Is This Site Dieing On The Vine? (General)

by Nathan Goldberg , Monday, July 11, 2005, 14:43 (7222 days ago) @ Don Lester

Hi Don

? As I reflected on my previous question about the July exercises
? mysteriously disappearing I couldn't help but also start thinking of all
? the other things that seem to just keep going wrong. This site started
? with quite a bit of fanfare, lots of prompt attention, and lots of
? apologies for the 'startup pains' it was enduring.
?
? But, here we are, several months later, and you are not only plagued by
? basic schedule problems (ie, delivering content in a timely manner), but
? the site itself has broken links all over the place. The most amusing was
? the FAQ that does not work, but that users are strongly encouraged to read
? because it is being 'constantly updated' with new information.
?
? I took the liberty of running a quick scan of the www.improveyourchess.com
? and members.improveyourchess.com (I didn't even try the old hyphenated
? domain name that seems to have disappeared).
?
? I found 74 broken links on this site, and this site just isn't very big
? (only 585 URLs found). That is 12.6% of the web site is links that just
? don't work. It took a whopping 15 seconds or so to find them using a free
? web site testing utility called Xenu, something which could be routinely
? run after changes are made to make sure nothing is broken by the changes.
?
? This venture may well end up being relegated to the bin where poorly
? managed great ideas go. It really pains me in many ways since the concept
? is so good, and the potential is so obvious, yet all the chess knowledge in
? the world is not going to get it past the lack of a functional and
? coordinated implementation. None of the problems are communicated to the
? user base so nobody knows if management even perceives them as problems or
? if they are even being worked on.
?
? If anyone is reading this, or even cares to know (management never seems
? to post here no matter what the question is), the broken parts of the site
? (and some other information) are as follows: