NewsOK speedy again after BCS hangover
At 10:31 a.m. this morning, we received two questions from a NewsOK visitor. Here’s the first part:
do you realize your website is completely unusable today?
Yes – we realized that we were suffering from site performance problems for a significant part of the morning today. It was bad timing, since we were prepared for a massive traffic surge after the Sooners’ loss to Florida last night in the BCS National Championship game.
After a lot of research from our programming, development and server administration teams, we found the culprit … the massive amount of traffic on our main article, coupled with the massive amount of comments made on that article, led to unforeseen overload on our database servers.
Basically, the volume of traffic caused some of our users to experience issues trying to load our Web site. The “nuance” has been adjusted. And the extremely occasional unforeseen problem is a byproduct of being the largest Web site in Oklahoma that is growing at a remarkable rate.
(And when I write “occasional unforeseen problem,” I mean it. Our site-disruption rate would rank well with any site in the world.)
We don’t want it to happen again and are taking additional steps to find unforeseen issues.
And now for the trick question – the second part of our visitor’s question.
how can a news organization be this inept?
Um … nice try. I’ll have to re-phrase before I can answer.
Seriously, I don’t blame this person for being frustrated. I’m certain many other visitors were equally frustrated. And they had every right to be.
But trust me when I say that I doubt your frustration matched our own as we investigated the issue. We pride ourselves on delivering information to the world when you want it.
You demand it. We deliver it. That’s the deal.
That is our goal on a lazy July day, and it’s our goal on a busy post-national championship day. It will be our goal tomorrow.
Regardless, please try us again. I promise that all the content is still there now if you couldn’t get it before – as are the 600-plus reader comments on the primary OU-Florida article. Sorry you couldn’t get it when you demanded it.
Buying the Sam Bradford flip
We received this question today:
Forgive me for being untechnical. Howsomever, can you tell me where to go on your site to find the ‘Bradford flip’ photographic series? I would like to purchase at least one of them and would like to see what is available. Beaucoups thanks.
I had a similar question last month, and the answer is the same, but I’ll provide a bit more detail this time.
You can purchase a “piece of history” when you buy a re-print of The Oklahoman’s front page of the sports section. It just so happens that we had four images of the flip – shot by photographer Chris Landsberger – on that cover.
I purchased one for my 8-year-old for Christmas. It is now framed and hanging in his room. (It’s always fun when your growing son has his first sports hero).
Bottom line: That re-print cover can be a big hit.
The reason we offer re-prints is in the fine print of the press credentials we get each year. We can’t sell the images from the NCAA game action as individual photos. We are, however, legally allowed to sell images of The Oklahoman’s pages.
Action plans for President, courtesy of NewsOK
From the “fun little things you can find on NewsOK” department comes this short about a Dear Mr. President photo exhibit at the downtown Oklahoma City library.
I saw it on our news page.
Sure puts things in perspective when you see great advice from our children. How can you not smile after reading these nuggets of wisdom:
“Make schools have better pizza.” Anthony Allen
“Drive a red Corvette limousine.” Nolan Hampton
“Don’t cut down trees. Use sticks on the ground to make pencils.” Alleah Fullilove
“Send robots into war instead of people.” Elijah Poe
I’ve watched plenty of pundits and experts on plenty of political shows give their opinions and advice on making the world a better place in the past 12 months, but I’ve never seen a short list of ideas be so dead-on accurate.
(1) Better food, (2) cool vehicles, (3) environmental awareness and (4) less human death.
Makes sense to me.
Action plans will surely ensue.
Dream story makes dream comeback
Each day here at OPUBCO, we review the top articles, videos and blogs that were viewed on NewsOK.com.
Today was no different. Editors in the OPUBCO Communications Group news and information center (traditionally known as the newsroom) meet early in the day to talk about what reporters are working on for publication on NewsOK.com or The Oklahoman. They always start by talking about what is popular on NewsOK, because we can get real-time traffic data at any time.
We found it somewhat off that a story that originally appeared on the NewsOK home page on Sunday – a story about what your dreams mean – suddenly began topping the list on Monday afternoon. Some basic research returned news that the story in question was pushed up the traffic ladder because it was shared and made popular by Digg.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that it’s not a great story. It was an excellent read. But ranking as our No. 1 story seemed odd this week — a week when the OU Sooners are playing for a national championship and young people are killed in seemingly senseless acts.
But regardless of the other top news of the day, the story about our dreams topped the list. And it sent me around asking questions about the source of the traffic surge on that one article.
Frankly, we like it when that happens — and it happens frequently. Articles get an abnormal bump in traffic when they’re picked up higher on Yahoo News or Drudge Report or ESPN.com. It’s just another way for people to access our content.
We don’t really care how you get here. Use Google, Yahoo, RSS Feeds, Twitter or some other aggregation site. Doesn’t matter.
Make us your home page, or make us one of the 10 sites you visit each day. It doesn’t matter to us.
Just use us for any information about Oklahoma, any information related to Oklahoma or any information that an Oklahoman might find interesting (like dreams, for example).
And if you see us on Digg, dig us.
NewsOK community helps woman
Our top story on NewsOK.com this morning was about a woman in Wilson cares for more than 100 stray dogs. Oh, and by the way, she lives in a van with no heat or running water. She spends all her money, and then some, on caring for the animals that society left behind.
It was a good read, written by one our best writers – Ron Jackson – and shot by one of our best photographers/videographers – Chris Landsberger. Good stuff.
But early this morning, we noticed some comments posted at the bottom of the article by visitors who wanted to help Ms. Titus. We tried to find an answer. We were going to do more reporting and post something that gave these people answer.
Alas, “Rick” from Oklahoma City made a comment on NewsOK and beat us to it.
Some good news to report. I talked to Mr. Morrison, husband of Karin Morrison who owns and operates Compassion Seeds Animal Sanctuary. He told me that somebody has donated a trailer to Ms. Titus. He also told me that an account has been setup in the name of Catherine Titus at First Bank & Trust, 301 West Main Street Healdton, OK 73438-2117. The feed Store where Ms. Titus purchases food is WHITENER FEED & SEED 334 REDWOOD ST, WILSON, OK, 73463-6524 God Blesses people like Ms. Titus and Mr. & Mrs. Morrison.
Nice.
The really nice thing is that as of 3 p.m. today, there are 20 comments on this article – not one name as been called and not one subject has been mocked. Or, as “Jeff” from El Reno put it:
I’m glad to see something good has happened as a result of this story. This is what we need more of. Not the arguing and bickering that seems so common place nowadays. To all who lended a helping hand, THANK YOU.
P.S. – We are still tracking down some of what’s been reported in some of the comments. Expect to see an update on this story in the near future.
