Act explains website 'hack'
Muffed website upgrade leads vistors faced with a wall of placeholder text about bacon. UPDATED 5.55pm: Act names board member responsible for upgrade.
A badly organised website upgrade left many visitors to Act's website faced with a wall of text about bacon this afternoon.
The Twittersphere was immediately abuzz over a possible hack attack (although the speculation quickly collapsed into a festival of bad puns).
The truth is a more mundane tale of human error and poor planning.
The party launched a re-designed website yesterday, spokesman Tom Judd told NBR.
The policy page was not finished; indeed it only consisted of place-holder text about said pork and other meat products.
The web developers left a "Policy" tab off its home page, figuring they could add it after actual policy had been filled in on the live page.
But someone Googling for "Act policy" stumbled on the veritable pork-barrel of placeholder text and the link fowarded like wildfire around social networks.
The page is now in the process of being updated with the correct text, Mr Judd said.
Meanwhile, the Twitterati are having sport.
"Three steaks and you're out," offered Simon Diprose, one of many quipping under the #ACTMeat hashtag.
That's a theory Act may want to apply to its hapless web team.
Mr Judd said Act board member Peter McCaffrey was responsible for the upgrade, which was contracted to a web development company.
On Facebook, Mr McCaffrey pointed out he used this bacon-inspired random text generator rather than a classic Latin one, possibly missing the point about taking a page live too early, and disorganisation.
Chris Keall
Thu, 13 Oct 2011
Thu, 13 Oct 2011
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Act explains website 'hack'
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