motion media

Sep 18 2011

Changing a Website is always tricky business

I have always known people don’t like much change, but I never thought it would be to this extent. No one has died but there’s been some pretty nasty words exchanged. Let me try and explain my thoughts.

I wasn’t sure how I was to write this post, or if I was going to write it at all. I keep saying in my mind saying we should be the bigger person and just ignore all the bad stuff, which we do for the most part and we don’t let it bother us. What I do want to point of this post is just some key points about websites and one specifically.

If you haven’t guessed already this post is about the new energeticcity.ca. Last week we relaunched the site in the new format. I would like to point out here that the new format for energeticcity.ca is the exact same as the recently launched mile0city.ca, which people love.

Old Energeticcity.ca

The above picture is of course the old energeticcity.ca and below is the new one. So let me just compare them for a second. The old energeticcity.ca, to me, has always felt cluttered. I don’t know anything about any of the stories other than the top story. I have to actually click on each story to see the content of it. Now if you look below at the new energeticcity.ca and you actually scrolled through the site you’ll see that you get snippets of each story. And to all those naysayers who say we have now got more ads on the site, I’d like to personally point out that you can see more ads on the old site than can on the new site, above the fold.

New Energeticcity.ca

While I still do believe there is lots of work to be done to the new energeticcity.ca, I don’t think it is complete garbage, at all. What many people don’t see, which was a big part for us, is how the site is actually built. All the content including images, articles, contributors, etc. are all connected and compiled a large database for easy reference. Did you know we can actually post one-story that get published on both mile0city.ca and energeticcity.ca. While this isn’t a big selling point for the end-user, it cuts down on our workflow time, which in turn will allow us to do more and be more in the community.

The last thing I want to point out about the new energeticcity.ca is the tabs on the homepage. You have All, News & Sports, Groups & Blogs, BC & National News and Weather. Each of these different tabs has different content. One of the things that I’m toying with in my mind, is making the news and sports tab have a list of the latest news stories and cutting out the teasers, but I’m not the decision-maker.

Huffington Post

Mashable

Now I would like to point out two news style websites that get at least 10 times the traffic that energeticcity.ca does. First is the Huffington Post and if you look at their homepage you will notice that there’s not a lot there. There’s no list of news stories and actually has no ads. It’s so basic, you have no idea what other content they have on the website.

Then there is Mashable.com, which is always changing their site. If you look at their homepage you see 4 different ads before you ever see any content. And it is all very scattered, I don’t actually know where to look first. I assume their top story is on the left, but is also so much going on I’m not sure where I should click. The top story is actually similar to the energeticcity.ca one, so we must be doing something right.

I’m not trying to bring emotion into this launch, but I myself am trying to understand why people are so against a layout that is so successful in Dawson Creek. I’m also trying to understand why some reader feel it necessary to send one line emails that say “you really fucked this up.” I’m curious to know how they would feel if I came and told them this about something they put a lot of time into.

What do you think? How do you think we did with energeticcity.ca is comparison to other sites. I’m hoping for constructive responses so we can understand more about how our sites are used.

Mar 16 2011

Crazy Night in Chicago

Friday night in Chicago went from new and interesting to crazy and exciting. Drupalcon was finished and we were just enjoying ourselves at this point.

We left the Hotel looking for a couple of taxis to take us to our restaurant and ended up taking a limo around Chicago for a good 20 minutes. We ended our ride at Lou Malnati’s where we had to wait 30 minutes for a table. We walked up the street to some fancy looking bar, where Dayan accidentally ordered a $20 bottle of beer she had to finish before going to Lou’s. Once we got to the restaurant we had amazing pizza and Andrew had his incident which ended up getting us a free meal.

After supper we took yet another taxi ride to the John Hancock Tower. At the tower, on the 96th floor is a rather Ritzy feeling bar. It was packed. Windows and people everywhere. Oddly enough because we were a group of seven we got seated rather quickly. We weren’t up the tower very long before taking the roller coaster of an elevator back down to ground level.

It was an odd evening. One I don’t think I will forget anytime soon.

[flickr-gallery mode=”tag” tags=”crazynight” tag_mode=”all”]

For some reason not all of the photos are showing, so head to Flickr to see them all.

Mar 13 2011

Traveling Home Today

Well hello there, I just wanted to drop a quick line and let you know the team is heading home finally today. Drupalcon ended on Thursday, so we spent Friday and Saturday exploring the city.

I have lots of photos and blog posts I’d like to right out the rest of the trip, but I wanted to also let you know that I wanted to do so. Couple thing have held me back at the moment, one being the hotel WiFi is throttled like no other. The most I can do here is general surfing and writing. For me to upload 20 or so pictures would take a couple hours. The other reason being no time, I have been out and about doing different thing, going new places. Like yesterday, I went to the Chicago Institute of Art, which is apparently the second largest Art Museum.

So in a few ours I will board a plane and fly to Edmonton and then proceed to drive 8 hours back to Fort St John. It will be a long day.

Mar 09 2011

Day One at Drupalcon Chicago

Alright I’m not the greatest at actually writing about the sessions I attended. That being because most of the sessions I am attending are only somewhat related to my field of work, therefore I only really take in half sessions.

Nonetheless though, I’m having a fun time. Obviously it was good to listen to Dries early in the day. Then I went to the Media Session. After that though I ended up meeting up with our Web Designer, Steven, and hitting up the Exhibit Hall for free swag. Then I sat in on Andrews Bird of a Feather on local news sites, which was interesting, but only a small turn out and finally I listened to a session with Project Manager, which was neat. Of course the final, final thing I did yesterday was attend the Drupalcon Field Museum Party.

I have to say I got a little overwhelmed at certain points yesterday. There were just so many people and I did the stupid thing and didn’t really pay attention to where I needed to me. Today though I have a plan of attack, read the schedule a head of time.

Something I was told when I started playing with Drupal, although I haven’t gotten far, was to never hack Core.

The only thing I am regretting so far at Drupalcon is not being more out going in person. On Twitter I’m a little Social-lite, but in person I keep to my own in a sense. Wouldn’t mind meeting other people along the way and hearing their stories.

Mar 07 2011

The Eve of Drupalcon Chicago

Well I will keep with short as I am tired, it is 12am, and I need to be over at the Sheraton for Dries keynote tomorrow at 9am. So anyways, the Motion Media team and I had a pretty chill day of working, lounging and exploring.

We went for breakfast at The West Egg – review to come – then took off to the Drupal Tower – Sheraton Hotel – to lounge around with the fast internet and do some work. Our work for the day was basically around one big client site and an internal site. Both are some of are best work. I’m excited because the company will have a functioning blog again – opps did I just give to much away.

Unfortunately – fortunately – Martin’s computer died. It was a beast of a PC Laptop. Coming in a 17″, weighing god knows what. The point of the story is, we took a gander to the Apple store and walked out with a new 17″ MacBook Pro. It’ll be a learn curve for him, but we have faith.

To keep it short, that is how the rest of the day went, until this evening where we go to go see Dayna play at an open mic, but I’ll blog about that later. For now, check out these photos.