Hey there! As you know, TTAC looks a bit different than it did last week. And operates a bit differently, as well.
Well, it’s been a week now, and we’d like to hear feedback from you, the reader, on what is and what isn’t working.
I have been monitoring the comments, and I’ve read your emails (and replied, if necessary. If I owe you a reply, feel free to ping me again). But it will be easier if we can round up feedback in the comments to this post.
Please keep your grievances realistic and focus on things that aren’t working or we could easily change. Meaning complaints about user experience, or bugs, or functionality. Complaints about aesthetics are irrelevant to this conversation, as are complaints about topic mix or tone or the quality of our prose. Save those for another time.
We are aware of some things that aren’t working or aren’t working well, and those things will be fixed in short order.
Please keep in mind that the impetus behind the change wasn’t just that the old site looked, well, old, but also that it was quite slow to load. It was like an ’80s crapcan — ran great for a long time but started looking dated and running slowly.
As our VP of Content, Colum Wood, puts it: “While the front end of the site may not look dramatically new, the back end changes are dramatic. As you may know, Google puts a lot of weight on site speed and a few other key metrics. Achieving those metrics is critical to having a high-ranking site and top-performing content. With the migration to this new platform we’ve been able to eliminate a lot of tech debt built up over years and score extremely highly in all key measured metrics from Google.”
In other words, we’ll be running more quickly once this is all sorted. That’s good for you — the site will load on your laptop, tablet, or phone more quickly. And it’s good for us — we’ll traffic a bit better, and us writers and editors will be more productive when the site loads faster.
But as always when there is a major change, we’ve run into unanticipated challenges. Most of those should be handled this week.
That said, we also want to hear from you. Sound off below!
[Image: Sorn340 Studio Images/Shutterstock.com]
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