September.
The surgeons are scrubbed, the scalpels are laid out neatly in a line, and northcoastjournal.com is lain out flat on the operating table, awaiting its facelift. All that is remains is to hear from you, our team of aesthetic consultants.
Do you love northcoastjournal.com? Do you hate it? Do you hate some parts and love others? Are you entirely indifferent? What are your biggest pain points when visiting our home page, the calendar, the Blogthing, or any other sub-area of the great sprawling thing that is our Web site? Give us a wish list. Issue unrealistic demands. Let the discussion be wide open, so long as it has something to do with this site and how it might be improved. Call us nasty names. Call each other nasty names.
And thanks in advance!
This article appears in The CASA.
I like the aggregated blog feeds on the THING, and I like that you have a useful archive. As to the content, I probably disagree with the NCJ more than agree, but it is the only local paper that regularly conducts an in-depth study of issues and (especially) candidates for local office.
God knows you’ll get enough critical feedback so enjoy this love fest while you are able.
Your web site is pretty fantastic – I love the archive of old stories. A lot of other newspapers would be smart to duplicate that.
Calendar: also pretty great. I love how it’s sorted so today’s events are always on top.
The web site footer says copyright 2008. You should update that. 🙂
This isn’t your fault, but the link from the Ace Hardware ad is a disappointing: "Please check back soon for our January Sales Event!!!"
-Kevin
Whoops! I’m not sure if it’s my place, but I went ahead and fixed that anyway.
It is difficult to find the Letters to the Editor. One is usually linked on the main page. There ought to be a Letters link in the pull down menu.
OK, that’s better. We love you, Chris & Kevin, but we want you to be brutal!
Not bitchy, just brusque and opinionated about websites…
2A. Nix animated ads. They annoy your readers and people click on them less frequently than static ads (in my personal experience). Don’t place banner ads above the title graphic.
2B. Give ads a focus. The Ace Hardware ad is generically about deals. Give me a specific reason to click the ad.
4A. Nix the calendar column on interior pages. Too much mental clutter. If I want events, I’ll click the calendar link in the nav bar. It’s possible to give people too much information, shoving it at them in places where they’re not inclined to expect or want it.
4B. Nix staff picks for calendar events. Staff didn’t pick the parade or science fair my family attended today. What do I care what staff thinks? You’re not Video Experience. I watched My Name is Bruce last weekend. Thanks VX staffers!
4C. I miss the all-in-one calendar page I could print and take with me, or discuss with the family at the breakfast table. This applies more toward the second-half of the week after the newsprint copy has been recycled.
4D. For a particular day, sort events by category or alphabetically, not based upon start times. If I’m looking to see what I can do today, I’m not looking for what to do at 9 a.m. That sort of thinking applies more to musical acts in the evening.
Nix the classifieds column. Make it nav bar link. You’re not Craigslist and won’t be with your current thinking.
The archive index page must list feature article titles or it’s useless. Rewrite the titles if needed to guarantee keywords are present (that someone would look for using an in-page search). Thumbnail cover images would be good too. As is, I use Google instead.
On the blog, position Blogwatch in its own column. Because it gets pushed to the top of the front page every time a blogger posts an article, it’s easy to think NCJ staffers haven’t written anything new because the Blogwatch is always at the top of the page.
Twittering? Really? Sigh.
Boy, that’s awful.
Whoa! Thanks!
I’m not sure what you mean by that last bit, though. I might have cleaned up a few comments when we first started, but I gave that up after a week or so.
That last bit: the blog renumbered my list. My first list ended at eight. The auto-correction seems to have made some points subsets of others, which is why you see the number one several times in the list. In my second post, I began with the number nine, but WordPress rewrote it as the number one.
I think you need to move to Eureka
Stop running so much background script on the website.
Is the NCJ payed to collect web-traffic info?
Oops, re: placing Blogwatch in its own column. I browse with Javascript disabled. I see the full list of blog post titles (and full list of T-S articles, etc.) when I view the front page. I didn’t realize everyone else has to click the "Click here" links to see obscured links.
I still think Blogwatch should be in its own column though… with no obscuring of content.
I would like the blog to make me waffles in the morning and be waiting with my slippers and a gin-and-tonic in the evenings.
Failing that, I’d like to be able to view all the cover thumbnails of a sizable chunk of recent past issues at once. A "recent issues" link instead of scrolling one-at-a-time. But I do appreciate how overall userfriendly the archives are.
Instead of making the calendar sorted by only one factor, how about a sorting option that allowed the user to order by time, genre, etc.? And I like the staff picks – sometimes I discover something I might have otherwise overlooked.
Also, one LtE link would be great, instead of having to read them one-by-one. (I usually read the paper version first anyway, but when online, yeah, don’t make me click and go back.)
And move to Eureka, yeah!
Think about it Hank, you might be able to walk to work, if you all move to Eureka.
I like the NC Journal blogthing aggregator a lot. In particular, I think it’s interesting/encouraging/useful that NCJournal plays a role as an intermediary between blogs and its readers, and uses technology and actual journalists to bridge. Not every citizen can pay attention to blogs (actually, most don’t).
Here’s an interface suggestion: Make the "16 more…" text be a link that expands the box to show the additional posts.
Comment: There should be a list of blogs that are included in the aggregator somewhere (transparency of how things work is good).
Feature ideas:
– Tag cloud that shows what’s hot on Humboldt blogs in the aggregator at a given moment.
Complete (maybe wiki?) list of humboldt blogs. Right now the most complete list I know of is at the Myrtletown blog:
http://www.myrtletown.net/viewthread.php?Humboldt_County_Blogs
Related content (including blog posts) for normal Journal stories? I’m not sure what off-the-shelf technology exists, but I know there are some things.
I agree with Jennifer, I miss being able to look at the full set of back issue covers when I’m looking for a past story. Maybe an archives link…
Wouldn’t mind the waffles, either.
I keep trying, but, honestly, this site is one of the most counter-intuitive, poorly organized sites that I (try) to use regularly. It’s all a bunch of disconnected bits.
The, I can’t even think of a word to describe it, Mailbox is ridiculously difficult, compared to the print version. Why is this so hard? Why can’t I click once and scroll down through all the complete letters? It’s not like there’s a limit on the number of vertical inches that is meaningful.
It’s generally a case of constantly having to click back and forth to get to the next thing. Why can’t the command line at the top reflect the order in which the stories appear in the print version. Then I could finish one, click for the next, finish that, click…you get the idea.
Am I over-educated, having spent over 15 years as a graphic designer trying to make sure that the form of something served the function and doesn’t get in the way? Don’t think so.
The Town Dandy is too insular. Move beyond the railroad, harbor and other big industry. Give us personalities and gossip. Make it fun. Make us laugh. Quit being so serious and dour. Think Herb Caen.
About the blogthing: It pretty much sucks. The barbarians have stormed the gates. There’s no editorial vision, no scrutiny. A robot automatically posting garbage from blogs? Are you trying to compete with craigslist’s Rants and Raves? Because that’s pretty much what it’s become.
It’s okay to provide a directory of local blogs (everyone else does), but to allow those same blogs to post content to the blogthing is getting into that whole inmates/asylum issue.
So, kick-out the capdiamonts and plazoids and impose a strict editorial regime. For chrissakes quit posting Times-Standard content (have you no pride?) And re-name it. "Blogthing" has always bothered me.
That, and Web-publish to the main site the same day you street the fishwrap (i.e., Wednesday).
I love Joel Mielke’s cartoons.
Please put your archives in chronological order! Trying to find articles on specific topics is frustrating and time-consuming.
Bring back the old blogthing pipe. This new one has too much junk in it. Let the robot have his own pipe.
I like keeping up on Humboldt County through the NCJ. For half the year we are in England, so the on-line edition is all i can get.
My only request is for you to return to the previous format of columns. The narrow column is for the birds. You have to spend all your time scrolling.
Please don’t remove blogs from the blogthing (renaming it works for me, though). I like your criteria of mostly being about the north coast as a prerequisite to being put on it. I can scroll through posts that don’t interest me but a diversity of opinion and personalities makes the blogthing more informative.
Maybe have sidebars for the robot’s posts. It takes too much effort to find the NCJ’s writers’ original content, and all of the robot’s posts just push the good stuff (from real live people) further down the page.
I too enjoyed the old pipe. It seemed easy to navigate, and gave me a quick, useful overview of local blogs.
I’d prefer that NCJ writers’ posts be prominently featured here, with other local sources/blogs as a sidebar, or a pipe link.
Well, I have tried twice to post here. Neither has appeared. I assume it has something to do with my ADHD. I start to write, get distracted, then 2 hours or 2 days later I come back to this open tab, finish my ‘thoughts’ but it never gets posted.
Anyway, one more time: I agree with pretty much eveything AJ said (Hi Andrew, what’s the deal with dissing Twitter?).
Lots of people have been commenting on functions and I thought the request was about design. The 2 things I dislike about the current design are the narrowness of the layout and the color scheme.
The current layout makes everything feel cramped and uninviting. I can’t breath. Too much all at one level. And this feeds in to the color scheme. It’s bland and does not allow for highlighting what is most important. I know, it’s all important. But it can’t be all equally important. Give us some focus. And not the blinking ads focus. That’s distraction and makes me want to not click nor patronize the advertisers.
Here’s crossing fingers. Clickin Post button.
Is the new, Seven-o-Heaven cartoon going to be available on the website? It’s funny!
I think making the section header – the town dandy, mailbox,etc, under news and views – clickable would solve one problem, clicking mailbox should take you to all the letters. Barring that, put mailbox in the pull down menu at the top, similar to other sections.
I don’t look at this site regularly. My only comment, after reading the article about Wendy Ring’s Sound of Moolah puppet show — you might try proofreading before posting.
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