A lot has been going on in the background with Depot Central (and I will leave those for Scott) however two important pieces of our site have returned. The RSS and poll system are back.

Since we switched servers, the RSS feed pretty much died, so did polls. The old systems worked well, but it was time for both the polls and rss feeds to be updated, so we waited until after we launched the new site to re-establish them.

Over the past few days both of these systems have been redone and relaunched, opening doors to future upgrades.

If you want to know more about rss feeds, check out this post.

-TJ

Well, we are beginning week two of running Depot Central and it still has quite a few things to work through. Thankfully there have been few hiccups. Scott can write a more comprehensive update at a later time on what has not worked and what is now working.

Bad news today from a great blog and resource for news folk diving into multimedia work.
Multimediashooter.com is dead, hopefully not forever…  Richard Koci Hernandez (multimedia guru from the San Jose Mercury News announced.

-TJ

Since Monday, we’ve been receiving non-stop questions about the “Search Archives” section. Unfortunately, with the release of Depot Central V2, this section has been quietly retired…to pave the way for the all-new, all-improved Search functionality.

Long-time users of Yakimaherald.com will be familiar with our Search Archives section, with a slow and cumbersome webform that almost never had useful results. To add insult to injury, stories older than a week required a $1.50 fee to look them up. Due to the previous way that stories were filed and stored, it was deemed easier at the time to contract an external company to index and search our archives(which largely accounted for the fee).

With the change to Depot Central V2, we now host stories from a modern SQL database, similar to a WordPress blog just like this one. And with recent advances in software, we can now integrate a dedicated full-text search engine into the site, with no extra burden for us.

What does this mean for you, the user? It means an end to archival fees for one thing: in a few weeks anyone will be able to view our archives going back to 1998, completely free of charge(albeit with some existing restrictions: we cannot host Associated Press and other articles we do not have the rights for).
Even better, the search is much faster, and much easier to use. It is already in use for several administration functions of Depot Central, and users have reported it as a “breath of fresh air”.

Stick with us for a few more weeks, and we’ll make sure you never get lost in our site again..

- Scott

Scott Francis, the Web team’s programmer, has been hard at work repairing parts of yakimaherald.com that should work, but doesn’t. In other words - bug hunting.

To catch folks up on our latest news, yakimaherald.com runs on Depot Central, a ruby on rails system to publish the news online. Scott built Depot Central.

Before we launched the new site, his programming of Depot Central has mostly been in the background on a test server. It’s unavailable to the public, so the Web team can test, evaluate and modify the system so it operates smoothly. Yet bugs are unavoidable. One perspective that is relatively commonplace in the tech industry is that testing within a closed system can never ensure bug free products. That reason is why we have the disclaimer at the head of yakimaherald.com. If you encounter an error, let us know so we can fix it.

Since we launched, several of these bugs have been reported and fixed. Others will be squashed over the next few weeks and months. The short answer is, what we build and test privately sometimes does not work after it is deployed to the public, forcing us to fix it or disband it.

Here’s a short list of things that have been repaired or modified on yakimaherald.com since we launched.

• Front page redux (several times - and ongoing)
• ‘E-mail the story’ link
• Several section pages did not display correctly (sports, opinion, letters to the editor…)
• Massaging the control system (how we manage the stories)
• Temporarily diverting sections to the old server, such as obits, until we get them migrated over to the new system.
• Getting the ad system to work better site wide.

More bug stuff later!

- TJ

The first full day of our new Web publishing system is coming to a successful close. Yakimaherald.com is now running on a home-grown content management system (CMS) called “Depot Central V2.”

Some pieces of the old Web site remain, such as paid obituaries and newspapers in education. These legacy areas will be phased out and the old server will be cleaned and used to bolster yh-r.com’s stability.

Building a news CMS is a relatively unusual task in the industry. Most news Web sites pay companies to customize and host existing publishing platforms for their news sites. A quick look at Yakima and Northwest area news providers; kimatv.com, kapptv.com, kndo.com, king5.com, nwcn.com, komotv.com, kirotv.com and many more are all built by their corporate owners or by private developers. Yakimaherald.com will join a handful of news Web sites built from within the home organization, such as spokesmanreview.com and seattletimes.com.

Taking on CMS projects by news organizations can be a risk, because they can be costly and time consuming to get off the ground. But the benefit of having a home grown system allows organizations to constantly improve their Web site to reflect the needs of their community.

I have experienced the troubles associated with ‘bought’ Web systems. They occur most often when trying to customize the site to help present a given story, that day. Dealing with customer service at corporate headquarters, or tracking down a programmer at the company that built your news Web site is downright impractical when deadlines fall in your lap.

Our old system, even though it was relatively flexible, was not an easy tool to use emerging online publishing techniques. Now, with Depot Central, it improves yakimaherald.com’s ability to take advantage of new online publishing methods for the benefit of our readers and viewers.

The first day went well and the Web team continues to find, and fix bugs. If you have any problems or comments please let us know. You can e-mail us at webmaster@yakimaherald.com, thanks again!

-TJ