Relaunch of Athletics Website

Check out the "updated" website for athletics...

[cornellbigred.collegesports.com]

Here's the article on the relaunch

[cornellbigred.collegesports.com]

Oy vey.

Is there anything they didn't try to shove on the home page?

If it ain't broke...

The new features are kind of cool...but the layout on the main page makes me nauseous.

Well, it's no busier than espn.com...I like it. And I know I'm biased. But I think it looks good and much more sophisticated than the old website.

The rotating headlines are cool if you like shiny and sparkly objects but you have to spend a couple minutes there to see if a new story posted. Plus, what's going to rotate in and out over the summer?

More space for photos is nice but where is Cornell going with this: Will it post 10 photos of the hockey game an hour after the game? Or just have more chances to run the same stock photos: "David McKee: Standout in Goal"?

You'd think a non-profit like Cornell would have the strength to say no to blinking ads. Let alone those stupid pop up floating ads whose choices "close now" and "never show up again" seem not to register anywhere outside my mouse cable.

There's no poll right now, no chance to vote on things like: "Cornell will win Friday night, yes, no, not sure."

Speaking of messed up websites, earlier today ifyou went to the Syracuse website, you could not find anywhere on the home page the game time for the Syracuse basketball NCAA first round game. [www.suathletics.com] That should be rule #1: Put stuff there you know a lot of people want. Most Syracuse fans want to know what time is the Vermont game, just to make sure, and then if (when) Syracuse wins, what's the time of the second game.

[edit]The lacrosse link to gametracker works but the link to the audio didn't. (It does on the link at page-bottom to sign up for live audio.) Anyone else have that happen?

But yes the Cornell site does seem an improvement. Let's see how it wears over time.

Keep in mind there are still some kinks to work out on both sides -- Cornell Athletics will need to fix some typos, College Sports Online will need to check hosted feeds...that sort of thing. Probably a lot of that going on tonight behind the scenes.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

The rotating headlines are cool if you like shiny and sparkly objects but you have to spend a couple minutes there to see if a new story posted. Plus, what's going to rotate in and out over the summer?[/q]Bill, use the "tape player" controls to either stop the rotating headlines, or scroll through them to the one you want.

Personally I think it's lousy. At least the hockey page, and I that's the one I'm mostly concerned with. Not a great layout. Still missing a History section. I couldn't find a stats link after a quick check. Very commercial and busy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but I don't think they pulled it off well.

Then again, the only time I go to the official web site is.... I don't know when I ever do. Between USCHO, collegehockeystats.net, eLynah and TBRW I can get all of the information I need/want more convienently.

The media transport buttons are there but no instructions / hints either directly, as hover help, or by right clicking for those whose mice have right buttons. But as has been pointed out, the site is just now up and no matter how much you think these thing through, you're going to miss something.

Also missing (I believe): No easy way to contact sports information. For working press who don't have daily or weekly contact with Cornell, I think that's a fair request that Cornell's SID & assistants be accessible. That could be an option in the Contact Us box.

[Q]Jerseygirl Wrote:

Well, it's no busier than espn.com...I like it. And I know I'm biased. But I think it looks good and much more sophisticated than the old website.
[/q]


Not that it's a justification of the billion things they cram onto the home page, but ESPN.com has a weeee bit more information to convey to readers than CornellBigRed.com does. Saying "our site is busy but so is ESPN's" is a poor point of comparison for a Ivy League Athletics site.

This just seems like a classic redesign for the sake of redesigning. Things aren't necessarily made easier; just different and busier and more "cutting edge" looking. And "easier navigation" doesn't have to mean putting as much stuff on the first page as possible.

Additionally, even throughout ESPN's redesigns, at least the last couple of times, no matter how they changed the "look" of the site or added additional info to the home page, the core menu on the left, Top Story in the middle, and headlines on the right, has changed very little in recent years. And I'm sure these are the only 3 items used by a vast majority of users, a vast majority of the time. The Cornell redesign, on the other hand, changes the arrangment of the most used information, the schedule and the top stories.

I'm ashamed that I just spend 10 minutes talking about the Cornell website redesign. Because to Keith's point, who really cares? It's the Cornell Athletics website.

[Q]Jordan 04 Wrote:... who really cares? It's the Cornell Athletics website.[/q]It's Cornell's sports image to the outside world. Recruits will see it. Alumni who don't know about eLynah go there. If you're about to head out to the football game in New Haven, it's where you'd go to check the time and that it really is at Yale not Cornell before you set out from Pawtucket. And this is a Cornell that is quite image-conscious, as you may know if you've heard about all the time spent redesigning the Cornell logo.

[Q]Jordan 04 Wrote:
Is there anything they didn't try to shove on the home page?
[/q]

A direct link to Intramurals...
It's the only thing I ever used that site for, and it's because I can never remember the website for Intramurals (bigred2.cornell.edu or something), while "cornellbigred.collegesports.com" with the drop down menu's "Intramurals" link was pretty easy.

Half the front page is filled with ads, not substance. At least the annoying Netflix pop-up seems to have been deep-sixed. Is this the i-Drive of websites, Bill?

[Q]Jordan 04 Wrote:

Because to Keith's point, who really cares? It's the Cornell Athletics website.
[/q]

Well, obviously not you and Keith... It's not the ECACHL website! I don't go to the ECACHL website on my own.

I do go the Cornell Athletics website on my own to check schedules and reports on Football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, and Track and to get the link for the audio of the hockey games that I can't attend.

[Q]Jordan 04 Wrote:
Additionally, even throughout ESPN's redesigns, at least the last couple of times, no matter how they changed the "look" of the site or added additional info to the home page, the core menu on the left, Top Story in the middle, and headlines on the right, has changed very little in recent years. And I'm sure these are the only 3 items used by a vast majority of users, a vast majority of the time.[/q]It'd be nice if one of ESPN's redesigns could make it, I don't know, NOT CRASH.

All I want is a get rid of the annoying ads button - including the CSTV BBall one on the RHS.

It's the same format as several other schools web pages, and IMO it's not very good. But you can be sure, they contracted out the web design for a large sum of money so they wouldn't have to employ anyone in Ithaca to do it.

[q]I do go the Cornell Athletics website on my own to check schedules and reports on Football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, and Track and to get the link for the audio of the hockey games that I can't attend.[/q]If you're looking for info on other sports that aren't as well covered as college hockey then I can see why you'd go the official site. (I'm just as likely to look at ESPN for football/hockey on those rare occasions when I'm interested.) But for hockey there are plenty of better resources.

In fairness, the site is better than the absolute piece of s*** that existed back in '96 or '97, which prompted me to start a Cornell hockey website. I just don't think it's nearly as good as it could be. *shrug*

Al - Pop-up ads and motion ads are seductive from the POV of the site developer because they're dynamic and they have the potential to generate more clicks / revenue. Cornell perhaps has dreams of pop-ups curing the athletics department deficit. Problem is, when every ad buzzes, waves, pops ups/flies around, or flashes, it's annoying as hell, and the viewer goes away. When even one ad does that, it's annoying. It's possible it's generational: people who grew up on MTV don't mind all the motion. People who remember flower power and free love may mind very much indeed.

Ooops, I just got hit by a pop-up. I clicked "Don't Show Again" and we'll see if that means "don't ever pop up this crap ever again or I'm withholding my check to the Cornell Fund" or "don't pop up this specific ad for the remainder of this session." [Two minutes later:] Must be the latter. A different ad flew in.

Too bad one of the My Big Red News options is: Nothing that's animated. Right now there's an annoying CSTV motion ad in a frame on the right plus the fly-arounds.

While we're pointing fingers at Cornell, the site appears to be handled by College Sports Online [www.collegesports.com] and that appears to be an affiliate of CSTV, and CSO says that it "designs [and] markets" web sites for colleges. To me, this would be one case where in loco parentis should be reinstituted on East Hill.

At page-bottom there is a feedback option: [cornellbigred.collegesports.com] I'm using it. But if the comments go to CSO not Cornell, then Cornell isn't hearing our concerns.

BMW's iDrive, the twirly dial on the console of the 7, 5, and soon 3 Series, is an example of what happens when brilliant engineers didn't seek outside input. Once you've spent a couple hundred hours with prototypes, it becomes second nature, but that wouldn't be very good for new owners. As a rough analogy to the pop-ups on the site, only with the 3 Series do you have a delete option, and that's by not order the navigation system, which is no great loss, because while it's decent, it's not in the same league as the Denso and Alpine systems on Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, etcetera.

Enough. I think I've used my allotment of words for today.

Why are our colors "red and black?"

[cornellbigred.collegesports.com]

And defending our Cornellian colors, sadly, does not result in "Cornell, victorious to the end."

[cornellbigred.collegesports.com]

The accepted spelling of "Tee Fee Crane" has never been "Teefy." Man... utter lack of proofreading. It's not like these things are a matter of oral history: all they would have had to do was refer to "Songs of Cornell."

I get those pop-ups that say "Never show again"...and I click that...and they still come back!!!!

[Q]Scersk '97 Wrote:

Why are our colors "red and black?"

[/q]

Dunno, but I wish we'd remove all the ugly black, blue, and silver/gray trim from our uniforms. Seems to me only hockey has it right: Carnelian and white. Period.

[Q]Al DeFlorio Wrote:

Scersk '97 Wrote:

Why are our colors "red and black?"

[/Q]
Dunno, but I wish we'd remove all the ugly black, blue, and silver/gray trim from our uniforms. Seems to me only hockey has it right: Carnelian and white. Period.[/q]

Yes, a new fan could be led astray by the trim on uniforms of the last few years.

I am also thankful that the hockey uniforms have remained inviolate.