The Ottawa Citizen needs a new website. The current one is way more frustrating than any website should be in 2012. It’s intermittently slow and unresponsive, and if you watch the status bar, you can see that it’s choking on layers of advertising. It’s waiting for things to be delivered from ad sites, and the actual content gets less priority than the advertising. On several occasions I’ve had to reboot my computer because something on the site eats up all my memory. And if that’s not enough, it’s got one of those incredibly annoying ads that pops up and covers the entire content you’ve so patiently waited for, and then it does some stupid animation to make it look like it’s smashing apart. It’s not even cool the first time.
The site also makes you jump through some poorly designed hoops in order to leave comments on their blogs, which is so frustrating I don’t even bother anymore.
I understand that newspapers need to make money somehow, and maybe they’re accepting all this advertising as an alternative to charging for content. But there has to be a better way than littering the site with obnoxious advertising. I can’t be the only person who’s being driven away from the Citizen’s website by it.
Agreed, sometimes I just leave the site.
I agree, and I find their iPhone app is slow to load as well.
A classic net story: the Citizen thought it found a way to earn back some of the value on their value-added news content – but it borked their website instead.
It’s why add-ons/plug-ins like AdBlock and AdBlock Plus (for either Firefox or Chrome) are so popular. Although they pretty much bork the ads. So the Citizen’s website becomes useless, along with its cashflow model.
What you see in your browser if you have such a plugin is, ummm, no ads. They disappear.
The site speeds up a little, too. But it still stutters, because many of those outside ad servers seem to bash at your browser’s new AdBlocky gate a frustratingly long time, trying to get to your eyes, or at least piss ya off for not letting ’em in.
Unsatisfactory no matter how you see it. But given the choice, a lot people seem happier not having to look at really lame blinky crap while they wait for the molasses to pour down their connections.
I read the Citizen from the OPL’s website, it’s way better. You have to have your library card number handy and sometimes you have to try later if they’ve reached the max number of subscribers. But once you’re in, it’s a really nice platform.
http://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/main/find/download
(depending on your browser, click on the picture of today’s paper on the right if you see it, otherwise click on the Hundreds of Papers link and search for the Citizen once you’re in)
What ads? Use Adblock+ on Firefox or Chromium, and/or have a big HOSTS file to redirect sites to TCP address “0”. Noscript is also useful to control hazardous javascript, java, and flash.
You need to add a facebook button for your website. I just tweeted this post, but had to do it manually. Just my $.02