Share this article! Oregon Business is going forth more boldly into the digital realm. After months of hard labor on the part of our web-development team, I am excited to introduce the new and vastly improved OregonBusiness.com. Credit for the mobile-friendly site goes to our web production manager, Jesse Morgan, and our former digital news … Read more
Oregon Business is going forth more boldly into the digital realm. After months of hard labor on the part of our web-development team, I am excited to introduce the new and vastly improved OregonBusiness.com.
Credit for the mobile-friendly site goes to our web production manager, Jesse Morgan, and our former digital news editor, Jacob Palmer, who worked alongside Judd Boyer, owner of a local web-development firm. The trio have been working tirelessly for months to wrangle existing OB content onto the new site and work through dozens of bugs — all while responding graciously to my steady stream of one-note queries: “Are we done yet?”
I thought I’d let Jesse explain, in his own words, some of the process and reader benefits of the new site.
“I’m most excited about having a version of Oregon Business that’s a pleasure to read on the go. Our new responsive design allows for a mobile experience that feels like an extension of the site and that has a focus on the content.
“The most challenging part was finding a way to organize a back catalog of 10 years and 15,000 published articles into a new space that allows for more user-controlled navigation. Most website projects include just a few informative pages about the business, individual or project you’re trying to find. News sites publish hundreds of stories a year. Our goal was to preserve that history on the new site. So if you want to read about, say, ‘Loosening the Reins on Work Romance’ from our January 2008 issue, it’s there.”
As Jesse notes, the website remains a work in progress. The team will continue to improve the user experience and reorganize the archives to ensure everything is in the right place. In the meantime, I am confident you will find the site much easier to navigate and our long-form articles — like this month’s cover story on Eugene’s changing business and culture landscape — much easier, and more pleasurable, to read.
The timing of our launch is bittersweet. Two weeks ago, Jacob accepted a position as a copy editor with the San Francisco Examiner. He won’t get to enjoy the site he spent so much time building, but I, for one, will think of him every time I log into the back end, using (thank God!) the latest version of Joomla 3.
Please join me in welcoming Jacob’s replacement, Jaime Dunkle. The former online editor for the Portland State Vanguard takes the reins at Oregon Business this week.
Let us know what you think of our new look!
