The relaunch of the Republican National Committee website is a disaster. Your first clue is the word “beta” displayed in the header when you open the home page.

Beta is a term used by software developers to describe a work in progress, not yet ready for public use. From Media Gods:

Define Beta

keywords=programming, programmer, software, developer, software development, process, code, systems

Traditionally, a step in the software development process where completed software is tested by “real-life” users to find bugs or design issues that may have been overlooked in the formal testing.

Real-life users, yes. But for an application like this, the testing should not be done in the public domain. That is a totally clueless way to invite criticism, which certainly is what has happened. A password protected wiki that could be accessed by thousands of dues paying party faithful would have been fine.

As you can see from the screen shot of the initial “splash page” above, the layout breaks the first rule of website design right from the getgo — it wastes the entire first view on the header and the plain tan background for a video that does not come up playing. Should you make the hapless mistake of hitting the PLAY arrow and starting the obnoxiously loud and jumpy video, you will also find there is neither a PAUSE or a STOP button to turn the thing off. You have to go to the right bottom corner and hit the SKIP VIDEO link.

The whole site reeks of neophyte web designers who were so intrigued by the bells and whistles that they forgot to deliver the message. One can imagine that the RNC spent big bucks on some web design company to achieve this mess, so you will not want to waste your political donations on them. Bypass these losers, and donate directly to the candidate of your choice. There are some good Republicans out there, and even (dare we say this) a few good Dems. And to really optimize the effectiveness of your cash contributions, consider an Internet-savvy advocacy group like Numbers USA that really makes a huge difference on Capitol Hill.

At The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder summed it up best — Top Ten Reasons Why The GOP Website Relaunch Is Fizzlin’

10. In a section devoted to “future leaders,” there were none.
9. In the subsequent rush to get up a “future leaders” page, they choose “you.”
8. The last GOP accomplishment cited on the accomplishment page was from 2004.
7. The what’s up page — hip! starts with this sentence: “the internet has been around for a while now”
6. Administrator passwords were accidentally posted.
5. When the RNC hosted a kick-off conference call, the website was down….

The big launch occurred yesterday morning, so the Blogosphere has had a day to consider and react. Here are some of the opinions.

WSJ Washington Wire — New GOP Web Site Reaches for Grassroots

…. the opening on Tuesday was decidedly low-key. There were a few notices on friendly Web sites and a bit of congratulatory tweeting among the GOP technorati. Democrats sniped about a malfunctioning “Future Leaders” page, which the RNC said it quickly fixed. But several of the interactive pages, including Steele’s own blog, “What up?” were drawing little response.

It’s all a reminder that the Republican Party still has lots of work to do to recapture the energy of the 1980s and 1990s – or catch up to Democrats in use of technology. It’s also perhaps a reflection of the perennial organizing problems that the party has had with its highly individualistic members.

Christian Science Monitor — New Republican Party site crashes hours after launch

There’s a metaphor lurking in here somewhere. The same day GOP Chairman Michael Steele unveiled a new online home for the Republican Party, the website apparently crashed, leaving users unable to log on….

The site was meant to rival the digital operation run by the Democrats and President Barack Obama, who used social networking to great effect in the 2008 elections….

[By early Tuesday afternoon] bloggers had found a mass of bugs and glitches, including repeated php problems. By 3:30 p.m. EDT, GOP.com slowed to a crawl, eventually shutting out users. The official cause? A network error…. Democrats … are basking in the glee of their technically inept rivals.

Sadly, No! — Fly, my little monkeys, fly!

I’m sure some focus-group weasel will force them to take this down soon, but for the time being, this is actually the title of Michael Steele’s official blog at the GOP website:

Perhaps the most discouraging message of the new website occurred when you clicked the link to the “Future Leaders” page. That resulted in this message: “404 Error: This page could not be found.”

UPDATE, 10/16:  Just in case you need any more convincing to avoid the national Republican organizations and donate to individual candidates, see this article by Michelle Malkin — An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing.