The Standard-Examiner Touts its Two (Count 'Em, 2) Websites

Added WCF bonus: Yesterday's news today!

Why it seems like only yesterday that we, the cyber denizens of Weber County Forum, were involved in a thorough discussion of the Standard-Examiner, and the upgrades our home town newspaper has recently made to its StandardNet Live (free) and Digital Edition (paid subscription) websites. Hmmm... actually the discussion was the day BEFORE yesterday -- now that we think about it.

And now, (right on cue) here comes Std-Ex Editor Dave Greiling this morning, picking up on our earlier conversation and offering more fodder for discussion of the Std-Ex's online offerings, with this morning's most informative and timely "Behind the Headlines" column:

• Web site changes a constant in changing business

Editor Greiling presents one danged fine nuts and bolts explanation of the differences between the two websites, and goes on to discuss the reasoning and rationale of newspaper management in offering these two distinctly different web products.

Mr. Greiling also gets into specifics as to the goal of the recent StandardNET site revamp. These are the objects the in-house programmer gnomes sought to achieve:

• Simplify, to make it easier to find items such as story comments, videos and links;
• Improve the visual impact and presentation; and
• Make the site faster.

For the most part, we think the Std-Ex has been successful in this endeavor. In our opinion the new site is far more straightforward and streamlined than the old one. It loads faster too, now that the "programmer gnomes" have seemingly prevailed over the "advertiser gnomes," and eliminated much of the user system resource unfriendly clutter from StandardNET pages. The only thing it seems to be lacking at this point... regular red meat content.

We also got a real kick out of this Mark Shenefelt comment:

Shenefelt said the reaction to the changes has been generally positive. He’s particularly pleased with the increased interactivity he sees with Web visitors.
Traffic is also up more than 60 percent since the redesign.
“There are great conversations on some of our stories. I’ve noticed a lot of new regulars, commenting daily and posting on more topics.”

It appears these heretofore stodgy print media newspapermen are just now learning the fundamental principle of the webosphere. If you make your most interesting material freely available online... and allow your readers to offer their own interactive comments, you'll find yourself well on your way to building a loyal and reliable online reader community.

And while we're cherry picking paragraphs, we'll focus on this article segment, which permits us to launch into another WCF-patented neck-snapping segue:

Our goal is to post the current day’s digital edition by 6 a.m. There are some technical bugs that we’re working through that have delayed posting on several days and caused some missing pages.

Yes, gentle readers, here are the two Weber County Forum-topical articles (missing pages) which the Std-Ex neglected to post in yesterday's StandardNet or Digital Edition versions. We link these especially for you, Gentle Reader Moroni McConkie:

• Windsor demolition still on hold
• Committee golf course suggestions in last stages

We were delighted to find these above two articles added (however belatedly) to the Std-Ex's Digital Edition database this morning, if only because they provide archival continuity.

The floor is open for reader comments. What's on your minds this Saturday morning?