If you’re reading this, you’ve probably noticed some pretty major changes to the ERE.net site and our daily newsletter. It’s the culmination of months of work by Jim and Hunter, our crack development team.
The first things that you’ve noticed are no doubt cosmetic – we’ve got a snazzy new look! But beauty is only skin deep, and (I hope) the new features that we’ve created are going to increase the value that you get from ERE.net in a fundamental way.
Here are some of the new features that we’ve put together:
- Easier navigation. In the past, we’ve had multiple publications on the site – ERE Daily, Inside Recruiting, and The Vendor Report. There were themes that set these publications apart, but fundamentally each delivered news and how-to information for recruiters. We’ve combined all of the articles that we publish into a single feed that will “live” on our home page.
- More articles. Starting today, we’ll be publishing articles more frequently – whenever we learn something new you’ll be able to read it here in real-time.
- Comments. When you comment on an article on the site, you can now choose to have all future comments on that article emailed to you by checking a box. This means that there is now an easy way to follow the conversation and responses to what you wrote!
- Multimedia. We’ve been using more audio and video on the site already, but expect to see a lot more of it.
- Improved RSS support. I read every article on ERE.net via an RSS Reader. For me, it’s the most useful way to manage my subscriptions. (I use Google Reader.) For those of you who use RSS readers to manage your subscriptions you’ll find many powerful new ways that you can customize the feeds that you subscribe to, including your favorite authors, keywords and columns. If you don’t know what RSS is, this video created by Common Craft does a great job of explaining it.
- Better Search. I’m not going to waste your time by explaining how it’s better. It just is. Give it a whirl and see what I’m talking about!
The new site is a huge step forward for us, but we still have a lot of work to do. In particular, we still need to do a lot with our social network - the groups, discussions and other features of the network need work, and we know it. We’ve been having some great conversations with group leaders and heavy users of the site, and it is next on our to-do list.
I’m pretty excited about the new site, and I hope that you like it as much as I do. It’s a work in progress, so let me know what you think in the comments!
14 comments
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Paul DeBettignies Jun 10, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Big fan of the new look, feel much better.
Recruiting Animal Jun 12, 2008 at 12:05 pm
But our old RSS feeds still work, right. We don’t have to redo them the way we did our registration.
Linda Winters Jun 12, 2008 at 12:33 pm
This is Great! It looks and feels so much better, I will spend more time here. I did not know there was so much in here, it was always hard to get around in.
Thanks for all the great work!
David Manaster Jun 12, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Paul - thanks!
Animal - My old RSS feeds all seem to be working, so I don’t think you will need to update them. Let me know if you have any trouble.
Linda - thanks for checking out the changes. We are still tweaking, so more to come soon!
Alan Whitford Jun 12, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Hi David and team.
Very very nice look and feel, looking forward to the enhanced experience.
Well done to all.
best regards
Alan
Jim Dalton Jun 12, 2008 at 2:48 pm
@ David and Recruiting Animal
Just a quick follow up to what David said regarding RSS feeds. You can now subscribe to an RSS feed of pretty much any article page on the new ERE.net site. You can click on a tag, enter a search term, click on an author’s name…basically any page that shows you a list of articles is avaiable in RSS format.
Most pages have an orange RSS icon next to the page title that contains a link to that feed. In most browsers, there is also a shortcut to see what RSS fields are available for a given page in the address bar.
Let me know if you guys (or anyone else) has any questions about how to make the most of our our RSS feeds.
Recruiting Animal Jun 12, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Thanks Jimmy. You made it sound pretty intriguing
Scott Axel Jun 12, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I am confused - I now have two ERE accounts… one to access the new functionality of the website and one to access the old? Any plans on merging the old with the new?
David Manaster Jun 12, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Scott - You’re correct. To comment on the articles you have to maintain a second account. It is less then ideal, but the plan is absolutely to transition all of the features on the site - which at this point mostly means the discussions and social network - to use the new login system.
Jim Dalton Jun 12, 2008 at 3:59 pm
@ Scott
Out of all the work we put into building this new site, the two side-by-side user systems is the one aspect I know I am least happy with too. It’s definitely an inconvenience.
But we didn’t want to hold up releasing new things while our team rebuilt our entire suite of services — we really wanted to get this new stuff out there. So this, for now, is the compromise.
As David said, we will be pushing everything over to the new user system as soon as is humanly possible, so hopefully you can bear with us in the meantime.
Anyhow thanks for sharing your confusion. You’re not the only one who was confused I can assure you.
Steve Levy Jun 13, 2008 at 12:15 pm
nice alpha release…the RSS enhancement is a fav. I’ll be stopping by next week with muffins - hey Dave, do you plan on being in the country?
Steven Rothberg Jun 13, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I’m the moderator of the College Recruiter group. How do the groups get moved over to the new site?
David Manaster Jun 13, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Steve - I’m in Boston part of next week but I’m not sure when. Besides, I’m on a diet. We don’t all work out with Navy SEALS!
Steven - At the moment, there is no new platform for the groups and discussions. Updating the technology that powers them is what Jim and Hunter are turning their attention to next, and when it’s done all of the groups will be updated. It’s a priority for us to make sure this happens as quickly as possible.
John Hammes Sr Jul 17, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Bah. I liked it better the old way. Just kidding. I like it. :)
John