I love them because their reporting is terrible and the site itself is straight out of the 90's. They used to run polls that were easy to manipulate, according to a ex-coworker of mine. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Nonetheless, everybody in Kelowna acts like Castanet is the one true source of information...
It's exactly what it looks like: a hodge-podged effort by some local folks with little experience and ability among them, besides an earnest desire to report local news with a local perspective, that has stood the test of time (it launched in 2000!).
1. It loads super quick
2. The list of articles is clear and easy to scan
3. There aren't a shit ton of adverts
4. There are no bloody popups, cookie notices, donate banners, etc.
5. The entire page doesn't load, me start reading then suddenly completely greyed out with an overlay because of badly implemented 4
6. No auto-playing videos that are impossible to find to stop
If this is 90s web design that's "a train wreck in slow motion" and "gloriously imperfect", can we all go back to the 90s please?
However, just like all good things, people decided if a little is good more would be better. This is why we can't have nice things, but it doesn't mean that the thing itself isn't nice.
Just because the webiste in question of this thread is a newsite doesn't mean we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater because it fits this one category.
Then clients say your app is fast and responsive but what they really mean is that we've not built an obese chimera.
Because there is literally at least one super distracting animated GIF ad in view 100% of the time while I scroll that page (which, on my iPhone, is not exactly easily readable due to lack of responsiveness).
On the OP article I see zero ads but I think that’s possibly my PiHole kicking in (which notable fails to block any of the presumably locally hosted adds on Castanet).
I agree with some of your other points but let’s not go to far :)
This site is great!
Not only that, I didn't even have to touch NoScript - it all apparently loaded perfectly. Wow, it'd be nice if much more of the internet was like this!
I remember digicrime.com making fun of it. And they had all these “services” where they exploited browser problems like endless popups etc — they specifically said they don’t do spam because they can just sign you up for tons of spam and let those marketers do the work haha
Anyone remember that? (“it is now unsafe to turn on your computer”)
How many people will see it? Mmm about this many hands outstretched as big as a salmon
The thing prints money as local businesses funnel all their advertising budgets to it.
No expectation of performance, like buying a newspaper ad lol
Love the "Around The Web" section and how it genuinely just wants you to see a video of a cat playing piano [0]. No aggressive ad placement or fake product review schemes. Just an awesome video of a cat they wanted to share.
Edit: And it seems polling system for "How does this story make you feel?" only relies on cookies to prevent duplicate votes... So I sent them 100 votes for "Awesome"
[0] https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-story-351694-25-.htm#3...