Massive tech glitches still plague the Chronicle's new-look website, SFGate.com, which continues to mystify the Hearst, (corporate owner), big suits who've invested millions in the re-brand and are reportedly steamed over its persistent problems.
To wit:
Visiting the site can be a harrowing experience; once there, some operating systems, (like mine), immediately freeze. On some computers, it takes over five minutes for SF Gate to load and be workable. What was once an easy, albeit archaic method to sign on now is fraught with tech issues like the simple act of navigating stories. That process has now become an adventure and requires loads of patience. The Bay Area Gate consumers seem pretty irritated too.
Visiting the site can be a harrowing experience; once there, some operating systems, (like mine), immediately freeze. On some computers, it takes over five minutes for SF Gate to load and be workable. What was once an easy, albeit archaic method to sign on now is fraught with tech issues like the simple act of navigating stories. That process has now become an adventure and requires loads of patience. The Bay Area Gate consumers seem pretty irritated too.
This is embarrassing for Hearst which is trying desperately to make The Gate profitable and a means to go after the all-encompassing digital advertising. This humongous technical cluster blank is certainly not helping matters.
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Instead of actual news, the site seems to promote thrilling lead stories like"Which french fry is best", houses you'll never be able to buy, and what's "trending now" mediocrity..Why bother? There's no "there" there.
ReplyDeleteSpot on, Christine. Before the so-called revamp, I visited the site daily. But now that it resembles a tabloid, I don't even bother.
DeleteIt's even worse that that. Users have to wade through all the non-stories and oversized photos to find what little real news the site offers. I find that I'm spending less and less time on SGGate. What on earth were they thinking?
DeleteI thought it was me. I went to SFGate and had no idea what they're doing. There's absolutely no structure or continuity to their puzzle and I don't know how anyone can read it without getting a headache.
ReplyDeleteLove the chronicle but the loading time is sooooooooo long!
ReplyDeleteI was just there and waited 3 entire minutes (I timed it this time) for the Sports section to come up. Finally, I just gave up. I'll just use the Trib, thank you.
DeleteRich - try using Mozilla, it works for me. Internet Explorer 10, 11 or whatever is a royal pain. Google Chrome was a problem for me as well. Still a habit to read the 'Chron'
ReplyDeleteevery morning.
I use Mozilla Firefox. It locks up on me all the time.
DeleteAnd anything even slightly interesting refers you over to the paywall Chron site. Which, judging from SFGate, is terrible and not worth paying for.
ReplyDeleteI posted the below by error on the KRON entry. Rich please reprint here:
ReplyDeleteIt used to be one of my go to sites then they started f-ing around with pay walls. Their wine section used to be top of the line. Jon Bonné is still great but other than his articles there's no there there. The final straw came when they completely changed the format of the comments section. I bet most traffic to the site was to read the comments. They screwed that up royally! As a previous commenter said, the site is worthless in terms of news. It is sensationalistic trash one can find anywhere online.
I think you're overstating the technical glitches and missing the larger point:
ReplyDeleteIn terms of being able to digest news in a way that's intuitive, entertaining, and user friendly, the new design is a total bust.
The user interface blows. Giant expanding ads. Stupid "tiles" that take up a quarter of your screen each instead of simple lists of headlines that are easy to scan. Ridiculous, overdone slideshows just designed to allow maximum serving of ads.
To me, these are the real problems.
If you can't even enter the site far enough to see whether it's "intuitive, entertaining, and user friendly"...and I think we already know the answer to the last criterion...then I think that's the largest point of all.
DeleteThe Gate had been trending towards becoming a glorified blog for years. No substance. This latest redesign was the final straw for me. I un-bookmarked it and haven't been back since. And, you know what? I don't really miss it.
ReplyDeleteIt might help to disable Flash player. It could even help a lot. And yet make sure flash player is up to 15.0...then disable. Sounds contradictory,but that's how it goes.
ReplyDeleteIt's awful. It used to be a daily go to for me, but now I created shortcuts to just a few sections that I check every few days / weeks.
ReplyDeleteIt's like someone ate a bunch of articles, blogs, and slideshows and then just puked them all up on the page. Just check out Popsugar which is the site that the person now heading up sfgate came from. It's celebrity related content that is vomitted onto the page just like the new sfgate.
Faster load times? No. Easier to navigate? No. More click-throughs by me? No.
I'd be interested in seeing the before and after readership numbers since the redesign.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't happen to a better company.
ReplyDeleteSFGate has too many videos on its pages, and the web clowns at SFGate must have wrote their web pages so that the pages didn't show up until all the videos were downloaded.
ReplyDeleteYou can disable Flash, but when I did that, it was affecting too many non-SFGate things. I have AdBlock on my browser, and there's a little "Block" tab at the top of all the SFGate videos. Clicking on the tab will allow you to keep the video from loading. That helps a lot.
The story organization is mind boggling.
ReplyDeleteThe new site is absolutely unusable on an iPad.
ReplyDeleteNot only is sfgate a pain in the behind to access, the moderators will BAN you if you're just trying to explain the history of race relations in the United States?!?!
ReplyDeleteThe moderators are a joke. Their enforcement is so arbitrary.
Deletehaha. I was banned with so many names over there.
DeleteFuck that fish wrap
sfgate.com. What an adventure.
ReplyDeleteAfter you enter the site and begin to scroll down to scan the day's headlines
what do you get? One loading page after another.
With all the heavy graphics and color dense pictures you have wasted half your morning trying to read one story much less finish it.
Many websites are going this way--really overloading your machine with all sorts of crap that no one wants and which brings down your browser or doesn't allow to access the one thing you do want. I just click away. If this is the future of advertising-based websites, they are going to lose a lot of money.
DeleteThis is one reason I will never convert to ebooks and magazines. I know my paper books and magazines will always "load" for me and will never force ads down my throat before I am permitted to read my content.
What is more fun than news roulette--I click on the story I want and get another, which is only apparent after it takes a minute to load (or if it is a slideshow it takes a few minutes.) SFGATE going the way of KGO (I haven't listened to KGO in 2 years and I'm close to delisting SFGATE from bookmarks)
ReplyDeleteSFGate sucks anymore. I can't get more than one tab to open when before I could have six or seven with no problem. They get maybe 5% of the "clicks " that I used to do, if that especially with the incessant click bait crap. The comment format is dismal compared to what they had which was probably the best one around. Steve
ReplyDeleteThanks, guys. I really thought it was my old 2005 laptop which is on its third keyboard. Sadly, the Chron is still a better paper than the guys....You really have to dig to find any columnists.
ReplyDelete