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