Random But…
What do you guys think of the Indianapolis Star’s new website design? Yay? Nay? Yuck?
(It was a hefty day of campaign classes at ILF today, so this is an open thread.)
March 19th, 2008 by Josh Gillespie
What do you guys think of the Indianapolis Star’s new website design? Yay? Nay? Yuck?
(It was a hefty day of campaign classes at ILF today, so this is an open thread.)
March 19th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
The Gannett Star has a website?
It takes so long to load, I was kind of wondering.
Look, I’m old school. I don’t need or want all the fancy bells and whistles. Just give me the [word removed, see “Posting Guidelines”] news. It would make the website a lot faster and I’d be more inclined to use it on a regular basis. But the front page consistently takes nearly 25 seconds to load completely for me (old and new sites, makes no difference), and I’ve got a 4Mbit connection that I just tested to make sure it’s running full speed.
In sum, the Star site still feels like it’s 1999 and I’m on 56k dialup.
Other than that, the site is very pretty and I like the fonts. But pretty doesn’t feed the bulldog. Either they need more bandwidth or they need to hire somebody competent to bum their code and tweak their servers.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
The Star site looks nice — sort of like a blog in some ways.
I didn’t have a problem with speed. After reading the last comment, I even reloaded the page using F5 to get it to really reload and didn’t have a problem.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Considering the Star has little in journalistic substance, they now find themselves having to dazzle us with their **** [see “Posting Guidelines”].
Oh look! Shiny objects!
March 20th, 2008 at 7:47 am
OK, so I checked load time on my workstation in DC, where the company I work for has a fractional T3 connection and the page ought to load in nothing flat. It took 20 seconds from start to finish.
It’s slow. It’s got too much scripty goodness and way too many advertising sites loading even after the main content (which took 15 of the 20 seconds) is displayed. F5 reload wasn’t any better.
And Michael is right. The website now looks like the print edition: Tastes great, less filling.
YMMV.
March 20th, 2008 at 8:51 am
I have always appreciated the Indy Star’s commitment to their website. I must say I liked the old design better. Haven’t they been through this tinkering and gone back to the old style before?
March 20th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Gannett is rolling out a redesign of the websites of all of their newspapers; the Courier-Journal’s was also redone (and not for the better).
March 20th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Get this, in today’s print edition of the Star, it came with a users guide on how to use the revamped site. That can’t say much for it’s usefulness if it comes with a users guide. It’s 16 pages long with no advertisements! Lots of nifty pictures though.