Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
UPDATE 08/24/2010: It looks like Examiner.com has changed the permissions to the video so it no longer can be embedded. Also, yesterday I was contacted by a Examiner.com regarding my posts. They want to correct some "inaccuracies" as well as address my questions. Currently I haven't received their comments yet, but when I do so I will publish a follow up.
Last night I published the Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar article about serious problems with their new Drupal 7 based platform. The information in it is based on detailed information provided to me from a source that is an Examiner writer, as well as additional research performed by myself.
Today I was informed that Jim Davidson, President of Examiner.com, published a video around the same time as my article went live. In the video he is providing information about some of the facts and questions raised by their users and covered in my article. Scroll down to find the video.
He starts by highlighting that the new platform has been in development for the last nine months and that they have engineers in five time zones working around the clock on it. He also says that the new platform will, when its more finished, offer a more engaging resource for local communities.
Then Jim is going into more specifics about the current problem. Starting with why they went ahead with the launch despite all the glitches. He says its because the migration is a very large process, consisting of over 1.5 million articles, plus 3,000 new articles every day and that is a temporary process.
One of the problems listed in my article yesterday was that it took up to 6 hours, or more, before a new article was live. Jim says that they have tuned the process and that it has been improved a lot. I haven't been able to get confirmation on this yet though.
In regards to why the number of daily page views are so low, Jim explains that the new site uses friendly URL's and better navigation. Google, Bing and Yahoo is now "getting used to it" and are starting to index the new pages. Search hit are slowly starting to improve he claims.
Jim talks about a few other things as well, but the general feeling you get is that there are glitches, hiccups, small issues and everything will be sorted soon.
Unfortunately this is very far from the detailed descriptions I have got from my source, including examples of navigation problems which I have been able to verify. The explanation about the massive drop in page views is too simple. For starters those search engines have not lost the their indexed pages. Yes, they would not point to the new location, but they would still hit the site and most visitors will at least try to find what they where looking for. Then an almost 2/3 loss in page views and 50% loss in visits can't be blamed on the search engines alone. For a site of the Examiners size, a lot of people go directly to it via bookmarks to their favourite writers and topics. Where have all of them gone?
Jim also confirms that they are still using the old publishing tool and that it has taken a long time for new articles to go live. Thus new content still has to be migrated before being live.
That makes me wonder:
- Wouldn't it have been better to postpone the launch until all old content had been migrated, navigational problems sorted and the new publishing tool ready?
After all, the old site was working just fine and they where aware of that the new platform had serious problems. It could have been used in parallel for a few more weeks. That would most likely have avoided a lot of the problems they now face, as well as had delivered a much more polished and working platform for both writers and readers.
I still haven't heard anything back from Examiner.com regarding my requests for comments about this story.
In the meantime, watch the video below with Jim Davidson, President of Examiner.com.
If you have any more information about this story, please feel free to contact me using the contact form.
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Comments
Willi Gutmann (not verified)
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 01:48
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Examiner has been working on migration for a LONG, LONG time
- they didn't hatch the idea yesterday.
Looking around on the Drupal website, way, way way, back on March 4, 2009 ,
migration was already being discussed.
""The migrate module provides a flexible framework for migrating content
into Drupal from other sources"""
Acknowledgments --Much of the original Migrate module functionality was
sponsored by Cyrve, for its clients ~ Examiner.com (port to Drupal 7).
http://drupal.org/project/migrate
Cyrve specializes in migrating data into Drupal.
Examiner.com hired Cyrve to migrate a giant data set from
several MSSQL databases to Drupal.
The data set includes 2 million images.
http://cyrve.com/
It was in the works for many, many months prior to what happened recently
thomas
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 13:47
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Hi Willi,
I do point out that the new platform has been in development for nine months, just as Jim says in the video.
However, it does seem to me that they did rush the launch of it, knowing there where serious issues preventing it from working properly.
/thomas
Anonymous (not verified)
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 09:27
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
This article is RIGHT on POINT. Thank you for writing it and I hope it get picked up by other news media resources.
Liz (not verified)
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 16:17
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
This is the most bizarre sentence I've ever read:
"The question about why the number of daily page views are so low is answered by that the new site uses friendly URL's, a better navigation and that Google, Bing and Yahoo is now getting used to it and that it is slowly starting to improve."
Huh?
Page views are down because something has improved?
thomas
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 17:24
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Hi Liz,
Thanks for pointing that out. I have rewritten that paragraph, I hope the new text makes more sense for you.
Also see my comment about that further down in the text. I don't buy that explanation at all.
/thomas
Liz (not verified)
Mon, 08/23/2010 - 04:32
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
I didn't have any problem with your wording, just the quote from the Prez!
Pete (not verified)
Mon, 08/23/2010 - 15:42
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
The most ridiculous thing about the Examiner/Drupal disaster is that it was tested by Examiner writers who gave a list of problems that were ignored. The testers saw this coming. I don't think Examiner really even wanted them to test the product for feedback, but were just trying to gain some cheerleaders.
It was idiotic to release this before correcting the issues that were spotted by the beta testers, and irresponsible to screw 50,000 people out of a source of income.
Gaelen (not verified)
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 14:05
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
It looks like Examiner has pulled access to this video - any idea why?
thomas
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 14:33
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
I have no idea, also see update at the top of the post.
/thomas
Greg (not verified)
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 19:12
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Interestingly, I sat in a project management talk with The Economist today who specifically avoided the high risk strategy of a hard switch to Drupal. They explained they were criticised in some quarters for their decision, but a steady transition to Drupal was more prudent and manageable (I think I'm correct in saying they're still not done). If this story is accurate, I guess it shows The Economist strategy was indeed smart, if conservative.
thomas
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 21:56
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Hi Greg,
I have read quite a few articles about the strategy you describe The Economist has opted for. The organisation have tested Drupal on less mission critical smaller websites, sometimes internal websites to start with. Then after evaluation decided to use it for more projects.
In many cases I believe it is a sane strategy for several reasons, such as:
- They limit the risk if something goes wrong.
- They can do it on a sensible budget.
- The will be able to slowly introduce a new platform to IT staff as well as users.
- They get valuable experience for future larger projects.
Changing technology is always a big risk since it involves a lot of staff, as well as clients, to learn something new. Doing it on a smaller scale minimises these risks, and the pressure, in a good way.
/thomas
Damien McKenna (not verified)
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 20:20
Rigged traffic numbers?
I worked on migrations for some small-ish commercial sites (50-100,00 visitors per month) and after migrating to Drupal there was a sharp drop in pageviews. A few things that were uncovered:
* The older CMS refreshed their ads & the page itself to create additional page counts.
* Some of the cleaned up data structures meant page needed to visit less pages for the same content.
* Some custom application-type functionality was streamlined resulting in fewer pageviews necessary.
In short - there can be lots of valid reasons why traffic numbers can be different from a CMS migration.
thomas
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 22:16
Re: Rigged traffic numbers?
Hi Damien,
You give some good valid points that I agree completely with.
Another reason for migration is of course that the site has grown out of the old system and that over time the content structure, needs and management has taken new directions the old system wasn't designed for. Leading to confusing navigation for example.
With a new system you can implement all you have learned from the old system and that will often lead to that visitors will find content with less clicks, resulting in fewer page views.
Regarding automatic reloading of pages, something I am not a fan of, the Examiner is still doing that on the new platform though.
The writers I am having contact with have informed me that things have started to improve and problems have been fixed. I just had a look at the Quantcast stats for Examiner.com and the last few days numbers are up quite a bit. Both for visits and page views, which I see as confirmation about that.
/thomas
Martin (not verified)
Thu, 08/26/2010 - 23:58
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Improvements seem to be temporary. Problems listed as fixed are turning out to be broken again.
There are STILL Examiner writers who can't even access the publishing tool, and there are still links being directed to the wrong places --and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Don't believe the PR hype that calls these "bumps in the road."
Paula Neal Mooney (not verified)
Tue, 08/31/2010 - 20:34
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
By the grace of God I got 15,731 pageviews, and my Christian TV Examiner channel alone brought in $115.42 for Sunday.
Anonymous (not verified)
Thu, 09/23/2010 - 19:14
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Good for you. You are not the typical story here though.
Liz (not verified)
Tue, 08/31/2010 - 21:07
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
My URL's are busted --they say the wrong town name! My views are still down by about 80%. I'm skeptical about the people who say they're doing well when everyone else is suffering. The theory is that they are getting extra views because someone else's URL is pointing to them.
Anonymous (not verified)
Thu, 09/23/2010 - 19:16
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
EXaminer is the worst I've ever seen it. Everything is wrong - published articles disappear, links are broken w/in the article, external links to the article don't work, wrong cities appearing on your city's site....this has got to stop or everyone will quit.
Willi Gutmann (not verified)
Sun, 10/10/2010 - 07:32
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Examiner has fallen -- http://bit.ly/FallenDown -- I doubt it will return
Willi Gutmann (not verified)
Sat, 10/16/2010 - 20:11
Re: Examiner.com President Jim Davidson Talks About the Problems
Examiner down to 16,500 “active writers” in USA and Canada
http://bit.ly/NewsWreck
UPDATE (10/12/10): Examiner.com CEO Rick Blair responded :
We actually have had more than 62,000 total Examiners contribute on our site since we launched in 2008; we still actively communicate with more than 55,000, which is what that number is based on. Currently we have an average of about 60 percent that have actively contributed in the past 90 days. We use that time frame in monitoring engagement to take into account our daily publishing frequency is always fluctuating – as some titles like sports are seasonal, others like music are dependent upon new information or movement, for example.
””“Our 30-day average reflects this oscillation, as we range between 30 to 40 percent active in that time frame. ”“”“
30% of 55,000 = 16, 500 and that comes from the CEO of Examiner