*** Bigger Than The CFL? Freeople.com Launches! ***

[mrchubbs]

Every Ron Paul supporter knows there is nothing really "bigger" than Ron Paul's own CFL organization, but this newly launched site contains features that Ron Paul forums members have been yearning for since the campaign began last year.

So, in a way this site is bigger in scope than the CFL. The promotional email explains it best:


I am pleased to announce the official launch of Freeople (http://www.freeople.com). Freeople is a toolset for change. We are dedicated to empowering freedom-minded candidates, supporters and groups around the country. Our key features include:

* FREE meetup-like groups (public and private)
* FREE calendaring and event management
* EASY-to-use fund raising for any group activity
* FREE Google Maps connecting members, candidates, groups and events
* LOWEST fees of any online political community for fund raising
* MORE money to candidates and supporters by grouping transactions
* RATE the candidates in true free-market fashion
* EARN member points and be recognized as a top contributor

Join the site today by clicking "Register" on the home page. If you are a candidate running for office or know of one who should be featured on Freeople, let us know and we can help!

We look forward to your feedback and ways we can continue to improve the site.

Sincerely,
Ron Shimshock
Freeople.com

Some of you may remember Ron Shimshock as the guy who ran the Ron Paul letter writing effort last year as well as the guy who ran the CNN/YouTube Debate Ron Paul Ad Competition. So you know he's one of "us".

The site is very nice. You can donate to multiple candidates in ONE transaction. As a member you get your own blog. You can start your own group (like meetup). etc.. Also note that any candidate can sign up and run their own blog / profile on the site and collect donations directly through the site. That means that Obama and/or McCain are free to join... the catch is that there is a rating system for candidates. Gee, I wonder what rating they would get?


Check it out and register today!
http://freeople.com/


Enjoy.

[Bryan]

I signed up two days ago. :)


So you know he's one of "us".
Yes, http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=5474 :)

[Roxi]

sweet!

[Mckarnin]

Good work Ron!

[DirtMcGirt]

+1 wow!!!

[amy31416]

Bookmarked! Looks great!

[Tarzan]

FINALLY!!! :):):)

Thanks to Ron & Friends for all the hard work!
I appreciate your perseverance... this is a tough project.

[H Roark]

I just got a scrambled page?

[newyearsrevolution08]

great job

[bucfish]

nice

[scrosnoe]

I signed up tonight - looks good!

[revolutionman]

I cant put my finger on it, but i dont really like it.

i changed my mind, it seems okay, it'll be what the users make of it I suppose.

[constituent]

lol, the map points to Zilker Park in Austin (police state USA).

other than that, the site is great!

excellent work!

[PatriotOne]

This is what I am seeing. The rest of the site looks good except the top of the page. I didn't clicked on, or moused over, those white boxes in the upper left. They are just there for me.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e198/Yekt40/freeople.jpg

[revolutionman]

i got the same crap. It kinda ruins the experience.

[Jeremy]

fees? huh?

[ronpaulhawaii]

fees? huh?

where did you see "fees"?

[Jeremy]

where did you see "fees"?

first post... about donations or something

By the way, the verification email goes to my spam inbox. This shouldn't happen because I use gmail and this is probably one of the first sites that went to spam for the wrong reason

[szczebrzeszyn]

This is what I am seeing. The rest of the site looks good except the top of the page. I didn't clicked on, or moused over, those white boxes in the upper left. They are just there for me.

Seems like they didn't test against Internet Explorer 6 - the biggest disaster of the current web.

[Jeremy]

I'm trying to make a group, but when I click submit and clears out all the fields and no group is made

[Bryan]

fees? huh?

That's for credit card processing, which everyone always pays- the standard formula is for some base fee per transaction and then some percentage of each one.

Every online credit card processing services has a different fee structures based on "the plan" you choice based on your expected usage (similar to a phone calling plan).

Freeople.com both got a good rate and also saves by bundling multiple transactions shopping cart style into one payment, so you could split a donation to five candidates and only pay one flat fee to the credit card processing and not five as you'd have to do if they were on different sites.

[Bryan]

Looks like they still have a few bugs to work on for some platforms / browsers. It is a pretty advanced system with lots of room for problems for different system flavors.

I'll send ron a note to this link- what version of IE are us using? What OS version?


This is what I am seeing. The rest of the site looks good except the top of the page. I didn't clicked on, or moused over, those white boxes in the upper left. They are just there for me.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e198/Yekt40/freeople.jpg

[MsDoodahs]

YAY! ANOTHER great site!

I remain AMAZED at all the FANTASTIC ideas for spreading the message that have sprung up.

Two years ago...either none of this existed or it was extremely difficult/impossible for us to find and connect with such sites.

:)

[mport1]

Sounds sweet, I'll check it out.

[szczebrzeszyn]

I'll send ron a note to this link- what version of IE are us using? What OS version?

IE6/win XP - you can tell by the look of this. How come they didn't test against this browser? Seems like web development 101 :)

[mport1]

Is there a Facebook and MySpace profile for this to help spread the word? How bout a Digg article?

[Jeremy]

I started a branch of Lawson's Minutemen)

[MsDoodahs]

Is there a Facebook and MySpace profile for this to help spread the word? How bout a Digg article?

Good ideas!

I'm not on Facebook or MySpace...don't know how to do a Digg article, but if someone does, I know how to sign in and digg it after it's there. :)

[ItsTime]

looks really good.

[DirtMcGirt]

looks like they are fixing the problems

[newbitech]

anyone else getting a blank registration page using

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0 ?

Also get a 500 server error on IE 7.0.5730.13

so i can't register. =(

[ronpaulhawaii]

I started a branch of Lawson's Minutemen)

Damn, just when I went to join your group they went blank :rolleyes:

I'll have to do it later, am heading to a march in NYC with cfl flyers and signup sheets

:D:D:D

[Jeremy]

anyone else getting a blank registration page using

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0 ?

ya

looks like the site is down now

[newbitech]

ya

looks like the site is down now

looked good from the 2 minutes I saw, ill check back later.

[szczebrzeszyn]

ya

looks like the site is down now

Yes - actually the server returns HTTP 500 code - internal server error (but without a standard message, just a blank page).

[mrchubbs]

Maintenance page is up now...

I sent a message to Ron about the problems. He's probably getting some rest after being up all night.

He'll get the problems ironed out as soon as he gets a chance.


Enjoy.

[CurtisLow]

Still..


Freeople.com is undergoing maintenance at this time.
Please try again later.

[Knightskye]

Freeople.com is undergoing maintenance at this time.
Please try again later.

Hmm.

[asgardshill]

Still..


Freeople.com is undergoing maintenance at this time.
Please try again later.

Yes, that's what I'm getting too. Which is why it is good policy to fine-tune your web presence before making your launch announcement.

[rs3515]

Hey folks, this is Ron. We've been investigating this and the problem is due to Googlebot. Seems as though Google was doing its first pass of indexing the site and slammed it with hundreds of thousands of requests.

This isn't a functional problem with the site, but due to overload ... an overload we wouldn't expect for a long, long time. :)

Hoping to have everything back up and running before long. Sorry for the issues.

[rs3515]

Looks like they still have a few bugs to work on for some platforms / browsers. It is a pretty advanced system with lots of room for problems for different system flavors.

I'll send ron a note to this link- what version of IE are us using? What OS version?

Bryan, we've focused our development on all versions of Firefox, all versions of Opera, most versions of Safari, and IE 7 and above. IE 6 is super finicky when it comes to more advanced functionality.

We haven't seen a large number of IE 6 users so far, but if there is a huge outcry to have the site available to everyone running IE 6, we'll see what we can do.

[aspiringconstitutionalist]

The site's dead.

[rs3515]

The site's dead.

I posted in a couple of posts above ...

Googlebot did the first pass of indexing the site this morning and slammed it with thousands of requests. It caused the site to shut down because of it.

There is a problem with the configuration that we're trying to track down and have it up again shortly.

[hypnagogue]

Hmm.. Freeople makes me want to say free-ople, not freeple, as I suspect was intended.

[Jeremy]

Bryan, we've focused our development on all versions of Firefox, all versions of Opera, most versions of Safari, and IE 7 and above. IE 6 is super finicky when it comes to more advanced functionality.

We haven't seen a large number of IE 6 users so far, but if there is a huge outcry to have the site available to everyone running IE 6, we'll see what we can do.

Most websites are designed to work with IE6 as well... a lot of people use IE6

[rs3515]

Hmm.. Freeople makes me want to say free-ople, not freeple, as I suspect was intended.

Do you also say pe-ople? Just kidding. :)

"freeple" wasn't an option, so we went with something close ... people will get used to it over time.

[rs3515]

The site is back up and running. It seems as though Googlebot crashed the site when going through the calendar. Every calendar day is a separate page, and I think goes for the next 30 years. :)

Needless to say, we've now set our Google indexing to make sure it doesn't go through every day on the calendar, only through calendar events. If anyone has further issues let us know.

[rs3515]

Most websites are designed to work with IE6 as well... a lot of people use IE6

Yes I agree, although the number of IE 6 users is dropping every month and Microsoft is already on the roadmap to releasing IE 8. I'll see what I can do to clean up the CSS a bit for IE 6 users.

[mrchubbs]

Most websites are designed to work with IE6 as well... a lot of people use IE6


"a lot of people" should upgrade their browsers. IE6 is technologically ancient.
:D

Although I agree, for some reason people are still using it.

[Conza88]

ooooh ahhhhh

[Jeremy]

"a lot of people" should upgrade their browsers. IE6 is technologically ancient.
:D

Although I agree, for some reason people are still using it.

We have no control over those people. ;) And trust me... I know how annoying it is because I'm a webmaster myself.

[mrchubbs]

We have no control over those people. ;) And trust me... I know how annoying it is because I'm a webmaster myself.


I know... I just looked at some stats that suggest about 35% of all IE traffic to my site is IE6.0.

Crazy.

[libertarian4321]

Most websites are designed to work with IE6 as well... a lot of people use IE6

People still use IE? :)

Anyway, I signed up using Firefox (its free, you know)- no problems!

[Paul Revered]

I posted the OP on MySpace.

[rs3515]

I'm going to work some over the next couple of days to make the Freeople IE 6 experience a "bit more friendly" at least. :) Having developed a site with IE 6 in the past I can tell you how annoying it is to get it to do some of the most basic things.

When is someone just going to put Microsoft out of business? ;)

[szczebrzeszyn]

I'm going to work some over the next couple of days to make the Freeople IE 6 experience a "bit more friendly" at least. :) Having developed a site with IE 6 in the past I can tell you how annoying it is to get it to do some of the most basic things.

Everyone knows that, but that does not change the point, that you SHOULD develop for IE6 as well despite personal experience.

And killed by googlebot? Guys, what kind of server you're running? Just don't try to post anything on digg - your site will be grilled in 0.0001 second to the point of no receovery :)

[revolutionman]

I downloaded firefox. IE has served me well up to this point, but I suppose if it will things easier for my fellow revolutionaries, and its free, its worth taking the time.

[rs3515]

Everyone knows that, but that does not change the point, that you SHOULD develop for IE6 as well despite personal experience.

And killed by googlebot? Guys, what kind of server you're running? Just don't try to post anything on digg - your site will be grilled in 0.0001 second to the point of no receovery :)

Yes yes ... stop harping on IE6 ... I'm making adjustments just for you (even though it's a piece of crap). :)

The reason for being killed by googlebot had to do with the robots.txt setup. It was not disallowing the calendar, therefore google was trying to index at least 10,000 YEARS worth of days, plus 6 kinds of calendar formats, which is 2.2 million unique calendar pages ... and it had never been indexed before.

So, you don't think that's going to have a slight impact on the server? lol

[szczebrzeszyn]

Yes yes ... stop harping on IE6 ... I'm making adjustments just for you (even though it's a piece of crap). :)

Well, I don't use IE6, because I don't use MS Windows. Yes, it's a piece of garbage. But that's unfortunately what pretty big % of people still use and it's not wise to tell them "you use piece of crap as a browser, so you get piece of crap as a website". But of course, it's your site, you can do whatever you want :)



The reason for being killed by googlebot had to do with the robots.txt setup. It was not disallowing the calendar, therefore google was trying to index at least 10,000 YEARS worth of days, plus 6 kinds of calendar formats, which is 2.2 million unique calendar pages ... and it had never been indexed before.

So, you don't think that's going to have a slight impact on the server? lol

Well, it IS going to have an impact on the server, like EVERY request does. But kill a server? HELL NO! Why does it matter that it had to index 10,000 years ahead? I don't even mention who was the genius who set 10,000 years worth of days in a calendar ;) The point is, googlebot makes request like every 30 seconds or so. It's not doing 1000 request a sec. That's why it has a very small impact on the overall performence of the site and that's why I was surprised you said it was the googlebot who did the job.

[mport1]

bump

[rs3515]

All serious IE 6 issues on the site have now been addressed. Site should work in all varieties Firefox, IE 6 and 7, Opera and probably Safari. :) Optimized for 1024x768 screen size and above.

If anyone finds anything else of note, feel free to send me a message or contact us through the site. Thanks!

www.freeople.com

[PatriotOne]

Looks like they still have a few bugs to work on for some platforms / browsers. It is a pretty advanced system with lots of room for problems for different system flavors.

I'll send ron a note to this link- what version of IE are us using? What OS version?

IE is 6.0. OS is Windows XP.

[PatriotOne]

All serious IE 6 issues on the site have now been addressed. Site should work in all varieties Firefox, IE 6 and 7, Opera and probably Safari. :) Optimized for 1024x768 screen size and above.

If anyone finds anything else of note, feel free to send me a message or contact us through the site. Thanks!

www.freeople.com

My issues were resolved. Looks great for me now :).

[nathanmn]

Ok, so now we have these two great new websites. Lets let everyone know about them now. Email your meetups, your mailing lists, your forums, etc. These nice new websites aren't going to do any good if no one knows about them.

[rs3515]

Ok, so now we have these two great new websites. Lets let everyone know about them now. Email your meetups, your mailing lists, your forums, etc. These nice new websites aren't going to do any good if no one knows about them.

Agreed ... if people are considering canceling their Meetup group because they don't want to pay for another month, have them sign up on Freeople instead for free.

If anyone knows of candidates which should be on the site, let's get them on there ... doesn't matter if it is city council, commissioner, state rep or Congress. The site is meant for everyone from local to national races. The more recognition, the more success.

www.freeople.com