19 November 2005

New look CT online

| Kerces
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It may well be there were no papers this morning because the Canberra Times wants everyone to go look at their brand spanking new site design.

Sometime between 4pm and 8pm yesterday the new site went up and it certainly looks more user friendly. They’ve transferred over all the old stories as far as I can tell although the Your Say section is still gone (though given the slowness of the new site maybe it’s not surprising they decided to ditch that part). They’ve also kept the local news up the top of the front page, although it still is being updated with the same regularity (11am Saturday morning and today’s stories STILL aren’t up). And their search works! A simple search for “twins” in the full text of stories during the past year brought me 44 results where when I’ve tried it before I got zilch.

Still not many pictures, which is disappointing given the Bay Post has been able to use the new format to bring more colour to their site.

Interesting to note that Rural Press seems to be using the old Fairfax website model, now that Fairfax has moved on from it (see here for example).

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Absent Diane11:20 am 21 Nov 05

the words can’t polish a turd comes to mind

It was tongue in cheek, *g*

Besides, Crickey has us as the ‘local independent media of Canberra’, so in a way it would be linking to a rival’s site.

Mael, only the government “got up” in the links section.

Besides, as if we’d get linked to. We’re only a blog…

(And the third best thing was in last year’s competition. JB got the shits with the way the voting worked and refused to enter again)

I noted that the RiotACT didn’t get up in the links section, I suppose that’s something to do with only being the third best blog in the ACT…

Chris I did indeed find my twins and they were still online AND a hell of a lot easier to find this time.

And “Your say” is back – see http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/displayops.asp?class=yoursay. They just haven’t put the link in yet.

And Kerces, did you find your twins? Any left over?

Sorry, It’s a bit sterile.

It’s a sterile. Still better than the old one though.

Random,

Agreed looks neat, tidy and professional.

Though dont expect any more content… they want people to buy the dead tree version.

I’d be happy to pay up to 50% of the value of the dead tree version to be able to read everything online. (Like what is available from the Australian) Unfortunately I fear that Rural Press arent that progressive.

jr, it looks like it’s a custom system for the yourguide.com.au/Rural Press sites.

It’s better than the old site anyway, and has some vaguely interesting stuff like “POTENTIAL SPECIAL FEATURES SECTION” commented out. I hope this means they’re getting more serious about their web presence.

Samuel Gordon-Stewart11:19 pm 19 Nov 05

Yes, it does look like a CMS, but Mambo/Joomla is written in PHP, whereas the CT website is ASP.

obviously they haven’t workied out how to put their logo into the header yet, looks very amateurish

I mean Joomla

Definately a CMS system.
I’d put money on something like Mambo or Joomba

it does looks like they brought the old Fairfax site

Thats a trap for new players.

the CT NEVER updates on a saturday morning

Ah yes, but did you see they’re still featuring yesterday’s front page, and yesterdays stories, even though it’s today’s date at the top of the web page. Something has gone SPLAT….

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