Baron Election Page Technical Notes

The setup is a number of candidates who agree to make public their answers to a variety of questions. Votes may read the answers, collected by candiate or by question. Candidates may be paired or not, and may answer individual questions as a pair, or not.

The pages are created using a series of partial HTML pages and scripts. If I were to do this now, I would probably make a variety of SSI pages, rather try to generate complete HTML files.

The two examples of this system are available:

• The Baron[ess] Election in 2001
• The Seneschal Election in 2002

Directory Setup

Create a directory for the working files. This directory will contain subdirectories for each question (working/question/), named with the question name, which in turn contain text files named with the candidates' names, "william_mary.txt". Also contained here is a file called question with the text of the question. See a sample directory.

In addition, this directory contains the following:

• candidates directory: Contains a text file for each candidate containing the full (display) name of the candidate (william.txt contains the text "William of Handover"). This directory will also contain the html files for answers collected for each candidate or pair of candidates. See my candidates directory.
• htmlify directory: Containing html files to form the beginning, middle, and end of various pages to be generated. Specifically, it should include:
  • cbot1.html
  • cmid1.html
  • ctop1.5.html
  • ctop1.html
  • ctop2.html
  • ctop3.html
  • qbot1.html
  • qmid1.html
  • qtop1.html
  • qtop2.html
  • qtop3.html
  Here is my htmlify directoy.
• images directory: Containing image files of the candidates (generally a thumbnail and a full-sized image)
• questions directory: Will contain html files for each question. See my questions directory.
• resumes directory: Containing a file for each candiates with basic biographical/experience information. See my resumes directory.
• compcand script: Takes two candidate names (or one candidate name and an 'x') and generates an html file for that candidate with all the questions' responses. Must be modified for each new question. Calls makelinkc and makeanchc. See my compcand script.
• compques script: Takes question name and generates an html file with all the candidates' responses. Must be modified for each new candidate. Calls makelinkq and makeanchq. See my compques script.
• makelinkc script: Takes candidate name(s) and generates a link to a question response. See my makelinkc script.
• makeanchc script: Takes candidate name(s) and generates an in-page link anchor for each question response. See my makeanchc script.
• makelinkq script: Takes question name and generates a link to a candidate's response. See my makelinkq script.
• makeanchq script: Takes question name and generates an in-page link anchor for each candidate's response. See my makeanchq script.
• compileall script: Calls compques for each question and compcand for each candidate. Must be modified for each question or candidate.

Finally, there is the website directory tree, which is mostly just a scaled-down version of this one. It contains a candidates directory, with candidate html files; images directory, with pictures of the candidates; questions directory, with question html files; and resumes directory, for other important candidate files. Finally, it has the index.html file, for entering the site. This file was always hand-coded. See my index.html file.

All of these files are contained in a zip file. Also, here is the zip file for the Seneschal election in 2002.