3 Responses to “It’s finally here!!!”

1.  

   Dan Says:
   September 27th, 2005 at 10:35 am

   I’m posting the below comment here due to the fact that when I posted this on BR’s site they decided not to publish the comment:

   I’m sorry to say I’m very disappointed [in the new design of Buffalo Rising]. This site is too much. From an information and graphic design persepctive its overdone. I feel like I’m being assaulted with information now. Not too mention that the page loads impossibly slow, and I’m on high speed. The best information sites are the simplest ones. I remember when you first started this, you mocked Buffalo.com’s ugle website and I was in hearty agreement with that. Now your new site resembles it.

   I much perfer the simplicity of the old blog. The new stories were right there ready to be read, easy to find. Now I have to hunt through all these slow loading sections. And whats with the advertising? The old site didn’t have advertising. You’ll be serving two masters now that you’re going to have advertisers on your site. I think you guys let the web designers get out of hand and got dazzled by the technology, which oftens happens in this field. You lost the focus of what really matter here- the content and now this site is full of eye candy. I see the postive remarks from other blogs and it sounds like they’re too afraid to say anything negative and so they go with the flow which is BS, that mentality is part of the problem in Buffalo. I respect your effort here guys but c’mon focus on the content not on a glitzy hard to use site.

   Take that how you will, I’m sure this will generate some arguements but, oh well.

2.  

   Dan Says:
   September 27th, 2005 at 10:56 am

   OK, my comments are posted over at BR, sorry for being a nuisance and re-posting over here.

3.  

   Figmo Says:
   September 28th, 2005 at 1:38 am

   Buffalonian in Exile,

   I’m sorry you don’t approve of the design however the blog was never intended to be a permanent solution. This design needs refinement as all user-centered products do and we’re tirelessly addressing known bugs, refining and tweaking certain features and already redesigning others from the ground up based on user feedback and a bunch of data we’re gathering in the background.

   Again, this is a beta and we’re marching toward a more stable and faster release by the end of the week.

   However, that release will be the next evolution of this design. Quite simply, we stand by it. We dig it. It’s the online paper we want to read every day. And based on user metrics, the majority of our readers do as well. In just the past 24 hours we have noticed a substantial increase in the number of pages our readers are looking at. They’re also spending more time on those pages and sending more of them along to their friends. This design certainly spreads out the content, but it offers more opportunity for readers to see it and not miss it.

   A few last points: while we are very aware of emerging web technologies, we think we used them pretty judiciously and in ways that serve the content rather than distract from it. And hate on the design all you want–but to say it resembles Buffalo.com is, well, pretty wack.

   As for advertising, we think we treat it tastefully and a whole lotta readers seem to like it judging by the click-through. And we just won’t apologize for being a business. All this useless, distracting eye candy doesn’t come cheap.
   (this response also published on BRO)

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