Month: November 2006

A few marathon coding and HTML sessions later and I think that we’re able to declare that Blogging Tories has received enough tweaking to declare a full new version of the site.

Blog post thumbnail pictures, AJAX navigation (tabbed navigation without refreshing the page), AJAX-based search, and the fundraising tool are among the new features.

The search feature is particularly exciting. Now you can submit a single query and display results from within the Blogging Tories network, from the whole web, from blogs and now from the Hansard record.

A sample search

To shrink the search bar back up top, just click the blue triangle (that points up). News-based and Blog-based search results on the right can be re-sorted chronologically.

As for the new navigation, you can browse through Blogging Tories mini-sites such as BT-TV, Brookstreet and even the BT-SPY without refreshing the page. You can just click through the tabs. Go ahead and give it a try. (Forums does load a separate page…)

BT AJAX-based navigation

BT-SPY loaded

and again, because it is so very cool, the Blogging Tories Fundraising Tool which is currently raising money for the conservative candidate in London North Centre. At the time of this writing, this blog (as a participant in BTFT program has raised $212.00, and Blogging Tories has raised $393.00. You can put the BTFT on your own blog by clicking here, or if you’re the donating type, please go ahead!

Many thanks to Craig for his help in implementing the new features.

There are plenty of new features coming to Blogging Tories in the future. Stay tuned!

Today we honour and recognize the sacrifices made today for King, Queen, Country and countrymen. My thanks to all of those who served to fight against fascism and tyranny and those that continue to do so today.

Canadians remember those that made the ultimate sacrifice:
Boer War: 270
World War I: 66,655
World War II: 45,300
Korea: 516
Afghanistan: 43
Peacekeeping: 119

Each and every one of these deaths was a tragedy and we appreciate their bravery so that we, and others, may live free.

God bless us all.

Blogging Tories has released its latest tool. Now you can fundraise for the conservative candidate in London North Centre, Dianne Haskett.

Blogging Tories members that integrate the Blogging Tories Fundraising Tool (BTFT) into their sites can track the top and recent donations that they are able to raise via their own blog. When you click on the “Donate” button, you can submit a credit card payment (via PayPal) to Haskett’s campaign. Your first name and the amount that you donated will immediately appear on the “Recent Donors” list. If you’re a leading donor for that particular blog, your first name and donation will appear on the “Top Donors” list too.

Each blog has their own distinct recent and top donors list and each blogger can set their own goal as to how much they’d like to raise for the campaign. The amount raised is also expressed as a percentage of their goal.

Finally, a central version of the fundraising tool hosted at Blogging Tories will show the global (across the BT network) top donors, and most recent donors across the entire network.

Craig and I have spend a couple of weeks of on-and-off work on this one and we hope that it’ll be a successful model for distributed digital grassroots fundraising for many more campaigns (including some non-partisan charities that we look forward to helping).

So, go ahead and install the BTFT on your own blog and encourage your visitors to contribute to Dianne’s campaign. You can even test it out by contributing to my blog’s effort! (Major credit cards and paypal accepted. Payments protected by Paypal)

Click here to put the Dianne Haskett BTFT on your blog!

UPDATE: As a bit of incentive, Blogging Tories that put the BTFT on their site will have their blog links bolded on the blogroll until the LNC votes are counted.