Work on the new Isle of Wight council Website has been underway by council’s Communications team for over a year. Despite this, it was launched yesterday displaying errors and with much of the information residents expect to see still unavailable.
The council’s Communications team, who took overall charge of the re-launch, had previously stated that one of “the main drivers for updating the website” was “to reduce the amount of content online and focus on what is important to you.”
One wag, joked with OnTheWight, that the council had been successful, as most of the pages were unavailable.
Comments on the new look of the site has been varied, erring on the non-complimentary, bringing comments wondering if it was “Just a temp holding site?”
None of the old links work
When launching a new version of a Website, the most basic of requirements is that the Web addresses that the site used to use, also work in the new version. The re-launched version of iwight has dropped all of these, so none of the old Webpages can be found.
Search results – Page not found
Anyone searching using Google will find that any page that is pointing to the iwight site will be frustrated, displaying “Page Not Found. We’re sorry”.
The same is true for all Web bookmarks that anyone might have had.
It’s even true for all of the council social media links that are either on their Facebook page, or Twitter account.
Monumental mistake
This is not only a monumental mistake, but withholds the information from people as was demonstrated by the message left on the council’s own Facebook page,
Cheryl BaileyBabe Buck: Just tried to access this new website with regards to the Heights etc for information and all I am getting is page not found!!!!! V.V.frustrating!
The council responded, by giving Cheryl a new URL. Not exactly a realistic fix if this has to be done for each person frustrated by trying to find information on the iwight site.
Search not working either
For those that think that they can use the search on the iwight site to locate their information, think again. Search is met with the message, “The search index is currently being rebuilt as a result of our new website. Whilst the indexing is running the search will unfortunately be unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience.”
In short, there’s no obvious – or circuitous – way to access information you’re after.
