Just a few days ago I mentioned the recent Dalkey Archive Press website overhaul -- and my concern about the upcoming (and now realized) Archipelgo Books site relaunch.
As a content-person I don't care that much what the websites look like -- functionality is what counts -- and sadly (so far) most of my worst fears have also been realized here, as all the old links to the old book-information pages have been dropped (i.e. they didn't bother with redirects for the old URLs, just like the Dalkey webmasters), so all the links to the publicity pages for all the Archipelago books under review at the complete review now lead to the message:
(With many more Dalkey titles under review the situation is even worse with these, all of them currently leading to a page that tells you:
Anyway, this is the sort of thing that makes me feel like a real chump for linking to these (and so many other) sites. Collecting all these links a labor- and time-intensive job, and if the sites themselves don't care about maintaining the links and information I have to wonder why I should. (It also frustrates me that this means that far too often I send complete review-readers to pages that publishers (etc.) have abandoned or moved (but, so often, without a proper redirect so people can actually find it).)
These updated sites might have new bells and whistles (I am underwhelmed so far), but the constant churn also means a lot falls through the cracks and gets lost along the way. One more example: I just collected reviews for my review of Mircea Cărtărescu's Nostalgia -- and one of the few in a US publication was in the Dalkey-publication the Review of Contemporary Fiction; that page (and all their RCF review pages ?) seems to have been another casualty of the Dalkey 'update': there's still a Google-cache-copy, but at the site itself ... nothing beyond a (non-)information page for the issue of the RCF in which it was published.
For over a decade I've been watching publishers' sites, in particular, repeatedly try to reinvent themselves, and it's rare that the gain/improvement outweighs the losses (with US independents having a particularly poor track record -- Graywolf recently re-did their site too (and doesn't redirect the old (but admittedly truly horrendous) URLs either ...).
As a content-person I don't care that much what the websites look like -- functionality is what counts -- and sadly (so far) most of my worst fears have also been realized here, as all the old links to the old book-information pages have been dropped (i.e. they didn't bother with redirects for the old URLs, just like the Dalkey webmasters), so all the links to the publicity pages for all the Archipelago books under review at the complete review now lead to the message:
Sorry, the page you are trying to reach does not exist or has been moved since we launched our new website.The publicity pages are still (or again, in new-look form) there -- but at different URLs: Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle I used to be at archipelagobooks.org/bk.php?id=84; now it's at archipelagobooks.org/book/my-struggle/. I have no problem with them changing the URL; I do have a big problem with them killing/not re-directing the original link-URL to the new one.
(With many more Dalkey titles under review the situation is even worse with these, all of them currently leading to a page that tells you:
404 - What have you done ? You broke the internet !I harp on these two examples because these are the two most recent publishers to 'redesign' their websites without apparently caring what happens to all the old incoming links out there, but I encounter this all the time (and so do many of my visitors, when they use the links I provide on the review-pages here and wind up on 404 pages ...). I might be more sympathetic if both these publishers hadn't already pulled this shit before (yes, they've both 'relaunched' their sites previously, and changed their URLs without redirecting old ones ...) -- and if these weren't two publishers whose lists are basically backlists, i.e. for whom continuity, conservation, and continued availability should be more of a priority than many other publishers. I know the internet and its users have the shortest of memory spans, but come on, people .....
The page you are looking for is gone. Perhaps searching or one of the links below will get you back on track.
Anyway, this is the sort of thing that makes me feel like a real chump for linking to these (and so many other) sites. Collecting all these links a labor- and time-intensive job, and if the sites themselves don't care about maintaining the links and information I have to wonder why I should. (It also frustrates me that this means that far too often I send complete review-readers to pages that publishers (etc.) have abandoned or moved (but, so often, without a proper redirect so people can actually find it).)
These updated sites might have new bells and whistles (I am underwhelmed so far), but the constant churn also means a lot falls through the cracks and gets lost along the way. One more example: I just collected reviews for my review of Mircea Cărtărescu's Nostalgia -- and one of the few in a US publication was in the Dalkey-publication the Review of Contemporary Fiction; that page (and all their RCF review pages ?) seems to have been another casualty of the Dalkey 'update': there's still a Google-cache-copy, but at the site itself ... nothing beyond a (non-)information page for the issue of the RCF in which it was published.
For over a decade I've been watching publishers' sites, in particular, repeatedly try to reinvent themselves, and it's rare that the gain/improvement outweighs the losses (with US independents having a particularly poor track record -- Graywolf recently re-did their site too (and doesn't redirect the old (but admittedly truly horrendous) URLs either ...).