Obligatory disclaimer: I know Lincolnite.com needs a remodel. Big time. Those who live in glass houses... Anyway, I have a financial budget of $0.00 and a time budget of 0 hours. As soon as one or both of those changes substantially, I'm all over it! 😊
The Lincoln Journal Star's journalstar.com got a facelift yesterday. Was it a good move? Let's take a quick look.
First, I knew the new look was coming. I was given a heads-up, and the general vibe I got was that the new website -- originally to be launched on Monday -- was not a resounding success among LJS staffers. Obviously I'm venturing into hearsay territory here. Still, it isn't difficult to imagine why LJS'ers would balk at some of the changes. Most notably: the new website is a Lee Enterprises corporate clone that bears a striking resemblance to most other Lee websites. It's not the frontend look that matters here, but the backend functionality and flexibility. No longer will the LJS be able to implement features to the website as it wishes without first getting approval from "corporate".
Now, how about the the site's general look? The design is heavy on whitespace. The decision over whitespace amount is lose-lose for a content-heavy newspaper site. If they go heavy on whitespace, they minimize the amount of content you can scan at once. Too little whitespace and the user is overwhelmed by content. I personally prefer a good amount of whitespace on article pages, which journalstar.com mostly does. On the homepage, however, I prefer more density, particularly "above the fold".
I agree with Nikkidemas that the top navigation bar should operate on mouse hover rather than on click. There's no reason to make the user work harder than he should have to. Not only does the click approach add an unnecessary action for me to get where I want to go, it adds a series of unnecessary actions in order for me to even browse the site's structure. That's annoying.
Now, let's start browsing the site. First things first: let's ignore the oodles of 404 ("Page Not Found") errors you will stumble upon as you begin clicking links. And the months-old articles showing up as though they were new. We'll just brush those aside as "growing pains". One of the first things I noticed is that registration is now required in order to post comments. That makes Mr. Wilson a sad boy. Why? Because it means fewer drive-by, consequence-free comments from the nutters. Less work and annoyance for the LJS, yes, but also less entertainment for all of us. Boo! Speaking of comments, it is annoying that the article and its comments are no longer viewable on the same page. As if LJS commenters didn't have a hard enough time reading the articles..
Most of the rest of the site feels pretty familiar, both due to similarities with the previous journalstar.com and because it is in so many ways mind-numbingly generic. Browsing the site is just boring. Really. Really. Boring.
The Journal Star's blogs took a big hit with the move. Quick, try to figure out which blog these posts belong to. Can't do it, can you? And Neal Obermeyer's cartoons? Guess you'll have to get them here. Indeed, these are the sorts of problems the LJS will run into now that they aren't fully in charge of the site.
This quickie review turned out less organized than I had planned. I know I left several things out (some intentionally), but I'm sure you can help fill in the gaps. But before I sign off, I just have one little questions: WHY WASN'T THE SITE FULLY TESTED BEHIND THE SCENES BEFORE GOING LIVE?! Sheesh. A few bugs are to be expected, but when the new site launched is was almost completely broken. It's still largely broken. The Lee folks should really invest in a staging server so their newspapers don't look like fools every time they try to launch a new site. And if they do have staging capabilities, it's time to review their procedures.
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The site is awful?
I tried to find blogs and never could until I got your link (course I did give up trying after so many 404’s).
How many freakin’ times a day does one need to log in there, every new page hit?
Moving the comments away from the stories is just stupid and extra work. In fact, I was logged in (yet again) and tried to post a comment and of course got an error.
It’s been over a full day, and I still haven’t gotten through one story or found one area that I actually wanted to read without getting errors. Hardly worth the trouble.
At the Washington Post, I logged in once a few months ago and I set my CCleaner to keep that cookie and I’ve never had to log in there again. It shouldn’t be that complicated.
As far as losing Nealo cartoons, I can live with that.
Don’t forget this copycat site courtesy of @NewLJSdotcom on twitter.
http://www.pantagraph.com/
So it’s been three days, and they’ve not bothered to fix the links?
Even if they wanted a makeover, the blogs area was working just fine.
What a bunch of dopes.
Ahh yes, the blogs. Let’s just say the mortal wounding of the blogs was most definitely not the LJS’s fault. Same goes for several other features for that matter. The LJS is taking—and will continue to take—a lot of heat for things that aren’t their fault, and in fact that they actively fought against. The real culprit is higher up the ladder.
I do not envy the web dept. over there. I’m sure a lot of the work that they’ve created (like the blog page) is now undone & they’re having to deal with a lot of fixes due to the decision from above. Trying to nationally streamline something meant to be local sucks. In an effort to save money, Lee is underserving their audience & they’re going to wind up driving people away.
Good luck with the new system, LJS crew. I’m feelin’ your pain.
This is such a joke for a “professional” newspaper. But wait!!!! This IS the Journal Star after all. And it IS 20 or so years behind everyone else. Why on EARTH would they start a “NEW” site and then post the “BUGS” comments. Didn’t the bother to test it first??? Or did they simply COPY another format and go with that??? It’s a joke…much like about 90% of the coverage.
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