The New Crib Chatter Is Finally Here!
In case you haven’t noticed, the new web site has launched.
Whoo-hoo!
I took many of your criticisms and complaints to heart when putting it together. But keep in mind there will be glitches and some kinks that still need to be worked out.
Don’t like something? Or find that it’s not easy to use?
Please let me know. I will be making tweeks and changes to it in the next few days.
The twitter feed should be operational- and you’ll be able to tweet posts and “like” things on your facebook page. I also will get a facebook page for Crib Chatter up and running this week.
For the comments: there IS threading (your wish has been answered!). No more cutting and pasting the person’s comment you want to respond to.
And the site is much easier to search- as you can search by neighborhood or property type as well as use the search bar to search for a specific property by address.
Again- please let me know what you like and don’t like.
Welcome to the “new” Crib Chatter!
I’m not totally sure why the site has been so slow the last few days- as believe me I’ve noticed it too. It might have to do with the site re-design however. Let’s see if that problem goes away. The slow loading is VERY annoying. I understand everyone’s frustration. Thanks for putting up with these glitches.
Any chance you could indicate which post the comment is about in the “recent comments” section?
Great work, Sabrina.
yeah- that’s my preference too. I’m already annoyed at just seeing the first sentence. You guys are too prolific to show the comment- but not which post it’s about!
Slowness ‘might’ be a result of the change, but probably not the wp theme change. More likely a plugin addition is not playing nice.
wow!
no ignore button? damn!
Thank you DailyNews. Yeah- something is up so I’m checking into it.
Right now the site is very sssssslllllllllooooooooowwwwww. Never seen it this bad before.
It’s been like this for days now though. But yeah- something is going on with it. I’m checking into it.
I think you are missing the link to Market Conditions.
I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but currently there is a double posting happening as the main page transitions from full article to condensed, previous articles.
Looks great!
OH REALLY?!!!
At the bottom of the page, there is no way to get to “Older Posts”.
I know danny. Do you use that? I argued with my designer that people use it (it’s on the pages if you search by neighborhood etc.)
If there’s a double post- it’s not intentional.
Try and drop so many advertisements in the middle of the page. Think like facebook, tons of advertisements, but they aren’t “apparent” to the user…. I felt a little blasted with not knowing what was a link or an advertisement.
Definitely. I was just trying to find the 1st of the mansions, which is just past the bottom listing. I don’t even remember the neighborhood, or would want to take the time for a search.
It is the same ads as the old page. Nearly identical locations.
Okay- that’s what I thought too. There are some posts that might have been just a few days ago. How do you find them otherwise? I’ll have it fixed.
Also show more of each posting on the front page. The way it is now, they all have “Continue Reading” after just a couple of sentences.
I always liked reading your descriptions and seeing the pricing, before I decide to click and read more.
I too use that… especially if I haven’t visited the site in a few days and want to see if anything interesting was chattered.
+1
Yeah. Gotta have the Older Posts link.
That’s what I said. It’s amazing what ways people use to get the information off the site. But I definitely thought that was one of them. I’ll have it added back in.
agreed!
Yep that’s when I mostly use it too.
Love the new site btw, good work!
I use that too
….sometimes less is more.
I miss the links at the top of each page that would take you to the previous or next article. Often, I’d start from the most recent, then work my way backwards in time, page by page. No way to do that now, as far as I can see?
I used the older posts too. For example, if I missed a few days, I go back to catch up.
Very nice, Sabrina. Like the overall look. A couple of nits.
1. I’m not sure how well the way the reply formatting will work if there are endless back and forths, as there tend to be.
2. The layout almost seems a little too spaced out (large gaps between text). It’s definitely very readable, but almost seems too spread out.
3. Not sure the criteria for the popular posts column on the right side. Is it by views (doesn’t seem to be by comments)?
4. As anon has suggested, a list of posts that have had recent comments would be useful. I thought maybe I saw a version of this in alpha mode on the site a while ago (might have been a different kind of list), but it got pulled quickly.
5. The checkbox for notifying me of followup comments by email (not that use this feature) does not show up for me. I’m using Chrome browser.
Use Ad Blocker Plus for Firefox. I don’t even know what ads you’re talking about because I never see any ads.
Love the look of the new site. A “nice to have” would be a +1 or like/dislike button on comments
Agreed
New CC and new Yahoo Finance in the same day! Too much change for me at once
I would also like a +1 or thumbs up thingy… something to rate comments
1. On the right for the latest comments it used to say what post they were from, now it’s just the name. It really needs the post on there too so I can avoid the shitfests and discover updates to older posts.
2. It’s been slow for quite a while, not just days. If this is shared hosting you might just be on an oversold machine. If you have shell access you can use putty to log in and run “top”. If the load average gets into the double digits your server is fucked.
3. Threading for comments sucks, but that’s just my personal opinion.
4. Visually, the design imo is really ugly and incomprehensible. Sorry.
5. You don’t post enough to cut off your posts, just show the entire thing.
However you have great content that will keep me coming back regardless of this unfortunate design direction.
+1000. I liked having more content (text and pics) on the home page. Easier to decide on which article and/or comments I wanted to read. I guess new design yields more clicks and also more ad rev so thats good.
I agree with #5… at 3 or 4 posts a day you can handle putting the whole thing there.
I think for some sites this a ploy to force another page load and thus more ad impressions, but I could be wrong. Even if that is the case, I always loaded the separate page on CC anyway to get to the comments
You know how Everyblock.org has the Thank button and the Report button? We could soooo use those around here.
+1
One thing I really like about Yelp.com’s “Talk” section is that there is a “Page Bottom” link, so you don’t have to scroll through a bunch of comments to get to the “Reply” box to write your own contribution. Is it possible that you can do this here as well? It’s really convenient!
It would be helpful if comments could also be sorted by time, as they were before. It will be hard to read/find new comments since my last visit with this new threading scheme. too many individual convos to keep up with
I’m coming to this realization now too. I can see some appeal to the reply feature (although I don’t think I was one of those that asked for it) but I’m not sure it works well for this site. There was also a certain charm to old style anyway. One possibility (if it’s easy to implement) would be to keep comments by time order, but allow some functionality for people to easily include an indented (or whatev format) quote from a prior comment.
Still slow as molasses, and the new format forces me to open each entry to see the full listing rather than just scolling down the page, and to then backtrack to go to the next one – at least quarupling the time it takes to browse through. Very annoying.
The site looks pretty good. Once you get the speed back up to acceptable levels, it’ll be great!
oh, hey, I’m starting to wonder if all the server drag isn’t coming from all the damned emails it’s sending if you “subscribe to this entry”. Really, it should either digest and send you one a day, or just the next post after you post. I opened up my gmail to find 48 messages since this morning. It’s not efficient at all.
In my perfect world, the site would remember what I’d last looked at, and all the new posts would be a different color or something. I’ve always hated having to scroll to find new content at the bottom of an article, but now, w/ threading, it’s going to be really tedious.
I’ll also agree that while I like the cleaner look, it’s too much white space.
We love cribchatter, Sabrina, and you’re on the right track with the upgrade. Thanks!
Love the content, but so many bad things about the new site: speed, comments without any idea what they reference, new posts at the bottom instead of the top, threading, having to click though to see the entire post, etc, etc, etc. Why fix things that aren’t broken???? Not everyone has ADD and needs constant change and pointless stimulation – to some it’s just noise and irritation. Since I have (admittedly) limited mental capacity, I prefer to use what I have learning new things of value, not some spoiled kid’s idea of new and better because it’s not old. Please stop the “improvements” and stick to what you do best.
The service/function that sends the email ought to be separate from the function/service that renders the web pages, even if Sabrina were hosting this site from a computer in her bedroom.
I think the functionality you want would require either a more involved account registration process, expensive coding or both.
This new website format sucks – I think I have to find another site to troll
I think the threaded is better, although I can see why some people like the old way. Maybe somehow have a ‘new post’ marker like an asterisk or something on each new post since the person last visited?
Sorry to report that the new site has very limited functionality on a BlackBerry.
Far be it from me to complain about something that is free, but I am hard pressed to find a single thing I like better about the new site. Not that everything is bad, I just fail to see anything that I would call an improvement so far.
It’s much easier to ignore Clio, I bet some here would actually pay for that feature
Change is hard, but I like the new site. Sabrina–someone stole your website and is hawking it on redfin (http://duplexdown.com).
Icarus has a point, although it may be that the reason it’s easier to ignore clio is that it’s harder to follow anything. Which is all fine and good, but you can always ignore clio completely by ignoring cribchatter.
It’s often hard to separate reactions to a new interface between dislike based on being used to old interface (which doesn’t mean it’s invalid) versus true lack of functionality of new interface. But I do have my doubts at the moment.
sabrina, if you get rid of the threading and go back to the old ordering comments by post time, I will buy you a salad at wendys.
When did I get so old that change seems like a bad thing?
shell site for clio?
I agree
so that’s where anon(tfo) has been!
damn, I must be old too. I don’t like the new format : (
I can raise that with a frosty! (A salad didn’t seem like enough to be a game changer) Sincerely, I find this to be a lot harder to check back to as compared to just having to read the last few posts…
No one ever likes new formats. It’s only after you use it awhile that you don’t care anymore. The old site was so old it couldn’t handle certain functions anymore. There are over 3,000 posts on this site!
But I AM making changes to some of the things we all like or don’t like.
I’m taking the threading out in the comments (sorry to those who wanted it.) I think it’s too complicated and hard to follow the conversation otherwise.
Some other changes have already been made. There will still be glitches over the next few days. Big companies like yahoo finance launch a “beta” version and test it out on certain users over a longer period to see what works and what doesn’t. I don’t have that luxury. So I’m sorry if things are slow or confusing for a little while. It’ll get better as you all get used to the new format though.
great Sabrina. I think removal of threading will definitely help with readability.
Good. Now, get back to showing the full post info on the front page (which maybe you have?) and we’re back in business. I used to LOVE the way the posts looked on the front page. I liked seeing the previous sales, assessments, etc all at a glance.
Sabrina, I think change is good and needed even if we all miss the old when we get new. I like the new “like” function…but it doesn’t seem to be working. Also, the comments link at the bottom at the post is missing so I now need to scroll back up which is a pain. Lastly, earlier today the posts didn’t seem to be chronological but seems to be fixed now. Was that a change, or was it that i was trying to read it from my phone?
Overall, I’d give it thumbs up, even though I have to get used to it. Thanks!
we also need a thumbs down button!
and an edit button perhaps?
stfu asshole
“I’m taking the threading out in the comments ”
DISLIKE. so we can reply to a comment, but not to the reply to the comment? It’s your site, do what you feel is best. But less Clio and more non-GZ properties would be my preference
g’nite
I’m assuming that the ability to reply to an “initial” comment (as well as the giant reply buttons) will be gone shortly once it’s implemented. If it’s meant to stay as it is at the moment, then I’m with Icarus.
Also, I still think the proportions of text/blank space are off. Too much blank space.
Duplex down is from her writing style is clearly amy who called renters the poorz. Good luck to her and her bullish site. I’m sure shell’ do just fine.
“Duplex down is from her writing style is clearly amy who called renters the poorz. Good luck to her and her bullish site. I’m sure shell’ do just fine.”
ha!
Hey Sabrina, a late thought came to mind. With the new site is now the time to start enforcing the comments pertaining to the property listed rule and have a separate section for more general tangents? I don’t care either way, but I recall it bothers you when people stop talking about the property and start fighting.
excellent news eliminating the threading. owe you a salad.
It bills itself as “Chicago’s most interesting real estate blog.” (Is that a slam on CC or on the comment-writers here?)
Yikes, it’s even using WordPress too!
Sabrina,
You shouldn’t apologize. Its human nature. Luckily we have the internet as a forum to moan and bitch.. I think it makes real world life far more pleasant.
Looks great!!
Is threading eliminated? I still see it.
Also Sabrina, there is too much spacing between the lines IMO. I think you might want to dicrease the line spacing.
nambla.com ?
Was coming here to ask if threading was fully going away, but now I see it has. Of course, the replies that were there while threading was in place won’t fully make sense, but that’s a small price.
Still think there is too much spacing.
Search tool isn’t up-to-date. I wanted to find a post from today, w’ the term “203k” and the search tool doesn’t find it. I still want a “previous/next” link to articles before and after the one I’m looking at, please.