Hey A.V. Club readers. Hi. We know that the past 24 hours have been bumpy—something that’s been true of every one of our site redesigns, but especially when it involves this significant of a transition.
We knew from the moment we were told we’d be moving to Kinja that it would be a major overhaul. We knew we’d be trying to take a decade-plus of content—filed according to its own complex, not exactly modular organization system—and fit into someone else’s platform, then asking the administrators of that platform to tailor it to suit our own, very complicated, idiosyncratic needs. It’s a minor miracle we made it here at all.
That said, we’re well aware that the site isn’t all the way there. Again, we’ve been on Kinja barely a day; we’re all still figuring out how to work it ourselves. And we’ve spent the hours since the switch compiling our own list of the things that don’t work, then figuring out what other improvements need to be made to the navigation, to the comments, to the design—to just about everything. We’re going to get there eventually. It will just take a little time.
For now, though, here are some common concerns we’ve heard:
I’m having problems commenting.
If you’ve already followed the instructions in this Newswire from yesterday and you’re still having trouble logging in, or you’re still showing up in the “grays” despite using our claim form, contact the help desk. Someone will respond directly and assist you, we promise.
I thought all our old Disqus comments were supposed to migrate over, but I don’t see them.
They couldn’t import everything at once, but we’ve been assured that those archived comments should start trickling in over the coming days.
I can’t find TV Club reviews.
Yep. The good news is that not long after yesterday’s launch, we added “TV Reviews” to the navigation bar on the desktop site (it’s expected to be added to the mobile site nav bar soon). If you click on that, you’ll be taken to a landing page with every TV Club review. Use the drop-down menu at the top to find a specific show page. From there, you can use the second drop-down menu to narrow it down to reviews from a specific season.
I can’t find film/music/book/game/comics reviews.
All other, non-TV reviews are rolled up under the Reviews tab in the nav bar. On that landing page, use the drop-down menu at the top to narrow it to the specific kind of review you’re looking for.
I miss the review box where you could easily see the letter grades before clicking on them.
Yeah, that thing was nice. We (probably) won’t have something like that again, but we are discussing the best way to get those letter grades back on the front and landing pages alongside their respective reviews, so you can see them before clicking.
You guys stopped covering comics, books, and podcasts?!
We didn’t! For now, at least, the Comics, Books, and Podmass categories are rolled up under AUX, and we’re still definitely covering all of them. You can also find book and comics reviews under Reviews using the drop-down menu at the top.
Your navigation, in general, is confusing and needs to be improved ASAP.
We agree. Now that we’re here and things are no longer just hypothetical, we’re able to actually see how it’s all being sorted, then start figuring out what doesn’t make sense, and discuss how to better organize things. Fixing navigation is absolutely our first priority.
Your search function doesn’t work.
We know. It’s on the list.
Your RSS feed doesn’t work anymore.We know. It’s on the list. Hey, look at that: They fixed it.
Please just go back to the old site.
We can’t. What we can do is improve this site until it’s as good as it can possibly be. Again, this will take some time. But now that we’re here, it’s all that we’re focused on.
In the meantime, you can help us by adding to our already very long list of necessary improvements by filling out this feedback form, which will then be read by real people (real people who are also having to contend with major, occasionally frustrating changes on their end—so, just something to keep in mind). They will then be taken into account during our ongoing reconstruction. We genuinely need your help with identifying everything that needs to be fixed or improved, so anything constructive you have to offer there is much appreciated.
For now, thanks for your patience—and, as always, just for being here.