A failure for l’express.mu?
by Yashvin
Huge disappointment & complete failure!
I don’t have any other words to describe the new version of l’express.mu, a site which I visited daily to get the latest news!
When I visited the site yesterday night (Sunday), the new “web 2.0″ was already online, with loads of errors.
I was going to blog about it, but however I said to myself, perhaps that they are on a testing phase, so I should give them some time, until today during which the site was going to be officially launched.
However, during the day, I noticed that Island Crisis had already blogged about this new version of l’express.mu where a guest author was complaning about the site itself.
On my way back home, my colleague Ashvin told me to check the site, since there was a .NET crash, the famous yellow screen 
Bad strategy ?
According to me, the new version of l’express.mu should have launched, besides the existing one for many practical reasons.
Despite being a cyber island, where we are selling our expertise to foreign countries, an Indian Company (4C plus) has been selected for the development of the site.
Built with Latest Technologies?
Despite that .NET Framework 3.5 is already available since months, the web site has been developped using the 2.0 version :S
The lack of proper use of Ajax and awful UI is so obvious…
For example, when you click on the different tabs below, no feedback or loading image…and a few seconds later, you will barely notice that the “tab” has been changed!
You may also notice the time that the pages take to load or timeout problem due to server problems.
e-version?
As mentioned in an article by Avinash Meetoo, a flash web site is being used to offer an “e-version” of the newspaper.
Who would damn care about viewing a ‘real” format version of the newspaper, which takes ages to load and not practical at all to view in a computer screen?
Adverts à gogo!
If you succeed in surfing on the new web site, you may find something very annoying… the adverts!
I don’t understand why they have included so much adverts on the site, on the first day itself… Money? It seems the most logical answer…
I myself have been online since more than 2 years now, and I never considered putting adverts on my blog, not yet…
Amateurism!
Check out the picture that they included on this page!
I will be ashamed to put that, even on my personal web site!
Maintenance en cours
Since a few minutes(around 730pm MRU time), it seems that the technical team has decided to shut down the site (or part) by putting a maintenance notice, as below.
Future of Mauritian Bloggers?
I fear that l’express.mu and La Sentinelle group may blacklist myself and other bloggers for writing about this failure regarding the planification and deployment of their new web 2.0 site, but they should keep in mind that just as journalists are here to report incidents, bloggers are not so different
I sincerely hope that l’express.mu will reconsider their web site, and the whole process of planification, testing and deployment, and why not, change their development company?
Dont forget, DCDM Consulting is here 
Cheers for blogging!
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© Yashvin for Yashvin, pages of my life, 2008.
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Categories : Articles & News, Blogging World, General, MRU,Police,Law, Web & Tech
Post tagged with : bad planning for express, failure express, le defi media, lexpress.mu, mauritian newspaper online, mauritius blog express, mauritius blog newspaper, new version express, new version l’express, new version newspaper, web 2.0 newspaper