UPDATE, April 4: The site statistics I’ve seen are very good indeed: over 22,000 unique page hits in April SO FAR! I’m no advertising expert but that sounds pretty good to me — Google AdSense ads will follow on the site soon…
Finally, my boss saw the light and made the Palestine Times website free! This may be just temporary in the hope people will pay in the future, but I hope not. This means my front page story is now available on the site. You can also view my excellent weekly page called Eyewitness Reports, an edited selection of reports on non-violent demonstrations from groups such as ISM, IWPS, CPT, AATW, IMEMC, PNN etc.
The site has room for improvement:
- No archive for issues older than the date the site went online (so my Bil’in feature is still not there. However, luckily you can read it here on my site).
- Archive is a bit tricky to navigate. Weird typos still on the site, probably down to the fact that the files they use are the pre-proof-read copy. Doh.
- Weird formating in some stories (no bold for bylines or placelines etc).
- Hard to browse by day (a common problem for newspaper sites).
- No original web content (an issue that would require a whole new staff to solve).
But all in all it’s pleasing to the eye and not that hard to navigate. This paper is too important to lock the website down with paid-for only areas. Please click on the site’s ads to convince management they will make more money that way than through paid subs.