Blog: The editor's desk
This one's been a long time coming.
<p>Newsminer.com as it appears at its new "launch" (Feb. 1, 2008) was actually promised by me to folks here in the News-Miner and around the community around in October and November of -- yike -- 2006.The making of a Web site has been a long -- and sometimes tortured -- road for your local newspaper. With a BIG tribute here to Jon Bourne, our internet coordinator, for keeping the site going with duct tape and rubber bands for the past 17 months, I think those of you who have remained faithful to this site despite its shortcomings deserve to know a little of the inside history behind the product you see today.
The history goes back to our earliest launch, back in April of 1996 with the help of an enterprising copy editor by the name of Roger Price, but I'm not going to bore everyone with all the details of the past 12 years.
The most recent history is that in July of 2006 we cut our Web operations away from services offered by MediaNews Group Interactive in Denver, Colo. a company owned by the same people who own the News-Miner.
Nothing against them, it was just an odd relationship. We are owned by the same person but not really part of that media group, so things were always just not quite right for either party. We still work with them -- and they are a fantastic help to us -- but we host our own site right here in our building and that makes a huge difference.
So what's the big deal?
We pulled our site from Denver (where it had lived for at least 6 years if my memory serves), pushed it on to blog software on a couple of G4 Macs as a placeholder and were due to install of the latest and greatest new online publishing solution from a company that will remain unnamed here. The install was to happen in September of 2006. The demo showed us everything we dreamed of in a Web site.
The installation happened on schedule, and it bombed within 48 hours.
Jon has kept our site going ever since on the place-holder software until we found a new reliable solution.
We found it in Lawrence, Kansas with our new friends at the World Company, owners of the Lawrence Journal-World and online services subsidiary Mediaphormedia.
Purchase of a new content management system called Ellington and a set of servers took place over the past several months. We set up the new stuff. Hired a new Online Content Director, Julie Stricker and an Online Reporter, Robinson Duffy, and now, at long last, we are off and running.
Jon announced some time ago he planned to build his own business but he is sticking with us until we are on solid footing.
So with thanks to Jon, Julie and Robinson, and thanks to all who have been loyal newsminer.com readers over the years, today we launch a Web site that gives us the tools to offer all the things we've wanted to give you these many years.
First let me say that I do like the new look. Just a couple of complaints. 1. You cannot access letters to the editor. It should be accessible from the home page. When I do find it at the bottom, I click on it and get "Page not Found" error message. I am unable to see if my valuable letters I write have been published. Also, the home page does not have a Contact Us listing. That is SOP for corporate websites. And of course there is visible HTML gibberish on several pages. Other than these items it looks great.
Looks like things have improved somewhat since that previous comment, as I've seen no gibberish and did find a contact page -- though I haven't found a Letters to the Editor link when I've been looking in today. I agree that the letters should continue to be featured, since Fairbanks has always been a very outspoken community and the whole idea of being on the web is to be interactive.
Hi anon,
Thanks and, yes, these are issues we are working on. Letters are among the priority items. The site is still less than 24 hours old so we still have some kinks to work out. Stay tuned.
Wow, at least the old site only crashed on work day mornings, not all the time.
Also what happened to the Police Report?
I have to say I love it, and it is about time. Thanks.
It's hard to believe you would stick with an obsolete format for a webpage since 2006. Yikes - and I thought a newspaper was a leader in new technology and always looking for a better method of getting the news to the public.
Your "new" format has a lot of problems, just as the obsolete format did. I have sent suggestions in the past, but nothing ever changed. Hopefully, you now have someone who cares. My main suggestion is that someone make sure "Letters to the Editor" are changed to the current issue of the paper daily, just as the news on-line should be changed daily, to the current issue. This should be a priority item. Either there are no new Letters for today's issue, or it hasn't been put on-line.
The new format of having to click on each letter to read the complete letter is time consumming and irritating. If you want people to be able to comment on the letter, just have a way for them to click on the specific letter they are interested in commenting on, but use the former method of having all the letters completely listed.
The "Archives" which can only be accessed from the Main Page in tiny letters at the bottom, and easily overlooked, only accesses today's paper. I hope there is more work to be done on this as the old format gave about a week of papers free, and there was an excellent search for accessing older papers with a method to pay. Do you only intend to archive issues in the new format which means it will start with the 02/01/08 issue? I certainly hope that isn't the case.
Get rid of the html garbage - it's messy and unprofessional.
I registered and tried to get verified, but my post on a different Blog says "Anonymous" and I don't know yet what it will say on this one. What is the problem with that?
I don't particularly care for the new look, but that really isn't too important. If the items I've mentioned are corrected along with others that I haven't yet encountered, and it works better than the old webpage which was really S...L...O...W, I will be grateful.
Greetings - Thanks for getting up to date where we can blog with our fellow citizens on the stories and Opinions of our community. Lord knows I have a few to share....
My goodness, give them time to work out the bugs. Something like this takes a HUGE amount of work and a HUGE amount of time. Letting them know where bugs are and griping about the bugs that remain are two different things.
Good luck with the change over.
So sorry - was I too critical? A business that is satisfied with keeping their professional website on-line with "duct tape and rubber bands" is making a "HUGE" mistake, in anyone's opinion.
A business needs more than good luck in making changes. I suggested to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner several years ago that it might be a good idea to investigate the method used by the Anchorage Daily News for their web site, but apparently the people in charge didn't think that idea had any merit. The Anchorage Daily News has a great website that is fast, efficient, and rarely crashes. Our local paper might want to look in that direction.
Greetings Joyce - No you don't sound too critical, for someone from Anchorage. The old website was joke, no one would argue that. But I personally think this new site is a pretty good service, especially considering the cost....
Hi mrderik - To set the record straight, I'm not from Anchorage. I'm actually from California, and have lived in Ketchikan, Kodiak, Anchorage and Fairbanks now for over 50 years. I even worked for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner when C. W. Snedden, the original founder, was still running the show. I have a soft spot in my heart for our local paper and just want it to be the best it can be which was always Mr. Snedden's policy, and I believe the paper's present management team feel the same way - Joyce
I've run into a couple problems since the change. First, I have to refresh the page almost everytime I go to a new page. Second, the web page shuts down every time I try to go to the newsminer website from my PDA. Very frustrating.
Hello, Someone has to do something with speed of this website. check the source codes or the servers. maybe they need re-configuring. I'm a web developer and e-commerce developer. I'm moving back to my homeland this year Alaska. To Fairbanks, was raised in Anchorage but you couldn't pay me to live there again. In general the website looks great.
rss feeds please!
The feeds can be found in the list of links at the bottom of the home page under "Feeds"
I think that there should be a page showing a compilation of all recent the comments (with-in the last 24-hours) on all the articles.
Suggestion: Don't use non-standard TCP/IP ports. Lots of firewalls block this and it makes the site slow down. I'm assuming FDNM is using a third party advertising solution or maybe its in house - either way, the ads wont come thru for folks behind corporate level firewalls - seems all ads are trying to come thru port 16080 using the Adclick PHP scripts. Highly recommend sticking with port 80 as most news sites do.
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