Comics page enhanced with Comics Kingdom partnership
NewsOK.com is launching a new comics page this weekend. We’ve partnered with Comics Kingdom for an interactive experience with you daily comics online.
Our new experience allows you to select your favorite comics and bookmark them for easy access, then comment on them and share them with your friends. As with all of our pages, we will continue to improve the functionality on this page as we get feedback. But we are confident that as our users get familiar with this experience with our comics, its popularity will grow quickly.
Know it on NewsOK
Our ‘know it’ series is back in place now on NewsOK.com’s redesigned Web site. We’ve actually built the ‘know its’ over the past few weeks, but now you can find all the information we’ve put together on Addiction, Personal finances, Cancer, Retirement, Death and more.
You can expect a lot more on our ‘know it’ in coming months. NewsOK will continue to research and build more information on topics that are important to Oklahomans. In time, you’ll be able to ‘know’ anything and everything as it relates to Oklahoma.
Comments on our articles
If you look at our home page, or any section front page, you will see a new addition on each of our top stories. Under the headline, there is now a a little note that shows how many comments have been made inside that article.
If there are no comments yet, you can be the first. If there are comments on the article, click the icon and read them.
That functionality was in design superstar Scott Horton’s original design for the site, but it took a few days to get that part implemented.
Tuning In returns to NewsOK
One of the first comments we received after we launched essentially asked where the Tuning In feature was.
Tuning In is the piece that runs every day on Page 2 of the Sports section in The Oklahoman. It informs readers of the sports programming they can find on TV and the radio for that day. It has always run online, also, but every time we redesign, we have to figure out how to get that transfered over, both technically and logistically.
Well, we now have Tuning In on our Sports page on NewsOK. Just go to the right-side rail of the sports page to see the latest Tuning In piece from that day.
Voices, voices everywhere
No – the voices are not in your head. They’re on NewsOK.
One new aspect of the new NewsOK.com is the Voices page, located in our main navigation.
The voices area of the Web site houses all the opinions, columns, blogs, and podcasts from all of our personalities at The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com.
The really cool aspect of these pages is the left rail. That’s where we display the recent comments from articles on that topic. If you’re on our Sports Voices page, you’ll see comments on sports articles. If you’re on our Business Voices page, you’ll see comments on business articles. On these pages, you can see what we’re saying, what our users are saying – and then you can say something, too.
My site loads faster now!
The most consistent comment we’ve heard from the public is that our new Web site is cleaner and easier to navigate. We’re happy to hear that, because that was the ultimate goal of the resedign.
Another consistent comment we’ve heard is about the load time of the site.
Indeed, the site does load faster than our previous version. That is happening because the programming staff and designing staff spent weeks cleaning up and improving code under the covers to make your computer load our site faster. They also configured the servers and placed images on new servers to improve the load time of the site.
I’m no expert on that stuff, but I know when my favorite Web site works well – and this one does. It’s just another example of the development team making things happen behind the scenes to help our news and information shine.
Day 1 recap
The first full day of the redesigned NewsOK.com is closing. We’ve now been on the site for a full 24 hours.
We’ll be evaluating and dissecting the feedback from our users over the next few days, but early indications of the first day is very positive.
With any major change to a product, whether its The Oklahoman or NewsOK.com, we never expect to get a lot of calls, e-mails and comments from people telling us how great we are. It generally doesn’t happen. People are wired to let us know when they’re unhappy and stay quiet when they’re pleased.
But today, that trend doesn’t seem to be true. We’ve received many positive comments, many helpful insights, some negative comments and a few ugly comments.
We cherish the positive, act on the insightful, discuss the negative and move past the ugly. Regardless of the nature of the calls and comments, thank you for using NewsOK.com.
There is still much to work for us to do to completely move over NewsOK into our new design, but the vast majority of the site is operational. We have plans to add greater functionality and more enhanced features. You’ll see more blog posts when we get some of the aspects from deep into our site online and ready.
Jim Lange editorial cartoons
The cartoons from Jim Lange were not updating on the site properly this morning. They are now. They can be found on our main voices page.
Daily obits
We’ve had a few calls and messages about the obituary page – a popular destination on our site. You can get to our obits from the sub-navigation on the home page. Just click the link that says “Obituaries.” The link is also available from the sub-navigation on the News page with the text “Obits/Public Notices.”
Once you are there, you can browse our database of Guest Books with the search menu at the top of the page. You can scroll down a little further to see the links to the daily listings that appear in the newspaper.
Photo slideshows
We added our page for photo slideshows to the main navigation of our multimedia page. We have a lot of awesome slideshows from our photography department. Now, you can see them again on our new site.
You will see a completely revamped multimedia page in the coming weeks. It was showcase our videos, photo galleries, slideshows, podcasts and more. Creative director Scott Horton can’t wait to get that page going. In the meantime, we have a page that still shows all that stuff – just not as pretty as we’d eventually like it.
