Trailer Park Software
It takes money to make money. Right? Isn’t that the saying? Everyone seems to know it.
Everyone except the Business Journal. It’s bad enough they have an ugly site design (clean yes, but poorly organized, uninspired, and dull), but they also apparently have some kind of Soviet-era site management software on the backend. Just to make changes to your website account you end up digging around in long screens packed with demographic questions. Not fun. I usually stay away.
This morning they sent an email invitation to join their new “social network”. Because we NEED the fucking Business Journal’s social network! Life just isn’t complete without it. Heaven forbid they just piggyback on Facebook or do something innovative like a custom Reddit. But I digress.
This thing is a mess. You get in there and you have no idea what is going on. As a developer, I can see what is happening. They are handcuffed by the software that controls their site. That software wasn’t created with a social network in mind. Far from it. So to compensate they have to hang new functionality off the side of the site, so to speak. Kind of like the guy in the trailer park who puts an “addition” on his house by connecting a smaller trailer to his big trailer with some sheet metal, green fiberglass shingles, and (of course) duct tape.
This is more than a look-and-feel thing though. By trying to squirm around their handcuffs, they’ve had to split up where your user information is. Some of it is in your Account Settings, and some of it is in your “Dashboard”. (Protip: software isn’t enterprisey enough unless you call it a dashboard.) That might sound like nitpicking, but it isn’t. If you look at every single one of the “newest members” on the site, you’ll see a shadow icon in place of where their profile photo (aka mugshot) should be. Except for me. As far as I can tell I’m the only user with a mugshot because I’m the only dumb bastard stubborn enough to dig around in the site for 15 minutes to figure out where I can upload my pic. And it’s not like these users don’t know how to upload a pic. There’s a whole photo gallery filled with 8×10 Glamour Shots scans that users have uploaded. But no pics on user profiles!
The striking thing about this social networking attempt is how many features they’ve tried to pack into it without actually adding much value. They clearly put some thought into what they would provide, but not any thought into how it would actually work or what true value it would bring to their users. So you can upload some photos or even “start a blog” on their site. But you can’t have a simple URL to your company in your profile or link off to your own blog outside of their site. So it’s a walled garden. And walled gardens don’t work so well on the interwebs.
My advice? Begin with a simple goal which will genuinely serve your users. And get some budget before you try to do this shit. Don’t go in half-assed. Remove all but the most needed new features from the social part of the site. Trim it down so you can build it back up. Add only features that you can prove are valuable. (Hint: Your users will ask for most of them.) Consolidate your information into one place. Every account on the site should have the same type of profile options available to them (mugshot, url, etc.). And consolidate the information in your database too! I can tell that you keep the same pieces of information in several different databases. That’s crazy.
And if your website management or CMS software won’t let you do these things, throw it out and write your own. You’re obviously already doing some of that. Why not go all the way? It’s not hard. There are plenty of open source CMS systems out there to get you started, not to mention wonderful software platforms that other newspapers are already using.
Otherwise, just pack it in. No one needs another annoying/useless “social” website that isn’t bringing its ‘A’ game.