Rebuilt site has new features – with more on the way
Thursday 21st February 2008, 2:31PM GMT.
Eagle-eyed visitors to This is Guernsey may have noticed that the site has undergone a few slight changes in the last couple of days…
The site has been completely rebuilt to make it slicker, easier to navigate and to give it a much more modern appearance.
This is the first redesign of the site in some five years.
And there are several new features – some already available, and some being planned for launch soon.
Foremost among those already online is the ability for site visitors to comment directly on certain articles.
Getting feedback from readers is important to us, and you can comment on this article – and the new look of the site – at the foot of this page.
Other changes include links on most pages to the online editions of The Globe, Guernsey Now and Guernsey Press supplements such as I Do, Motoring and Careers.
There’s a handy calendar on most pages that will take you to all the stories published on a given date.
And each week we’ll be putting up a new vote for users to take part in, with the results sometimes feeding back into the Guernsey Press.
Owing to the changes some regular users who have bookmarked favourite pages might find themselves getting an error message.
If this happens, simply go to the main page, navigate to the page you require and bookmark it again.
If you have trouble finding anything, use the search box at the top right of the screen.
This search box now searches every article on the site, including news, sport and business stories.
The site was designed and built by MNA Digital, which is part of the Claverley group of companies which owns the Guernsey Press and the Jersey Evening Post.
MNA will be turning its attention to This is Jersey in the next few weeks.
- To read Guernsey Press stories in full click here for subscription details. Individual editions are now available online.
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The site design is great, I find that living away from Guernsey it is nice to keep in touch with what is going on.
I am slightly disappointed that you do not publish full articles online and expect people to subscribe not even the national daily papers charge for their online edition!
I guess you think that if you publish full stories online people won’t actually buy the press, but I disagree as people will always buy the press.
Regards
Martin
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This really is a vast improvement.
The layout is significantly more user-friendly and much easier to navigate.
Congratulations!
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we are in France and sorry just do not like new format PLEASE return to normal. Thanks Janet
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Looks good,easy to navigate round,i like the idea of being able to pay £10 a month to recive the G.E.P.interactive!!! Great idea,I can now read the paper evey day with my children arun 4 nicole 3….Keep up the good work! Guernsey man now living in BRISTOL…
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I can’t seem to find just the update of family notices – I used to be able to read just the new notices (births, deaths, marriages etc) but now seem to have to enter each different category – is this correct? If so this seems to be the only downside to an otherwise great new look. Now living in Australia so your site is always a favourite.
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Whilst the old site design was perhaps a little dull, it was at least useable. Your new design, apart from being an absolute dog’s dinner, is close to unuseable on my Mac.
On this page, for example, the top two side adverts are twice as wide as they should be and cover the left half of the first three paragraphs. By contrast I can only see the right half of the four adverts at the bottom of the page!
Your home page is a total unformatted mess, with stories and adverts all over the place.
You need to do much better.
Steve
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I a Guernseyman living off island, I like to keep up to date with what is happening back home. Every day a visit to the websites of This is Guernsey, Channel TV, BBC Guernsey and Island FM helps keep me informed.
I am disappointed that the full stories have now stopped. I can’t justify buying the whole press – I’m only interested in the main headlines, and as someone else commented, I’m sure that it didn’t stop on-liand people from buying the whole paper.
Maybe this decision can be reconsidered – prehaps a delay so that the full article only appears the next day?
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What a disaster – no more full stories!
Expecting people to subscribe is an odd option, as the industry is moving away from that at the moment – see the New York Times, FT, Independent who have all made changes to become free recently.. on top of the fact that all the main British national papers are free
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I read the Press on line every day but sorry, I feel the new site messy and not easy to navigate, it was good to see the full list of headlines to choose from.
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I agree with Kay – I too used to like reading all the recent family notices under one heading. Also when you put the mouse on the top toolbar icons (ie jobs) you could see at a glance each full menu – now you have to actually click on it and go into it to see the index. Also as most ex pats, I think we only want to read the main stories and I don’t agree with having to pay for this. I’m sure a few tweaks here and there and it will improve !
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As a regular visitor to Guernsey I ilke to keep up to date with what is happening on the island. I am disappointed that full news articles are no longer published.
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Congratulations, I think the format is a timely step forward.
However, I would like to echo the previous comment and suggest you restore full Guernsey Press articles to the site. Without these, you have dramatically reduced the usefulness of the site to people like myself who live off the island and enjoy keeping up-to-date on local news.
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I’m sorry people, your new website is a disaster. It looks like a page of adverts for a start! I am dissapointed that each news story has about as much information as the bbc guernsey web page! I have enjoyed keeping up with the happenings in your beautiful island as we are unable to visit as often as we would like. It seems from now on that will not be as easy to do. Great shame.
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As a Donkey living in England visitor to Guernsey with my family I like to keep up to date with what is happening on the island. I am disappointed that full news articles are no longer published.Whilst the old site design was perhaps a little dull, it was at least useable. I have found it very hard to understand where to find things with links to more storys stuck at the bottom of storys No side bar news story I could go on but its late and as a long distance lorry driver I need to sleep after a very long week good night please work on the site a bit more
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I am a Guernsey resident currently
working in Vietnam.
When i have time i always catch up with the Guernsey news via your website. I regret to say that i do not find the new design any better than the previous one, which was easier to navigate, clearer and altogether more user-friendly. I dont know why you wanted to change the original format!
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I agree with Kay Warren about the births, marriages and deaths column. It is difficult to find the recent ones. I too live in Australia and love this site.
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To view the most recent family notices, do a search without entering anything in the search box.
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Hello:
Just want to let you know that I love your new page. So much easier to look around.
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As I live in Australia I don’t have access to the Guernsey press please go back to putting in the full stories and not just a head line
Guernsey born and bred
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I agree with Mr Seeds
The new site is pretty but that’s about it. Newsworthy it isn’t.
Why bother with a Post a Comment when you only give the headline of an article. Or does it come with the software?
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I live in New Zealand and have This is Guernsey as my homepage. Like the comment from Gary Seeds, I too wish you would go back to putting the full stories on this site
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The news section of the website is far too busy – agree with others – need more detail for the stories – rest of the site is good
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We now live in China, and reading on line means alot to us. But to read half a story is just no good. Much better the other way, how can we make a comment if we don’t know the whole story?
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The reason for not putting the whole story up is clear…the little “subscribe here” link just underneath each story. They want to everyone to pay them £10/month for the privilege of being able to read the whole story. For those of us who don’t have access to the newspaper, this site WAS invaluable….let’s hope things are changed to make it so again.
(I’ll be pleasanly surprised if this is published btw).
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As an ex-pat living in the caribbean, please re-instate the full news as the headlines are useless to me. My first task every morning is to go on line to check the Guernsey Press for the local news to find that all the the news from home is now denied to me. Just tantalizing headlines. GG
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I to am dissapointed that i can no longer read the full news, just the headlines. I live in new zealand and read the press every day,hope you will think about putting the full news back on..
Have a really happy day
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I share the views of a great many respondents that as non-residents with an interest in life in Guensey we can no longer see the full articles on the website. This is very narrow thinking. Most newspapers, both regional and national are available in full on-line. Please reconsider.
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I wrote, just the other day, how much I enjoyed reading the website, but in hindsight, I should have said that I don’t enjoy it any more.
The reason being that we only get to read the headlines, and what with the news that’s happening in Jersey ( only on your doorstep ), I get more news from the BBC than this website!
I’m certainly not going to subscribe, when I can get free news on other sites!
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In total agreement with you on that one Heather. It’s all well and good having a brand spanking new webiste, but the content is quite shockingly inadequate these days. Please bring back the whole stories to the websites, especially for those of us living away from home!
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I don’t like the design at all, it’s far to busy!!
You can’t see for looking, there are too many ad’s and
I don’t like the partial articles.
Keep trying tho!!
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sorry to post 2, but you can’t edit your post!
Posts should be last post on top of the list i don’t like having to scroll through many posts just to get to post myself!
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with 32 posts from 30 people and only 4 of them positive I would have expected to see some comment from the press? as to what they will do to make it better!!!!!
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@Shaun: I would doubt that the editor of the site could say anything, seems that the piority of this site is no longer to give news but to get people to subscribe (David G said it better). Plus throwing so many ads onto the site suggests desperation to make any small amount of money regardless of the cost to us, the readers.
I hope that these comments from all of us will eventually get heard and changes will get made. The site design isn’t that bad otherwise, not great, but not terrible.
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As well as echoing the comments about only getting the headlines, the other problem with the new website is that it is now not possible to go directly from one story to the next. You have to go back to the home page, which is always slow to load
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Thanks for all comments – positive and negative. They have been noted.
To answer a couple of the points raised:
The issue of story length will be reviewed in a couple of months’ time.
We are putting the finishing touches to a Site Map which should assist those who are still having trouble navigating.
It is possible to navigate directly to the previous or following story by using the links at the foot of the article.
This site is designed to run on Macs running OSX and PCs running Windows XP or Vista using Internet Explorer or Firefox. Safari is supported on Macs running OSX.
This discussion is now closed.
If anyone has any other comment to make, please use our feedback form.
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