Somerville News web site becomes nearly useless

[ron_newman]

The Somerville News has made a big deal about converting from Typepad to their own custom website, but .... geez:

- There is no obvious way to find articles older than four days ago
- There is no indication of which articles have recent comments
- Clicking on "Contact Us" results in "There are currently no articles in the section"
- Clicking on "Write Letter to Editor" results in "There are currently no articles in the section"
- Clicking on "Submit Calendar Item" results in "There are currently no articles in the section"
- Clicking on "Advertise" results in "There are currently no articles in the section"
- Clicking on "Legal Ads" results in "No Display Ads Found"
- If you submit a comment, they now require your e-mail address and phone number

I gotta wonder who approved this change, and why.

Comments

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

i did ron - and its a work in progress - my how easy it is for you to criticize. why don't you come down and give us a hand?

you're a real snot sometimes ron.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Under "Contact Us" I see "There are no articles in this section."

Ditto under "Advertise."

That really just kinda says it all, I guess.

[mderidder.livejournal.com]

You found the previous site "useful"?

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

so what's it going to be ron? you coming down to help out? instead of going on this site and being a nerdy little nitpicker - why not give a buzz or send an email with your observations? 1. there are plenty of articles in their sections older than 4 days 2. the dead links arent there on the side anymore (temporarily) 3. the company that is hosting the site is working on the advertise, classified ads and legal ads section as i type this 4. could care less about recent comments - that was nice under typepad, not so much important today like we did when we shot out of the box with the original typepad site, it was trial and error. nobody is perfect. you don't have to be proactive in bashing us though ron - that's just crappy of you - and foolish. any other observations? any other comments?

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

Short fuse + severe frustration = irrational and stupid attack against Ron. Sorry Ron.

[marylu.livejournal.com]

I do miss being able to see which articles had recent comments.

[pearlythebunny.livejournal.com]

One thing I find a little disconcerting about the new News site is that articles keep disappearing. For example, on Monday there was a column written by the mayor. But then the column disappeared. Eventually I figured out that it had just been moved to a different tab (Opinions), but I find that I hardly ever click on tabs. If the material isn’t on the first page, I don’t spend a lot of time searching for it. I’m much more likely to scroll down a long column looking at the articles than I am to start clicking on tabs to find articles.

So my personal opinion is that you should keep all of the articles on the home page for at least a week. Then you can start moving them around if you want. But I really don’t mind having everything in one long column, so that you can scroll down and see everything that has been posted for the past month or more.

[firepail.livejournal.com]

well, it looks like some good came out of this...

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

1996 called, it wants its website back.

RSS syndicated to LJ?

[hiddenbear.livejournal.com]

I set up an LJ syndication onto my Friends page for the previous Somerville News RSS feed. If someone is going to do this for the new address, can they tell us the syndicated LJ so that we can all use it?