A few weeks ago, I commented on how Medway’s Liberal Democrats were lacking a web presence - and that they had foolishly allowed their domain name to lapse. Well, I have been doing a bit of digging around since then, and have found out a few things.

The Lib Dems had re-registered their domain name (or, more specifically, Alan Jefferies had) the day after I made my warning post. Their website now contains little more than a holding page - but it is, at least, better than some anonymous webster* to register it for them and create for them a potentially damaging spoof website. I was, myself, considering buying the domain name and selling it back to them at the same amount as I’d paid for it to protect them from such underhand tactics, before I came to my senses. After all, if I’d have done so, I’d have been open to the accusations that I was going to be said anonymous webster*.

Their holding page indicates that their website is being completely changed. There’s nothing wrong with this - I too am currently in the process of re-designing and re-programming the Gillingham Conservatives’ website - I just hope that they learn from their previous website and don’t make it off-putting to potential supporters.

They also link through to the not-been-update-since-Noah-built-the-ark websites of their two parliamentary candidates, Andy Stamp (Gillingham and Rainham) and Geoff Juby (Rochester and Strood). Tactical use of the Internet is important to all parliamentary candidates - so it’d be interesting to know what these candidates think when they search Andy Stamp or Geoff Juby on Google and see the list of results. Number one is the official Lib Dems’ national site, then for Andy I am number two and for Geoff I am number three and John Ward’s backup site is number two. Their own websites don’t even feature!

Contrarily, Rehman Chishti has been making good tactical use of the Gillingham and Rainham Conservatives’ website to send his message out to voters. He too is now branching out - both rehmanchishti.co.uk and rehmanchishti.com have been registered. The former heads to a holding page and the latter heads to a page reading “This site is currently unavailable” - with the Conservatives’ tree logo as the favicon.

The importance of the Internet can be over-stated by many, but is also often underestimated by a large breed of politicos. The best advice this humble blogger can give to all interwebically silent politicos is thus: at the very least, register for a Blogger account and blog away. Alternatively, you can find someone like myself to help build you a website contianing many features to best make the use of the Internet for political activism.

*Please note: my references to websters are not references to cloth weavers, but my second made-up term, referring to Internet-savvy people with a web presence, such as myself.