The slideshow at the top of our page is another victim of our site renovation. It was originally supposed to randomly display all of our large collection of CCs, to give visitors a chance to browse posts randomly. It turns out to only have been showing the 99 most recent ones. That was a no-no. And it really slowed the site load-time down significantly. The last few days, it’s been showing just a handful of most recent CCs, which makes it load faster, but defeats its intended purpose even more so. So for the time being, we’ve unplugged it. It may, or may not come back, depending…
Interesting. Looks like it was the slideshow that made life interesting for my low-bandwidth link. I’m stuck on dialup (or satellite–not much better) due to being in the boondocks. Even with a ‘stop loading’ command, It’d keep loading unless I went offline. Now, if I give a stop, it actually does. Ain’t software wonderful? /sarc
With respect to keeping it, a yes vote, but not a hell yeah. Handy, but not essential.
The site is loading a heck of a lot faster on my “phone” now (Blackberry with Opera browser).
It just popped up!
I can see the drawback to losing the Carousel too, the whole point is to attract new visitors.
Would it help if we all searched Google for CC before opening the site? 😀
For what it’s worth, I enjoyed revisiting some of the articles that came around on the slideshow, but if this is what it takes to make it run faster I’m all for it. I’ll just have to use the menus now. All that work, I’ll tell you…
If we don’t bring it back, we’ll find some other way to accomplish the same thing. Maybe just a mini-slide show, or just of the titles, or…
Just the titles works for me, though I know eye candy is important. Maybe if the images were little, like avatar-sized?
Speed is definately up without it…
Of course at the rate this place is growing we could have the silde show just do CCs from “THIS DATE IN CC HISTORY” 😛
That photo is from Mad Men. I think that was just a fake ad created for the show, not the real thing, right?
How CC-appropriate…
…in Greek, nostalgia literally means “the pain from an old wound”. It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device, isn’t a spaceship – it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again.
My data cap has kicked in for the month so everythings slow now despite your efforts.
Can I put in another vote for some kind of similar replacement? Even “just” showing the last 99 CCs I found the slideshow a really useful part of the site’s navigation (for example on those times when I’ve been away a week or so and want to skim the most recent additions).
Smaller images would be fine if folk are having problems with loading times (I only visit via my laptop on a modest home broadband line, I’ve never noticed any significant performance issues with the site) but some kind of visual navigation of the archive/most recent entries would be really appreciated.
(incidentally great work so far on the overhaul! I’d not been experiencing especially slow loading but the place feels much crisper now, and one or two functional elements – like commenting – are vastly improved. Thanks for putting in all that effort, it’s paying off!)
Keep it simple ala Google. Give me the topics of the day, display a small photo and offer a simplified menu. That way more links can be displayed at once, allowing one to see more quickly where they would like to go.
I like the way CC is shaping up. It sure is faster, could be a bit better, but adjusting the “gaps”, “points” and “dwell” to factory specs will fix that…
Having been a site admin (and will be soon again), I can relate to your conundrum about what to keep vis-a-vis attracting eyeballs and what loads quickly (and generally easier to admin and troubleshoot).
I could lose the slideshow and never miss it. I’m happier with a faster loading site, and could care less about Flash-based (I’m assuming) gingerbread that slows loading, particularly when it comes to mobile. Unless you do a dedicated mobile site (does BlueHost offer that in their packages?) the KISS principle applies.
To be honest, I rarely view this site on mobile, but I HATE it when a site loads slowly, mobile or not.
Faster = better.
PS: I meant to add that overall, I’m liking the changes I’m seeing. I’m no wizard with WordPress (I’ll have to learn it someday), but these changes all seem to the good. I particularly like the lighter color scheme. The all black could be kind of funereal at times…
I rarely browse to the main page. I usually look to see what’s new on CC via the RSS feed.
I know this is now an old article, but I’ve been a busy little beaver at work lately and haven’t had as much time to hit the CC comments section – however I do manage to check the site on my phone every day (on a Blackberry with Opera, just like the other Sean!) and I made a mental note to chime in on this one…
Personally, I’d much rather live with a faster site and no slideshow than vice-versa. It is a good feature, though… so it would be great if it could be implemented in a less resource-heavy way. I’m fairly new to CC and the slideshow did prompt me to check out some articles I may not have been so quick to click on without visual prodding, but honestly I would have gotten around to them eventually anyway.
IMO it’s a feature that will draw a few glances, but won’t keep them coming back again and again. The standard content on CC is good enough on it’s own and you can tell immediately what this site is all about from whatever comes up on the front page on any given day.
I think if there was just a few “CC Archives” links up top with static images that changed every time the front page was refreshed, that would probably accomplish the same function without being so intensive. The faster load-time is crucial on my phone, and more and more people are experiencing the internet that way nowadays…