I am going to tell you little secret: In politics, OPTICS MATTER.
It strikes me as amazing that the Civil Rights group that was first successful to use the Internet to network and coordinate the fight for gun rights, is now so behind when it comes to Web design.
I am just going to address Florida Carry and Florida Sport Shooting Association because they are both local and I belong to both.
These are their main pages:
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I am pretty sure that whomever designed the sites, has since then graduated from high school and probably is married with kids by now. Both pages need a serious makeover as soon as this legislative session is over.
And yes, I know: Social Media is more important and blah-blah. But people will always end up visiting website for the substance of the organization. We cannot afford to look as if we are a forgotten site from GeoCities or MySpace, specially when domain names and hosting packages are so cheap nowadays. If Dudley’s clone page for Florida looks halfway good, the true Gun Rights organizations have no excuse to look like After-School projects from the Clinton Era.
Come on! Even this blog looks better!
No wonder we are not being taking seriously. We are the internet equivalent of the weird old uncle still wearing his 70’s leisure suits for Thanksgivings.
For a group of people whose biggest joy would be to buy almost every single new gun and gadget that is presented during the SHOT show, we seem to have no problem with decades old web design still representing us.
You hit the bright shiny nail square on the head. Sites full of broken links. Forum errors and downtime. The problem seems to be that folks who run the groups are looking at the money of getting a decent website built and then shove it off onto someone’s kid or that member who made a geocities or angelfire page back in the day.
The shift towards relying on social media has also marked a decline in the participation of forums and perceived importance of a group website.
As social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit as well as search engines like Google and Bing continue to make it harder for gun owners to sell to each other and even to discuss their hobby, these websites are more important than ever. They have to work and they have to be slick.
There is the risk of domain name providers and ISPs also blocking gun sites but those companies are easier to bring to heel than social media, who will just claim they’re a platform, not a service provider.d
Dudley’s Texas link, Texas Gun Rights, just accomplished shutting down a good chance for constitutional carry in Texas!