only say that for many years phpwebhosting.com was great and that only after theplanet.com somehow became involved with them did the server go down hill. It must be theplanet.com's fault. Had the Friends of Joe Lieberman knew about this, I'm sure they would have chosen a better discount webhost.
if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you think you can cheap out and push terabytes for nothing, you will quickly find out that free lunches are hard to find anymore.
Now exactly how youtube.com stays in business, I don't get.
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
it would need to be tens of terabytes to even come close. THat is some serious fucking bandwidth, and webpages just dont do that kind, even if you are joe lieberman. It would take massive videos and much much more to do it.
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
The bottom line is
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:3, Informative)
Youtube's hosting costs are $1m a month and right now they are watching the pot of venture capital dollars trickle away and wondering how the heck they can moneterize (hate that phrase but YKWIM) the site enough to keep going with that burn rate. According to a story recently on Digg they have maybe 9 months left unless they sort something out.
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:1)
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
Their competitors will figure this out first, or everyone will move to Goooooogle. SELL YOUR YOUTUBE STOCK!
No free lunches? (Score:2)
Unless you're a doctor [nytimes.com] in America.
And yes, this has to do with the campaign. The first thing Lamont talked about in his speech this evening was not the war-- it was health care [nytimes.com].
W
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
If somebody has no clue about the amount of traffic a website generates, they'll get screwed by these schemes, and these types of hosts are still around.
Re:if my bill suddenly jumped to 7K? (Score:2)
It's pretty amazing how little bandwidth you can use if your site is well designed.
buncha saps (Score:5, Insightful)
Hours later CNN and others are running stories with the Leiberman campaign accusing Lamont of unethical behavior. Give me a break! What a free pass CNN gives to Lieberman for a late smear. Two sides to a story (i'll accept the premise) perhaps, but one is obviously using the chance (perhaps a 'wired' one at that) for a cheapshot with no time on the clock. Reporters and editors should check with their local geek before becoming such avoidable pawns in a serious contest about the future of the USA.
Fortunately, it appears this didn't push the election.
Re:buncha saps (Score:2)
Unless their local greek writes press releases, it's just too much work for them to bother.
$7k hosting bill? (Score:2)
Re:$7k hosting bill? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:$7k hosting bill? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:$7k hosting bill? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:$7k hosting bill? (Score:2, Informative)
What's interesting is that of the 155KB page size, 125KB of that was javascript. Ouch!
Re:$7k hosting bill? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:$7k hosting bill? (Score:2)
Just your standard CPanel box at theplanet... (Score:1, Informative)
That's what happens when you use cheap services.
This is all obvious because cpanel is the only crappy control panel I know with their own distro of roothat linux that runs the melange chat serv
Not true! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not true! (Score:2)
Here's the link to the story:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001304.php [tpmmuckraker.com]
Re:Not true! (Score:2)
One colo company I work with sells 512Kbps (100M burst) 1U colo hosting (your server) with 5 IP's for $99/mo.
Re:Not true! (Score:2)
The Slashdot Attack (Score:1)
If you pay peanuts (Score:2)
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys!
I tried to develop a shopping site for a friend to host on a similarly cheap server. I tested it on my "Internet Connection Sharer", an old K6/1 running at 200MHz with just 48MB of RAM {and still able to run Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL}. I swear that little machine was faster and more reliable than the hosted server.
The also made some really awful mistakes. Like using the same password for FTP {which, of course, is your u
REAL attack (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:REAL attack (Score:3, Funny)
Expose? (Score:2)
Charles
uptime my ass (Score:1)
Re:uptime my ass (Score:1)
Lost in the noise (Score:2, Interesting)
Did anyone see this? (Score:1)
Re: How to win friends!!! (Score:3, Funny)
It will only blow one fuse; $15 is about what it will cost to fix it.
Current text is even more funny (Score:5, Funny)
I just clicked on the link and I got the following (hilarious) text:
UPDATE ON THE ATTACK ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE
STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH: "For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman's website and email has been totally disrupted and disabled, we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the US Attorney and the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney and the campaign will be filing a formal complaint reflecting our concerns. The campaign has also notified the State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review."
"We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."
Re:Current text is even more funny (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Current text is even more funny (Score:2)
Re:Current text is even more funny (Score:2)
Are you kidding? This is slashdot. The astroturfers will themselves have mod points within a week.
Re:Current text is even more funny (Score:2)
And mod each other into oblivion a day after that. Not that it would matter. Slashdot's mutant radioactive trolls have chunks of astroturfers like that in their stool.
Re:CRAAAAAAAAACK GOES THAT KOOKY DEM PARTY (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason that this election is such a big deal is that a very senior senator is in a very tight race with someone from his own party. The democratic voters in Connecticut are tired of having Bush's lapdog taking up their seat in the senate. I wouldn't ordinarily throw names like that around, but what else do you call some who's voting record deviates from the President's wishes in less than 1 percent of his votes? If he was smart, he would have switched parties before this election. It's not unheard of, and he'd actually have a chance at winning. His opponent, Ned Lamont, has a lot of big groups behind him, including MoveOn.org. Lieberman is so afraid of losing his seat that they brought out the big dogs and had Bill Clinton campaigning for him in Connecticut. This is not your average race.
You may be right about the democrats saying 'goodbye to '08' though. This race definitely shows that democratic voters are tired of the democrats attempting to be republicans. Democrats, and even republicans, that want to win this fall will need to go against the President and distance themselves from him.
Aero
Re:CRAAAAAAAAACK GOES THAT KOOKY DEM PARTY (Score:2)
Re:CRAAAAAAAAACK GOES THAT KOOKY DEM PARTY (Score:2)
Source? From what I can tell Lieberman is only with Bush on the war issue.
Re:CRAAAAAAAAACK GOES THAT KOOKY DEM PARTY (Score:2, Informative)
The New Haven Register, by Gregory B. Hladky on 03/13/2006
Sided with Congress to force prolonging Terri Schiavo's life, against her and her husband's wishes.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/3/27/21395 5.shtml [newsmax.com]
Voted for Attorney General Gonzalez, who thinks the Geneva