Ed Broadbent, former federal NDP leader (1975–1989), came out of retirement to run in the Ottawa Centre riding in the June 28, 2004 federal election. He won the seat convincingly. This engagement was his campaign website, www.edbroadbent.ca, built and live from January 2004 through the election and beyond.
What was built
A fully bilingual (English/French) campaign site built as a custom PHP and static HTML hybrid using Macromedia Dreamweaver, the standard professional workflow of the period; WordPress had been released only ten months earlier and was not yet production-ready for a high-profile national campaign. The site was hosted through Magma Communications, an Ottawa ISP.
Architecture: parallel en/ and fr/ directory trees. PHP handled paginated news, events, and the donate flow. Static .htm pages covered the bio, issues, media room, and Ottawa Centre sections. The splash page loaded a random rotation of twelve campaign photos. Donations processed via Magma. Elections Canada legal authorization line on every inner page.
- Platform: Custom PHP + HTML (Macromedia Dreamweaver), no CMS
- Languages: English and French (fully bilingual)
- Hosting: Magma Communications, Ottawa
- Period: January–June 2004 (June 28 election)
- Client: Ed Broadbent: NDP, Ottawa Centre