John McCain revamped his presidential campaign website

A week ago, I wrote a post here surveying the presidential campaign websites for both the Democratic and Republican candidates. I went over to Melissa McEwen's blog, Shakespeare's Sister, and what did I find? A post revealing a revamped McCain website! Or is it, as Melissa wonders, a Chevy truck advertisement? I'll let you decide on that one.

But let's talk about the McCain website. When I wrote my survey of the presidential candidates' websites, I included screen pics of their home pages, as well as my commentary regarding their sites. Here is the screen shot of McCain's site, as well as the commentary I wrote regarding his site:

John McCain's original exploratory website.

McCain's website is still an exploratory site, with very little content, links, or really anything. The only thing you can do on John McCain's site is donate money, or join the McCain team. There is a biography of McCain, and a couple links to some McCain speeches, but that is it. The McCain site does have a future link for creating your own McCain social networking site, but all that is there is a request for contact information. For a supposedly front-running Republican presidential candidate, McCain's exploratory website is a complete wasteland.

Then again, McCain may be more interested in pandering to corporate interests, Religious Right-Wingers, and the rich elites rather than ordinary Americans.

And now, here is the screen shot of John McCain's new exploratory website:

John McCain's revamped website.

What a difference a week makes....Now McCain's site has a number of links showing McCain's biography, opinions on issues, an upcoming blog site, a user-creating "Homepage" site to create their own web pages in support of the McCain campaign, a Media site for news and press releases, and more. There is, however, no social networking site or links that you find with the Democratic candidates websites. I don't know if McCain's blog will be a community blog, like the Edward's blog, or if the McCain blog will be solely written by campaign staff members. What is interesting to note is that the McCain campaign site is one of the first Republican presidential websites to incorporate blogs into the 2008 campaign--none of the other GOP sites have blogs. It will be interesting to see if the rest of the GOP candidates follow McCain and incorporate blogs into their websites. Another detail to note is how McCain is using grays and blacks for his page, rather than the traditional red-white-and-blue colors that are prevalent on the rest of the presidential candidates' pages--although John Edwards' site does include a good splash of green and tan. McCain's site honestly doesn't even look like a presidential campaign site--hence, Melissa's comment of how McCain's site looks like a Chevy truck ad. I'm sorry Melissa, but you're wrong. Chevrolet's website is even more patriotic in color than McCain's website is. Here is a screen shot of Chevrolet's front page:

Front page of Chevrolet's website.

Does this mean that Chevrolet is more patriotic than John McCain? I'm not sure I want to get into that debate.

The bottom line here is that John McCain is about to officially announce his candidacy--perhaps in the next couple of weeks. The McCain campaign staff is getting the final campaign blog polished here. The website is up with all the links, newsroom to publish press releases, video content and such. The McCain campaign has been happily hiring former Bush campaign advisors for its staff. It is now a matter of timing as to when John McCain will formally announce his candidacy.

Of course, the official McCain presidential announcement will be such a non-political event since McCain has probably been preparing himself to become president ever since he got stomped by George Bush in 2000. But then again, let's pretend to act surprised.