CapTimes Redesign

In looking for feedback you might want to make it a bit easier for readers to find this Redesign Blog.

I applaud your promotion of the Red Cross' effort with the tragedy in Myanmar, but since you put links to that in the site's banner, it's been hard to find this this blog. I finally noticed the small blog section on the home page today, but to be honest I missed it over the past few days.

I know you're asking for feedback for the latest news, but the way you have the blogs organized separately from the other sections is confusing and makes them VERY difficult to find and read. For example, in that Blogs section in the middle of the home page is a link for John Nichol's post from 5/9 titled "Obama and Wisconsin." As a fan of his writing I look for his things in the Opinon and Columnists sections, yet I can't find links to his blog anywhere but in that small Blogs section in the middle of the home page. In a similar vein Rob Schultz has a post about UW Basketball coach Greg Gard's family. If you go to the sports section, there's a link to a Rob Schultz story from 5/8, but no mention of his blog postings anywhere.

If a reader is interested in sports, why make them hunt all over the site for sports news, sports columns and sports blogs? Having all those linked from the sports section would make so much more sense.

Thanks for your consideration.

when will i be able to search your site? i don't know if this is the place to post this but it's very hard to find anything here at all.

I'd rather have the time that the article was published listed there rather than number of minutes.

Also, FYI regarding the crosswords. The daily one appears to be fixed now but this past Sunday's was still mixed up. The Flash version seems to correctly match the clues to the puzzle grid but if you open the PDF to print (as I usually do), it's obvious that the clues are for this Sunday 5/11 but the puzzle is for last Sun 5/4. The dates are even listed as such on the PDF pages.

Jonathan wrote:

In looking for feedback you might want to make it a bit easier for readers to find this Redesign Blog.
I applaud your promotion of the Red Cross' effort with the tragedy in Myanmar, but since you put links to that in the site's banner, it's been hard to find this this blog. I finally noticed the small blog section on the home page today, but to be honest I missed it over the past few days.
I know you're asking for feedback for the latest news, but the way you have the blogs organized separately from the other sections is confusing and makes them VERY difficult to find and read. For example, in that Blogs section in the middle of the home page is a link for John Nichol's post from 5/9 titled "Obama and Wisconsin." As a fan of his writing I look for his things in the Opinon and Columnists sections, yet I can't find links to his blog anywhere but in that small Blogs section in the middle of the home page. In a similar vein Rob Schultz has a post about UW Basketball coach Greg Gard's family. If you go to the sports section, there's a link to a Rob Schultz story from 5/8, but no mention of his blog postings anywhere.
If a reader is interested in sports, why make them hunt all over the site for sports news, sports columns and sports blogs? Having all those linked from the sports section would make so much more sense.
Thanks for your consideration.

Excellent suggestions. We've made our active sorts bloggers a part of the sports main page. Schultz's blog has been on hiatus since the end of the season.

I'll chat with our opinion page folks and see if they'd like to have the same treatment Nichols.

We have another change in mind for the home page where we'll have standing links to each blog in the blog box.

We used to have a link to all the blogs in our navigation, but we weren't happy with how it was working and decided to nix it or the time being.

chad wrote:

when will i be able to search your site? i don't know if this is the place to post this but it's very hard to find anything here at all.

While we await better search functionality that will come with the new technology we'll be implementing in the near future, we've been considering using Google to provide search results. Would you find it too jarring to be taken to Google's site when searching captimes.com ?

Josh wrote:

I'd rather have the time that the article was published listed there rather than number of minutes.
Also, FYI regarding the crosswords. The daily one appears to be fixed now but this past Sunday's was still mixed up. The Flash version seems to correctly match the clues to the puzzle grid but if you open the PDF to print (as I usually do), it's obvious that the clues are for this Sunday 5/11 but the puzzle is for last Sun 5/4. The dates are even listed as such on the PDF pages.

Yes, the crossword has been fouled up on and off lately. We're chatting with the company that provides this service to us and hope to have the issue resolved, soon.

Timothy Nott wrote:

<quoted text>
While we await better search functionality that will come with the new technology we'll be implementing in the near future, we've been considering using Google to provide search results. Would you find it too jarring to be taken to Google's site when searching captimes.com ?

I don't think one has to be taken to Google's site if you use Google's search function on your site. I've been to many websites that use Google to search their own site and while the results look just like Google results, you don't actually leave the site.

Josh is right. You can add a Google search and brand it for your own site. See: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

Jonathan wrote:

Josh is right. You can add a Google search and brand it for your own site. See: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

True - I should have added the caveat that it had to be free. The 'no Google branding' option starts at $100/year. Doesn't sound like much, but it's the 'starts at' part that gets me.

At any rate, we'll experiment with the free version and see what we can do with it.