SABCNews just launched (or at least made active) the latest version of their site.
It’s a disaster.
And I don’t say that lightly. See for yourself:
Firstly, the loading times are shocking. Then, the design is a mess. Everything is out of proportion, difficult to use, claustrophobic, element clashes abound - there isn’t even a coherent color scheme.
It’s a table-based layout, and there’s plenty of markup that was simply commented out. They’re using a proprietary CMS (Vignette), when there’s plenty of local web dev talent. They tried the customise-blocks-on-homepage thing, but it requires registration, and isn’t nearly as user-friendly as the BBC Homepage (which might be what they’re trying to emulate).
I did mention it’s slow, right? They also have yet to discover the magic behind actually meta-tag linking to their RSS feeds from the relevant sections of the site.
I’d love to know how they ended up with, firstly, the company that did this revamp (if it wasn’t internal), and secondly, the people responsible. Who were they, and do they know that we’re in the 21st century, where things like cross-browser compatibility, accessibility, speed and design aesthetics actually count?
I’ve seen better free Wordpress themes. Oh, snap, how’s that for a brilliant idea? It doesn’t take forever and an arm and a leg to put together a decent news theme, and it’s not as if Wordpress blogs can’t be multi-author, or collaborative, or secure. Heck, they could have gotten up and running in less than a month with a budget of less than US$10′000, but I somehow suspect there’s more to this than simple value-for-money.
It’s almost as if they’re going back in time - keeping an ever-increasing gap between the forefront of web design, and the sites they eventually turn out. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they (or at least the same company) was responsible for the disaster that is WeatherSA.
Personally, I’m a little embarassed. The forefront of journalism on the African continent ends up with a site like this? Something is seriously wrong.
But you expected anything else?
To be fair, I didn’t even know they were redesigning. But honestly, the old design was better. It might have been circa-1991, but at least it was navigable and legible. This new one … eish.
Looks like I’ll be using my feedreader from now on.
here here!
Yeah! Let’s have a round of LOL for the SABC! Heaven knows they need it, after what must have been an interesting, novel-worthy saga…
Personally I like it.
Yes it’s slow.
Yes it’s ugly.
Yes it has no merit whatsoever.
Yes it’s obviously a cheap cop-out.
But ask yourself this: when last did a company so accurately display its work-ethic and professional-philosophy across every facet of its online presence?
SABC FTW!
“The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please try again.” - Haha, will have to look later!
As a whole, news originating agencies was seem to buy their CMS software from whoever they met at a trade show and got along with. The CMS companies that are at the shows spend more time and money to get these shows and wine and dine. The layout and most of the backend for that sites look like something from 1999.
Maybe news outlet will change their motto “Content is King” to “Content is King, but style goes a long way”.
Best,
Jeff
@Amod LOL! Yes, at least they’re consistent - you can give them that.
@Chris That’s the other thing - their hosting sucks. I can’t imagine that Vignette is a very light system. Wordpress is murder enough…
@Jeff That’s Africa. Government people and parastatal companies aren’t too concerned with efficiencies or value. Hence us, stuck in the stone age with these technologies.
Haha, the layout starts breaking and falling apart when I start clicking on stuff, lol
I was expecting at least something WEB2 for a large corporation like the SABC, guess my expectations are too high …
Dude, funnily enough, they’re actually advertising their All New Website on TV, pointing out all the social features and stuff.
I still can’t believe someone actually paid someone else for it. Incredible.