Welcome
Welcome to PoliGazette! Celebrate our launch week with us!
Howdy everyone, welcome at this new and improved blog. After thinking and talking about it for a month or two - amongst ourselves - today is launch-day. Basically, we want to continue where we left off: we want this site to be a place where moderate liberals, centrists and conservatives feel at home. We want this site to be a place for civilized debate. We want, in short, to offer readers a wide range of opinions and perspectives so that they can make their minds up more easily - or at least more informed.
In the future we want to offer original reports as well as blog posts, links and videos. Furthermore, we plan to start a Blog Talk Radio show of our own, so that you all can read and listen to us. This will be set up in the coming months.
The first week will, hopefully, be a great - great - week. We’ve asked several bloggers to write a guest post for us. These bloggers, names all of you will know, are incredibly busy but took the time to write a post for us nonetheless. These posts will be published throughout the week. Some of you have asked what the line-up is. Let me first say that we’re still waiting to hear from two or three people. That being out of the way, here are the bloggers who have agreed:
I advise you take a look around as to acquaint yourself with the new site. It’s quite different from the old Gazette. Firstly, the page isn’t as long. We want to limit the length of it - it’s less of a ‘bloggy’ set-up and more of a magazine layout. That is, obviously, done on purpose.
Secondly, every day we will have several Lead Stories. The Lead Story - the story way on top - will be replaced two or three times a day. This Lead Story is mostly a longer post, read by many people. In other words, a longer, popular post. Once we will focus on original reporting, the Lead Story will, quite often, be such an original post. You can read the entire post by clicking on ‘read story.’
Thirdly, next to the Lead Story you see “features posts.” These are normally posts that have been pushed off the frontpage. In other cases, they’ll be older original reports, popular articles, etc.
Fourthly, the regular blogposts can be found on the left side of the screen. The intros are, reasonably, short. To read the entire post you’ll have to click on ‘read story.’ Obviously, you can leave a comment.
Something I like very much is the center bar: as you see the section is called “In the News.” It contains the titles of, intros to and links to articles at news sources like the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, ABC News, CNN, Pajamas Media, Huffington Post and so on. We’re using Delicious to add these links. They will be updated throughout the day. In other words, if you want to find the hottest and latest breaking news, go to the frontpage and select an article that sounds interesting.
Sixthly, and this is something I like very much, you will notice, when you scroll completely down, that a video player will be loaded. The videos are brought to you by The Voxant Newsroom. This player contains some 25 news videos: from now on you can come to the PoliGazette to read and watch the news (as said, listening comes at a later time). Not only will you be informed when you watch a video, however, we will earn some money at the same time. You click on play, we get pay (artistic freedom of the poet). A win-win situation, in other words.
In the right sidebar you will see the editorial staff listed, you’ll see the latest comments, advertisements and the three latest headlines of our partner, Stubborn Facts. Be sure to visit this great blog on a daily basis.
What more? We have different pages: home, archives, about, blogroll and partners. The archive page makes it easy for you to find old posts. The about page informs you about the PoliGazette team, the blogroll has links to the best blogs on the net (a fairly limited blogroll, we’re snobs) and, lastly, the partners page informs you about how are partners are, what their blog is all about, etc. At this moment we only have one partner, we hope to partner up with more blogs in the (near) future.
And now, having explained the technical aspects to all of you, I’d like to take the time to thank the people behind the move:
- First and foremost, of course, Justin Delabar. Justin is the Managing Director of Creatabyte and the one who designed this blog. I contacted him a while ago to ask him whether he would be interested in designing this place. He quickly agreed and also agreed to implement the design. Without Justin, we would have been nowhere. When he sent me the first rough draft of what he wanted to do, I was speechless: it was exactly what I had in mind. The result is what you see today: to say that I’m thrilled would be an understatement. It looks better than I hoped. Justin did an awesome job. If you need someone to design a site for you, I highly recommend him. Visit the Creatabyte site to look at his portfolio.
- Secondly, I’d like to thank Dustin. Dustin is a co-blogger at the PoliGazette, of course, but he didn’t have time to write much in the last couple of months. He has, however, more time now and told me that he will get back to blogging today. What’s more, not only will he get back to blogging, he’s also the Site Manager. He’s the one who will fix what’s broken. If you have a question about the blog - not about a post but about technical issues - contact him. He already proved that he’s far more handy than me by moving the posts from the old blog to this one. There were some difficulties with that, but, together with Justin, Dustin got the job done (and stayed up to 3AM to do it). Thank you Dustin.
- Thirdly, of course, I wanted to thank my partner in crime, Pieter Dorsman. Pieter is a co-blogger here, has a blog of his own and he is the owner of a consulting company. What’s more, together we form the executive board behind the PoliGazette. We will become professional in the coming months, registered etc. Without Pieter’s knowledge, passion and energy that - becoming more professional - would not have been possible. When we turn this blog into a business enterprise, Pieter will be the CFO. Pieter and I are the ones who planned the move. Without Pieter my plans would’ve remained plans. He’s not ‘just’ my co-blogger anymore, he’s also my business partner.
- Fourthly, I need to thank Jason. Jason is assistant editor and weighed in on the design and the usuability of PoliGazette. Without his advise and eye for detail we would’ve forgotten to include many things and the site would’ve been far more difficult in use; both for you the readers and for us the bloggers.
- I’d also like to thank the readers who donated money when I asked for it in order to start PoliGazette. Thank you very much for generosity and words of support and encouragement.
- An unprofessional thank you is required as well: thank you Esma for putting up with me during the move and the planning for it… and for me not being able to talk as much with you as you deserve due to my blogging habits. Without your support and patience I would have given up a long time ago.
- Lastly, but surely not least: a big thank you to all those read this blog on a daily / regular basis. Please stay with us and enjoy your stay at the new PoliGazette!
It looks great Michael.
Keep up the good work.
-Chuck
Congratulations and good luck to Michael & Co.
Cool digs! Got ya tracked in The Reader!
The new site looks sweet!
Snooper, awesome! Read us in the reader!
Dyre: Thank you very much and… good work at Central Sanity (and your own blog).
Nihat: thanks!
Chuck: thank you for the comment and for the post!
As always when I see a change of format, I’m a little dizzy, especially because the new page is much busier that the old one. I’ll have to be careful with the video at the bottom, my stone-age computer at work doesn’t like it. Overall very nice. I’m glad you kept the “latest comments” on the side, very convenient when you’re in the middle of a heated debate with someone
You’ll just have to get used to it Lynx
The videos: ay, yes, isn’t that a good reason, though, to ask the people to buy better computers?
It does indeed look great. Congrats, and kudos to all who worked on the new design and launch.
I’m in the same boat as Lynx with the videos though (and hope to put off new computer purchase for a while). And I’m wondering if old computer capabilities are affecting the page loading in general; the place where the video should appear has an error message and my cursor is constantly flashing (no matter where I am on the site) as though the page hadn’t fully loaded (flashing with the hourglass symbol). Any help from the techies?
I’ll try it out on my boss, see what he has to say. Even if it doesn’t work, the look on his face should be priceless lol.
While I’m being an insufferable whiner, I’ll ask the all-powerful masters of the web if it would be possible to put a tag menu in the comments section. It’s very convenient, and though I’ve learned most of them by heart, the link script eludes me entirely, I end up going to a site with tag menu and copy-pasting.
ps1: I end up getting a “do you wish to cancel the script” error message whenever I get near the video section. I wonder if it’s the same issue as C. Stanley?
ps2: Big kudos to the techies and designers for a job well done. I know I should have said that in the first place, but better late than never. The design is good, and I like the color scheme, it allows for clarity. Again, great job!
I will forward this comment section to Dustin. Thanks for the feedback!
For me the error message in the video block reads:
The NewsRoom player could not detect the origin of this page and cannot play the news story. For more details see (the link to newsroom site).
When I follow the link there are a variety of possible reasons listed, some of which are due to the way the script is written (something that potentially could be changed on your end?) and some are fixing the settings on my computer (Which I tried and it didn’t help)
I have IE 7 if Dustin needs to know.
The flashing cursor is extremely annoying- I could live without watching the videos but if the other problem is related then I definitely hope it can be fixed! It’s a bit like having flourescent lights which flicker maddeningly…
Christine, I don’t know… I don’t have those problems. Neither in FireFox, Netscape, Opera… and I don’t use IE, but Dustin is informed about it now.
O, and Dustin told me that he’s downloading several plug-ins, one of which would enable commenters to edit their own comments (for a period of 30 minutes after first publishing the comment in question).
Well, I’d been thinking about trying a different browser so decided to take the plunge and just installed Firefox- and it’s all fixed. No more flashing cursor, the video shows up (and runs, now that I also clicked to install the plug in).
So it looks like IE is the problem- don’t know how much can be done on your end for Dustin to make it more compatible, or if users have to consider whether to dump IE in order to make the site work better.
Christine: that’s good to know. It should be IE compatible.
A bonus to using Firefox though: I just clicked over to Stubborn Facts and their site looks MUCH better- with IE their font was HUGE and columns often overlapped.
Christine: there’s a reason most people use FireFox these days.
IE sucks. Big time.
But some folks (unlike this old lady, LOL) are haplessly wedded to everything MS because it comes preloaded onto our computers.
Which is exactly why half the world hates Gates.
Our site was designed for a Firefox default. IE does not handle spacing well when you elave the default resolutions.
Oh, and love it or hate it, Michael, but if your site hangs on IE you’re going to be annoying at least 75% of your drop-in traffic. What can’t be cured….
Yes I know Tully - well, 75% isn’t correct, but much, yes. I have contacted the people about it.
Christine and others: Dustin is working on it. He just wrote to me: “the Google ad IE6 misplacement issue has been resolved; still working on the IE video problems…”
Good deal, Michael. It just came to my attention that I actually have IE6 installed, not 7. It may be that users with the later version have fewer problems than I was experiencing.
Nice new digs and good luck!!
Lynx - I’m guessing that your dinosaur of a computer at work uses Internet Explorer. If you switch to say Firefox or Seamonkey, you can use add-ons to block the script for the videos. This won’t lockup your old PC, but the open source browsers will crash on the MS operating system.
IMHO the two right columns are just a little two wide. Do like the layout, not the graphics intensive layout of AllThingBeautiful or older CQ. The archive section is perfect, or nearly so, one of the best I’ve seen.
Tully - The site administrator needs to add code to deselect some features in say checkboxes. As I mentioned to Lynx, the open source browsers are a work around, but they don’t likey Mr Gates.
I tried to load the site on an old PC with IE6, what a mess. Not the site, but the older PC’s OS and browser. Need to add code to check system setups, no big deal with Javascripts, Perl or PHP.
CS - Now that you are using Firefox, try some of the add-ons. AddBlockerPlus and NoScript allow for greater control when sites load, but both require a degree of “geekiness”. ADP allows you to block ads and specific sites, it isn’t too global. NS is more powerfull, but the power comes with a price. Firefox does crash with older PC’s and some security S/W.
ABP is great, no more annoying Google ads and such. But not so good for capitalism!!
CS - Firefox isn’t very secure unless you make it your default browser, even then some sites use some nasty cookies and your OS won’t remove them.
Mr. Gates no likey open source, not good for capitalism. Firefox stores cookies in an archive or jar, watch out for this.
Actually, Rudi, Gates isn’t a fan of capitalism. He tries to prevent capitalism from forcing him to adjust his software to other programs / businesses / browsers / etc. However, if he doesn’t change that quickly he’s got a problem.
MvdG - In Europe thats the storyline, but in the US BG isn’t seen as bad, just ask Tom Friedman. Most people don’t even bother with open source S/W.
If you want to piss of Gates, use OpenOffice instead of his MS OfficeSuite.
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.openoffice.org/product/writer.html
http://download.openoffice.org/2.3.0/index.html
Christine, you can still use Firefox even if you’ve got explorer on your computer. Most computers have it pre-installed, but you download Firefox and set it as your default browser. In my experience it works much better than IE, and has all sorts of nice addons that help you block spam and such.
Rudi, you’re right about flashblock of course, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me. I already have it at home, I’ll just install it at work tomorrow. Thanks.
Lynx - Are you aware how Firefox stores it’s cookies. Your IP security s/w might not check Firefox for malicious cookies. Some can trash the print spooler or mess up older versions of Word. On the menu go to Tools/Options/Privacy to look at cookies, some security s/w doesn’t open the jar and Windows doesn’t even care.
I do know about the cookies, but I keep fairly rigorous security on my computer, as well as passing AdAware regularly (which detects and eliminates the tracking cookies) and backing up my work (which is what I care about, more than my music or movies) monthly. At work I have it to remove cookies after closing. At home I’m looser for the sake of comfort, and because I don’t have critical things here.
Lynx: I’ve downloaded Firefox to take it for a test drive, but I haven’t yet removed IE. Will probably go ahead and set FF as the default.
Rudi: Thanks for the security tips, and I’ll look into the addons.
C. Stanley, I don’t even know if you CAN remove IE. I still have it, very occasionally some page doesn’t work as well on Firefox and I revert to IE. It hardly occupies any space, and it could come in handy one day.
Yes, christine, don’t actually try to remove IE. As Lynx says, there are pages which really demand it. Just set FF as your default browser.
Ah, I actually just meant that I hadn’t replaced it as the default browser- but hadn’t even thought through whether I’d then try to remove IE or leave it as an alternate- good to know that it doesn’t take up much space.
Christine: yes, you can just leave it on. I’ve got it as well, but seldom use it. It’s one messed up browser. Just use FireFox (or Netscape or Operate - both are very good as well).
You can’t remove IE; don’t even try, lest you may be successful only to f*ck up your computer. Anyway, that’s not what CS meant…
I’m having the same difficulties others are having. Blinking cursor, video at the bottom displaying an error, etc. Tried it with IE6 & FireFox on an WinXP machine, and with IE6 on Win2000. With IE, cursor blinks. With FireFox, page load doesn’t run to completion. With FireFox, I noticed the following: when I scroll down to the video section, the status bar displays something like “waiting for data from 127.0.0.1″ This is a special IP address that may provide a clue to your techie.
Having comments numbered (as at MvdG) would’ve been nice. Displaying 10 most recent comments, instead of 5, would’ve been nice, too. What else? Oh, will you import all posts and comments from MvdG? I noticed, some posts are not imported, and those that’ve been important didn’t come with the comments from MvdG.
… those that’ve been imported … (not ‘important’)
Nihat: I don’t understand that… at all. I’m not having any problems. We’ve got to deal with this though. I’ve contacted Dustin and Justin.
If there’s no other solution, we have to think about taking the video off then.
Ok - we’ve decided to take the video down. It will go off whenever Dustin reads his e-mail…
127.0.0.1 is the localhost, i.e., my computer if I see a “Connecting to 127.0.0.1″ on my browser’s status bar, and your computer if you see the same on yours. By the way, “Connecting to 127.0.0.1″ is exactly what I see on my FireFox (Version 1.5) status bar. I tried and reproduced the condition.
Taking the video section off (removing it) temporarily would help see if it is the video section that is causing the problem (blinking cursor on IE may be due to it, too).
It is not likely, but this may be a small thing that fell through the cracks as you switched from the development&testing mode to deployment. Do you know if your video provider (newsroom.com) jelaous about who embeds their stuff? Since they are paying you referral fees, maybe they are, and your host machine’s name & IP address may have to be registered with them. The error message “TheNewsRoom player could not detect the origin of this page and cannot play the news story” suggests something like that to me. Providers of such content may check which page is attempting to use their content, and refuse to serve if they don’t want to.
Anyway, enough with my theorizing from outside. You should try it from any computer you can put your hands on. At school, public library, neighbor’s or friend’s home, etc.
OK, not that the video is off, I don’t see “connecting to 127.0.0.1″ anymore and page load runs to completion on FireFox. Cursor continues to blink on IE though.
The blinking cursor issue in IE6 should be taken care of now.
Justin, FYI, it is still blinking for me.
In case it may help, here is another symptom with IE6 in addition to blinking cursor. I don’t seem to be able to scroll all the way to the bottom. When I do, I see the OneStat.com icon. But only momentarily. The page scrolls up a tad bit on it own so that only the top of the said icon remains visible. When I keep the mouse button pressed on scroll-down arrow, it keeps dancing between the two states (visible, not-visible). No such thing happening with FireFox 1.5.
An IE png transparency fix is causing the blinking cursor, but since the fix is only applied to the logo it should only be momentary. I’m attempting to reproduce the scrolling issue in IE6 but am not seeing it unfortunately.
As should be apparent to everyone the video service in question has been removed. If you’re just joining in the comment thread no worries, you’re not missing anything because it’s no longer there to miss
Sorry I couldn’t join in earlier, between life and working in the site’s background I didn’t have time. But now that I do have the time I just wanted to let everyone know that if you’ve got any other issues please feel free to contact me at poligazette.manager@gmail.com” rel=”nofollow”>poligazette.manager@gmail.com.