Gallery: Recognizing those behind the roanoke.com redesign
It was time to celebrate Thursday night as employees involved in the roanoke.com redesign gathered at Roanoke’s Shenandoah Club. Danielle Dunaway photographed the night’s events.
The list of RT employees involved in the redesign, which began in earnest in summer 2011 with “Project Gateway,” is long and likely not complete. That’s because it’s hard to find someone in the company who didn’t somehow offer support in some way for this effort.
But here’s the official list (with a shoutout to former online editor Meg Martin, who’s an ex officio member of this team). These folks served on more than a half dozen teams that looked at design, user engagement, our new digital-first workflow and that critical infrastructure. (Thanks, IT team!)
Alison O’Brien, Amanda Codispoti, Andrew Crater, Andrew Svec, Angela Campbell, Brian Kelley, Brian Thomas, Caitlin Saniga, Christina Nuckols, Craig Slomczewski, Dale Alexander, Dan Wheeler, Dana Bailey, Danielle Dunaway, Dwayne Yancey, Ellen Moseley, Erica Myatt, Gary Eanes, Grant Jedlinsky, Greg Ludwick, Jess Hoch, Karenna Glover, Kathy Lu, Katrina Waugh, Keith Liles, Kyle Draper, Lee Crawford, Lindsey Nair, Luda Nichols, Marie Stewart, Mark Shaver, Mary-Chris Hirsch, Matt Baumann, Matt Chittum, Michael Stowe, Mike DiFerdinando, Mike Guntlow, Natalee Waters, Nona Nelson, Patrick Hornby, Ralph Berrier, Ryan Loew, Katrina Tulloch, Stefan Babich, Stephanie Ogilvie, Suzanne Wardle, Tom Fraticelli, Tracy Brown, Wendy Kelley
March 15, 2013 - 2:38 PM
although the previos verson sure wasnt perfect, this one sucks.everything is harder to find. no more progressives
I assume you redesigned the website so people would buy more papers. The new website is horrible and I have started going to other sites for local information.
Two years? Really? And this is what you came up with? After reading through your “Project Gateway”, I was struck by your key themes for this project to ‘keep it simple’, ‘declutter’, ‘move readers beyond the front page’. Well, looking at the front page, it seems terribly complicated to me. The menus seem to go on forever (and for us older folks, clicking on those menus is hard). As for moving readers beyond the front page, it might be that it’s going to take time to find everything again, but it seems like you really tried to hide stuff. I guess Daily Deal wasn’t making you any money so you moved it up into a prime location? One last thing, if you were ‘trying to keep it locall’, why can’t I see the local news until I scroll down the page? I can see your blogs right away, but those are blogs … I “used” to come to Roanoke.com (sorry, The Roanoke Times online) for news. Two years? I think that you should have reviewed your own notes somewhere along the way.
I do like that you’ve pulled that awful ad off of the top and moved it under the menus. I know you need ads, but that was just awful being the first thing I saw every time I visited. Kudos for that. I like the pictures too. They seem better somehow. But keep that BETA on the logo as you definitately aren’t done with this thing yet.
- Zed
I appreciate the hard work of the RT staff in the redesign but, I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as the previous online version. It is hard to find local stories and everytime I click to go to a story, I not have to click on the back arrow several times to back up a page. It’s not my computer because RT is the only web page I have to do it on. A bad page layout and added frustration navigating it is not a good way to launch the new online RT. Keep up the hard work. You will eventually get there!
I do not like this website at all anymore. It’s impossible to see the blogs until you click on them. Then they are all bunched together. Used to be on Roanoke.com all the time. Now I come maybe once or twice a week. I miss reading the blogs but it’s too hard to find them.
Great job staff. Much improved.