Site Changes Coming to blogTO
Things have been a bit slow and wonky around here the past week. Truth is, we're undergoing an upgrade and a modest redesign of the site. Watch out for the new look sometime tomorrow. But until then, please excuse the lower than average number of posts as well as some annoying glitches that are affecting the site's comment functionality.
We promise (or at least hope) it will be worth it though. Stay tuned for a new look and some fun new stuff coming to the site very soon.
Comments (9)
jt> are you donating to the site or do you demand all your information be made by un or under paid workers?
I hope the redesign includes having more than four stories on the front page and an end to "click to continue" just to see one more sentence or paragraph of the article that could just as easily have fit above the fold/before the jump.
@rek
The changes coming aren't heavily related to site navigation.
Also, we've never had four stories on the front page (we've tried 6, 8, and 10 in the past). And the click to continue is (in addition to generating pageviews and paying our staff writers) also how we monitor stats and determine popularity of content.
Just to clarify Jerrold's statement - the "click to continue" (while it may generate more page views and therefore help pay writers) is primarily intended to enhance usability. We want to make the home page as easily scannable as possible and therefore try to limit each post to having 1-2 paragraphs showing on the home page.
Jerrold/Tim - That's a shame. An easily scannable page has a lot to scan through before you see the "next page" button at the bottom. 4 stories was a wee bit of exaggeration, but 7 is a lot closer to 4 than to Torontoist's 15+/page. It seems to me the longer a story stays on the front page the more views it will get and the easier it will be to revisit. If I have to hit "Next Page" three times to get to a story posted two days ago I'm probably not going to bother, and on the rare occasion I have it's usually to find there are no new comments (and I'll post a lot if the article has some traffic to it: http://torontoist.com/topusers.php ). But when I "click to continue" and there's only a sentence or two waiting for me it wastes my time and makes it obvious you put page views above content.
Our layout is a bit different than Torontoist so I don't think you can really compare numbers. But we do appreciate the feedback and will take it into consideration as we continue to looks for ways to tweak the site to enhance usability.
As far as clicking on "Continue Reading" and then getting only one more sentence, I'd suggest this is less common than you're making it seem. Maybe once or twice a month. And in those cases it's not intentional but rather likely just an oversight by whoever posted it.
View More Events
Suggest an Event
Join the blogTO Flickr group
Join the blogTO YouTube Group
RSS