Off The Record » Easter surfing
Statistics – love them or hate them, they usually tell the truth. The numbers for this Easter break on nouse.co.uk certainly make enjoyable reading for the current web team, with total pageviews up 115% on last year to 61,258 over the past 4 weeks. Absolute unique visitors are up too, with just under 25,000 individual viewers – 75% more than 2008’s holiday. It’s not a patch on termtime interest, but shows how staying live can make for an interesting website, rather than a 5-week long snapshot of the last week of term.
Of course, the ongoing Claudia Lawrence investigation and the G20 protests certainly contributed to these figures, but Nouse stayed switched on and ready to go in order to get this content out to visitors. As a result, 300 freshers found out that the Police were searching their rooms while they were away, and lots of interested commenters got stuck into a nice debate about God and science.
Needless to say, it also helps not having any competition.
Talking of competition, who’s making Vision’s website? And when will it go live? No-one seems to know. Answers on a postcard please, or rather editor@nouse.co.uk.
For those at the back, Vision had a decent website in the pipeline a few years back, before their coders got a better offer and jumped ship to form The Yorker. A few aborted Facebook apps later, and one of the most awarded student newspapers in the country still doesn’t have a website. I hope those back-stabbing CompScis that switched to EasyNews, in a garish orange that even Stelios would commend, are proud of themselves.
And when it does finally go up, there’ll be yet another forum for campus’ biggest keyboard-bashers to dominate. That’ll really put the strain on Rose, Taylor, Northwood and Mitchell – three websites, running similar stories, all crying out for comments. Let the moderation commence.
Elsewhere, I’ve always been impressed by URY’s website. It’s super-functionable and doesn’t look too bad either. Which is more than can be said for YSTV’s. A re-design was promised 12 months ago, but it’s still clunking along in gruesome grey and purple. Still, they do have a section devoted to fun stuff, which is undoubtedly the reason for their huge recuritment successes at Freshers Fair.
One website that has stuck to a deadline is the soon-to-be-launced Roses 2009 site, which is looking rather impressive, thanks to Matthew Tole and YUSU’s new design genius, Sam Town.
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“A few aborted Facebook apps later, and one of the most awarded student newspapers in the country still doesn’t have a website.”
Don’t forget, those awards include a Guardian Student Media Award for Best Student Website – which Nouse is yet to win. (And those will be the aborted Facebook apps which provided live-blogs of YUSU hustings a year before Nouse, I presume.)
Well said Alex. I couldn’t agree more, Vision really need to get their act together, they’ve let themselves really go downhill.
Even Derwent’s own newsletter has a decent website:
http://theflyingdcuk.wordpress.com/
lol lol
We love our webnets
We’re keeping our webnets secret
In really tightly locked boxes
No webnets for you
They’re ours!!
Maybe ask nicely?
No! No webnets for Henry!
Hehehe all the webnets are mine.
But still, Gawd damn. If we aren’t making Nouse readers and writers happy, we must be doing SOMETHING wrong.
I’ll fly off in my ROFLCOPTER
FLY ROFLCOPTER, FLY!
Well its all nice and that having another wallowing self-congratulation, but aren’t these blogs a mere copy-cat of the rival Yorker ones?
Burnham’s post really has me hoping the new Vision site has lolcats on the front page. *that* we won’t be able to compete with.
Ernie, I’m fairly sure The Yorker don’t have a human rights or behind the scenes blog…
wow…
that changes everything.
I’m going to start a blog about knitting xx
Ernie,
It’s not like The Yorker patented blogging, is it. Enjoy your blog on knitting, though some may think it ‘a mere copycat’ of the rival one on ‘Damn, Knit & Blast It’. http://susancrowe.co.uk/
“…[Vision] coders got a better offer and jumped ship to form The Yorker … I hope those back-stabbing CompScis that switched to EasyNews … are proud of themselves”
Verging on libel.
I’ve only just read this, and feel some clarification is in order – sorry to burst your sensationalist bubble with historical facts, but:
http://yorkipedia.theyorker.co.uk/index.php/History_of_The_Yorker
So to conclude, there was no “jumping ship”, and I was doing Vision a favour by spending many long hours putting their INTERNAL office IT equipment in order – as Vision journalists of the time will testify.
Russell Jones did a fantastic job of maintaining the Vision website at the time, and his only contribution to The Yorker was to inform us about CETLE.
Just because this is a blog, it doesn’t give you the right to publish blatant ill-researched untruths – that’s just bad journalism.
“bad journalism” Nick Evans? Pot, kettle, black springs to mind – and at least your accusation of excuses regarding blogs certainly doesn’t apply to Nouse’s news section; which is more than can be said about your orangetop.
Let’s take a look at the journalism that your ‘news outlet’ has produced in the past few weeks. I think my dissertation is both more exciting and certainly more interesting…
So your definition of “good journalism” is “exciting and .. interesting”, Robocop? “Factually accurate” doesn’t feature?
Robocop, let’s get some facts straight: many people involved either in Vision or The Yorker at the time of the events may take issue with this blog, not because it is controversial, but simply because it relies on what appears to be unsubstantiated hearsay.
Nouse’s reputation and prestige are built upon ideals of WELL-RESEARCHED journalism making this mis-representation particularly unfair and unfounded.