New Link Sport website live tomorrow

[ronnie21]

The adver is pretty dire now mind with some glaring errors on a daily basis where their news is concerned. It's like people who have never even been in the town are reporting on articles. locations of stories are regularly completely wrong or misspelled for instance.

Totally agree, last week for instance they did the lighting up times and must have used something for April or mid-September - but what do you expect from a newspaper that is actually produced in Oxford!!

[Red Frog]

After a period of increasingly decent reporting - Anthony Marshall, Gary Rose then Sam - the Adver's sports pages are now showing the depth of the recession in the regional press. The current no-names seem to have had a charismectomy. My personal bugbear is the repeated misspelling of opposition and ex-players they've clearly never heard of. They have no grasp of social media and have no relationship with fans, which Sam built up so well. Of course, it helped that he was a born and bred fan. I support my roots, so I get my news from Sam.

[Ells]

It's not so much the lack of social media integration with the adver that bothers me, it's more the lack of the ability to write in English.

I only read the thisis site now but the comments there are now more reasonable and coherent than the articles, which is terrifying. I really think it'd be dead already if it weren't for virtue of habit, which is sad but inevitable.

As for linksport I think the features on offer are great. I think the execution is more important than having a gazillion unique features frankly - what I have read seems to be high quality, though sometimes I think Sam could ease off on the metaphors. He's like a child in a sweet shop that's already had too much lemonade.

I do look forward to seeing some design changes, as though it was nice to look at it wasn't always the fastest most intuitive page to navigate.

[Flashheart]

It's not so much the lack of social media integration with the adver that bothers me, it's more the lack of the ability to write in English.

I'm quite sure they have the ability.

What they do lack is a shit to give.

[Sam Morshead]

It's not so much the lack of social media integration with the adver that bothers me, it's more the lack of the ability to write in English.

I only read the thisis site now but the comments there are now more reasonable and coherent than the articles, which is terrifying. I really think it'd be dead already if it weren't for virtue of habit, which is sad but inevitable.

As for linksport I think the features on offer are great. I think the execution is more important than having a gazillion unique features frankly - what I have read seems to be high quality, though sometimes I think Sam could ease off on the metaphors. He's like a child in a sweet shop that's already had too much lemonade.

I do look forward to seeing some design changes, as though it was nice to look at it wasn't always the fastest most intuitive page to navigate.

I do like lemonade. And sweets. Metaphors are a vice of mine, and it's hard to kick a habit. Point taken, though. Thanks.

[Sir Pissalot]

Yep, the new site looks OK and is easy to navigate around.  The important bit, though, is the quality, variety and accuracy of the content.  So far, so good, Sam. 

Oh, and Ells, don't you know that over-indulgence with metaphors goes very much with the territory?  You are probably too young to have been around when one of Sam's predecessors, Clive King, was the Adver's main football reporter.  If you think that Sam overuses them, you should have seen Kingy's work!  He was a master.   

[ChalkyWhiteIsGod]

Much easier to navigate now Sam. Less clunky and much easier on the eye.

Might need to be careful with putting text over pictures on the main page though. Sometimes it is hard to read if the wrong colour is chosen. Other than that though, a marked improvement.

[Nemo]

Oh, and some club logos with a transparent background wouldn't go amiss

[Power to people]

Link has now become my first port of call and being at work with at times limited time to check out the football news Link I find is the go to site for interesting articles.

I like it that Sam is offering something different, and I think it helps him that he is a respected journo in these parts and has built a reputation.

Just a little more attention to detail is required though, first article I have read on new site (POM Panel) seems littered with grammar errors (sorry Sam), the adver were / are notorius for it Link have been good at proof reading so far.

[pauld]

Just a little more attention to detail is required though, first article I have read on new site (POM Panel) seems littered with grammar errors (sorry Sam)

Really? Such as?

[Flashheart]

I just looked and couldn't find a single error.

[Samdy Gray]

Just a little more attention to detail is required though, the first article I have read on the new site (POM Panel) seems littered with grammatical errors (sorry Sam), the adver were / are notorious for it, Link have been good at proof reading so far.

Couldn't resist.

[Sam Morshead]

Thanks for your comments, everyone. Please keep them coming. For those interested, the site does have proper RSS. Currently it's for the whole site but we're splitting it into individual sports in next few days. Whoever the mod is for the news feed who might want it to adapt that section on here, PM me and I'll pop it across. You might not want it, anyway.

[Batch]

OK so first impressions are that its much less cluttered than the old site. I like that each sports is clearly laid out in sections, and the drop down menus provide quick navigation to where you need to be.

I don't like the STFC News section from the front page, the headlines are shortened with ellipses. Not the end of the world, bit inconsistent with the other sports. Don't like the "dot"  buttons to scroll through these front page headlines either, but the fact is I can click on "STFC latest news" anyway.

I usually view the site on a PC/Laptop.

I'm not yet in the habit of going directly to swindonlinksport.com as my first stop for STFC news yet. Its not content related, its purely that old habits die hard. The Adver (boooo) are pretty poor of late so I don't go on there as much either. I guess I pick up a lot of stories from twitter now (I mean your/links tweets linking back to the site).

Incidentally the site is OK on my mobile (Android lollipop with stock Chrome browser). Still don't like the truncated headlines, but the dropdown while not obvious contains all sports under one menu, STFC first as it should be.

[Sam Morshead]

OK so first impressions are that its much less cluttered than the old site. I like that each sports is clearly laid out in sections, and the drop down menus provide quick navigation to where you need to be.

I don't like the STFC News section from the front page, the headlines are shortened with ellipses. Not the end of the world, bit inconsistent with the other sports. Don't like the "dot"  buttons to scroll through these front page headlines either, but the fact is I can click on "STFC latest news" anyway.

I usually view the site on a PC/Laptop.

I'm not yet in the habit of going directly to swindonlinksport.com as my first stop for STFC news yet. Its not content related, its purely that old habits die hard. The Adver (boooo) are pretty poor of late so I don't go on there as much either. I guess I pick up a lot of stories from twitter now (I mean your/links tweets linking back to the site).

Incidentally the site is OK on my mobile (Android lollipop with stock Chrome browser). Still don't like the truncated headlines, but the dropdown while not obvious contains all sports under one menu, STFC first as it should be.

Thanks for the feedback, all very much appreciated. The carousel thing at the top will soon be adapted to have top stories rather than newest stories, too, which might help with your first point. Equally, Andy and I have to learn to write correct-length headlines to fit in 'STFC News'-sized headlines.

Re linking through social media, obviously it's our intention to get people to bookmark the site in time so we aren't reliant on Twitter traffic to feed the site, so hopefully you'll migrate over one day. But old habits do die hard, I agree, and taking the Adver traffic on that is going to be one long, hard, drawn-out process. But I'm sure the competition can only be healthy, as every Town player has said...ever.