WP launches new website

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The Western Producer has launched a new website. It has been a long time coming, but I hope visitors will find it’s been worth the wait.

The new producer.com is not a flashy or gimmicky website; instead, it’s functional and attractive. Our experience — both in print and online — shows that the easier and cleaner a website is for users, the more it will be used.

Visitors will first see what we call the “carousel” – the most visible aspect of our home page, which rotates three lead stories.

To the left of the carousel you’ll see daily news, where we place short-term markets stories and most of our Reuters news content. Off to the right you’ll see a variety of what we call “widgets” — the weather, latest blogs and a spot featuring Glacier FarmMedia’s weekly podcasts, “Between the Rows,” which is also available for subscription on iTunes.

Above the carousel, users who “mouse over” the sections on the blue menu bar — News, Opinion and Blogs, Markets, Machinery, Livestock, Crops and Farm Living — will see the top five stories in those sections automatically pop up. It’s a quick way of checking out the lead stories in each of those sections.

Below the carousel is a space for four stories we call “Must Reads,” which showcase key stories in the various sections on the website. Below that are another couple of key headline stories.

There are two other features of our site that readers might find helpful for navigation. One is what I call the “ultimate scroll”: when you click on a story in any section — say, Markets — you can simply keep scrolling down endlessly to get to all the markets stories. You don’t have to click back to the Markets home page.

The second concerns the mobile version. While most of the website remains similar to the desktop version, readers can press on the two sets of three little bars to the left and right of the Western Producer masthead. The one on the left produces view of the Daily News section, while the one on the right produces a list of all the sections — akin to the menu bar on the desktop version.

We may yet tinker a bit based on your feedback. We encourage visitors to check it out and let us know what you think.

Contact brian.macleod@producer.com

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Comments

old grouchy

Oh boy – – – – someone fell in love with white space.
IMO when one is trying to share or impart information the use of space becomes part of the message. What is problematical is that when I’m looking for information sprawl is like the handwriting of someone who writes quite poorly (physically and in the content) – – – it very strongly propels me to leave.
Perhaps that is the intent – – – I would think not.
(Even electronic space should be used frugally – – – then when the content is enhanced by its lavish use – – – well then use it splendiferously.)
John Fefchak

OMG….By the time I get to figure this new system out and how to use it, The WP will likely have made up another one.
I liked the other one better! Can you tell?
- The Western Producer
  
  John,
  
  I don’t think you’ll need to learn how to navigate a new site anytime too soon – this one has been a looong time coming!
  
  Also, count yourself lucky as you need only learn to find your way around the FRONT end of it!
  
  Cheers,
  Paul – WP web editor
old grouchy

Am noticing a reading annoyance. A page is opened and one is reading, (sorry I read quickly) and after having scrolled down somewhat, the system, having finally realized that it is supposed to add the second article, then bounces one’s page location. This shifting is more than somewhat visually disconcerting – – – in fact its quite annoying, worse, in fact, than even the blizzard of wasted space, its supposed to enhance the readability I think – – – I don’t see how though!
Denise

How come at the top of the page it says zero comments ? For example this one and then if you scroll down you find there were 5 comments.
- The Western Producer
  
  I’m not sure, Denise. I’ll ask our techs to have a look and see if they can fix this.
  
  Cheers,
  Paul – WP web editor
  - The Western Producer
    
    Our developers have been notified and will be looking at this today. Good catch! 🙂

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