MetroJacksonville Redesign?

[spuwho]

Is it time for MetroJacksonville to redesign its site?

While it functions well as a blog, news site and historical archive, its look is beginning to get a little dated.

MJ badly wants COJ to get progressive in their outlook of the city's future, can MJ get progressive with how they present its view of the city?

You appear to have ad revenue now and you have brought on some interns it appears, so is a redesign right around the corner?

Remember people will come here second to learn about life in Jacksonville (right after the T-U site), but to drive clicks deeper into the site you have to have some level of appeal.

Currently your ads dominate (actually overwhelm) your homepage, you can still be creative, original and maintain ad structure and click throughs.

Give it a run!

[thelakelander]

The ads are out of control.  I found it very difficult to follow the site on my phone, while on vacation the last week. I'd like to see us possibly lose a few and find a way to get more content on the front page in their place.  Hopefully, over the next month or so, we can get things taken care of.

[Noone]

^+1 I would have a video that would just pop up usually on your new lead stories and would repeat for a number of attempts then stop. Not sure what that's about.

More content on the front would be good.

love MJ

[Gators312]

The ads are out of control.  I found it very difficult to follow the site on my phone, while on vacation the last week. I'd like to see us possibly lose a few and find a way to get more content on the front page in their place.  Hopefully, over the next month or so, we can get things taken care of.

The phone ads are quite annoying and tedious to close.   

I think everyone understands the bills need to be paid, and I don't have problems with advertising.  Just maybe be more creative and less obtrusive.

[Debbie Thompson]

Yeah, I've pretty much given up trying to follow MJ on my phone.  Too often when I try to click a thread, I get directed to an ad instead. And when I try to X out and return to MJ, I end up having to go back to my bookmark and start over....when I get another ad, and give up.  Maybe it's the screen size (or operator error) but I find it frustrating.

That said, I know you have to advertise to keep this site going, so no complaints.  When I'm on my PC, and not my phone, I've been trying to remember to click on ads sometimes, even if I know I'm not going to buy the thing they are advertising, just to help.  LOL

[dougskiles]

Any chance that photo posting could be made easier?  With easy-to-find instructions on how to do it?

[Cheshire Cat]

^What dougskiles said.   

[KenFSU]

User blogs would be cool.

[Lunican]

To post photos just go to http://imgur.com, upload your photo and copy the BBCode (large thumbnail size) into a post.

Example:

Code Select Expand

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/b9gKwl.jpg?1[/IMG]

[dougskiles]

To post photos just go to http://imgur.com, upload your photo and copy the BBCode (large thumbnail size) into a post.

Example:

Code Select Expand

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/b9gKwl.jpg?1[/IMG]

I know how to do it from a computer (although directions somewhere on the front page would be nice for newcomers).

Can you do it directly from an iPhone?  Say you are at an event (like a live blog of a public meeting) and want to put up some pictures.  That would be cool.

[JeffreyS]

If you set a bookmark on your phone to the recent unread topics mobil page you will be surprised how fast and easy following the threads can be.

[spuwho]

I always ask any company who wants to do a redesign:

- What is their mission statement?
- What do they want to accomplish with the site?
- What is their target audience? Do they know their demographic?
- What are the core functions you find essential to serving your web customers?

That is just to start, I don't want get into a whole analysis paralysis with you all.

Just my 2 cents.

Are you guys married to that font face and photostrip you use for your title bar?

I get it, it has a historical photo, an old train and a skyline.

- Historical=good
- Train, steam streamliner from 1948 relates to Jax how?
- Skyline = OK, but its dated. Looks like a number of skylines at first glance

I think you guys use Simple Machines for your forum. Some markups are OK, but adding others are not user friendly. (like photos) Most forum posters don't know HTML and how to size a video clip from YouTube.

I agree you need to work on your ad layouts, I see you sourcing ads from several national ad firms. Try to format your layout so that ads don't distract heavily from the content. I realize you may not have control over every one of them that comes through.

I have tried your mobile experience, but gave up and use Opera Mobile and just view the whole site now.

If I think of other stuff, I will pass it along.

[Cheshire Cat]

Lunican or any of the other tech savvy MJ folks, is it possible for a function to be added right in the quick reply box on a link that would say "add picture", then allow posters to click on it, browse their own photo's and then hit an add photo button.  Kind of like the one on FB? 

[John P]

Lunican or any of the other tech savvy MJ folks, is it possible for a function to be added right in the quick reply box on a link that would say "add picture", then allow posters to click on it, browse their own photo's and then hit an add photo button.  Kind of like the one on FB?

While youre at it please add a feature so that I can do Face Time like on my ipad. Also Pop Money too.

[comncense]

What about just switching over to a platform like Wordpress? Easier to tie in social media integration, ads are less obtrusive, responsive design so the site can be easily formatted for mobile devices and all the previous request as in adding pictures to articles are simpler.