There is another website out there now covering the news of Carson City. I’m not going to comment on its content since…well…there really isn’t any. The site is the Nevada Appall, and it’s clearly designed and named to get a few digs in at Carson City’s local paper, the Nevada Appeal. When I first heard about it on Carson City Live, I got a little excited thinking there was someone else out there who was putting together some kind of news site about Carson City. But I was met with disappointment when I actually visited the site and found something that looked to be dashed together pretty quickly in Front Page. And that’s written anonymously. And that doesn’t really attack the Nevada Appeal in any way, except for calling it a “Pretentious Local News Rag.” Maybe it will improve with time, but for now it’s kind of a snore.
And since I’m a web developer first and everything else second, let’s dive into a quick review of the “under-the-hood” stuff that makes the site tick. Feel free to jump to the end if you want.
- It uses
<font>tags. That right there is enough to get someone banished from society. But that’s not all. It hasbgcolorattributes. It hastopmarginattributes (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as CSS). And they use<br><br>(two line breaks) instead of wrapping the paragraphs in a nice clean<p></p>. What year is this? I though 1997 was over. - For something that calls itself a “blog”, it sure does seem to break most of the conventions as to what a blog is.
- The most recent posts on the front page? Nope.
- Some kind of blogging system so you don’t have to use Front Page? Uh-uh.
- Reverse-chronological order? I can’t find it.
- Comments? No, but there’s an e-mail address, and your e-mails may get posted. Maybe. If they feel like it. At some point in the future.
- Archives? Kind of.
- Permalinks? For the archive pages, yeah. But the latest post is on a page named
today.html. What happens tomorrow? And even worse, it was last updated yesterday. - RSS Feeds? Not a chance.
- This one is a minor infraction, but it still gets under my skin. The whole thing is written anonymously. I know that there are legitimate reasons for anonymity, but on this site? Come on, what are you afraid of? Put your damn name on the page like the rest of us do.
I’m actually embarrassed after seeing this. I’m out there desperately searching for blogs that are written in Carson City, and this is what I find? This is the face Carson City is putting out to the web? This is our addition to the blogosphere? This is the way we’re going to let the world know we’re not a bunch of hicks, and that we’re just as digitally savvy as the rest of the world? If I lived somewhere else, I wouldn’t think too highly of Carson after seeing that page.
So come on, Carson City. I know we can do better than this. I want to see some good stuff, some good web pages, some good blogs written by Carsonites. If you know of one, put it in the comments. Because, you know, this site actually has them.
