Patriots web site blows

[neuronet]

I'm not talking about the content, but the design.

First, go to:
http://www.patriots.com

Excited for some good content? Too bad: your eyeballs are slapped with a bunch of ads, and you are invited to 'Jump to the Patriots.com homepage.' What the hell is up with that.

Then, once you are at the damned page:
http://www.patriots.com/homepage/

You are treated to a browser halting flash-heavy page with an ad that creeps over half the page if you accidentally put your mouse cursor over it. It takes so much of your processor that it takes three hours to switch to a new tab in your browser. If you click on half the links they bring you to a new page, rather than staying on that page. The video player isn't particularly reliable. If you accidentally go over a menu item the menu pops up and doesn't go away unless you stop the video. Then when you do click a menu item you often have to work through a labyrinthe of links to get to the content you actually want.

All around a huge steamy pile of horse dung.

The Dolphins have a better site. The DOLPHINS. Yes, the same crappy flash (they all use this awful format probably NFL hired one company and they used the same crappy-design infrastructure for all of them). But the video is better, no creeping black plague ads.

Example of a great Pats-related site other than this one? The all things Bill Belichick site:
http://www.allthingsbillbelichick.com/
Now THAT guy knows how to make a web site.

A weekend without a game...here is something that has been stuck in my craw for a long time now.

Suggestions: switch to anything else. Drupal, Ruby, basic CSS. At least make it W3C compliant! Take out the stupid flesh-eating ad. Make patriots.com the home page. Nobody is going to patriots.com to get a link to the Pats home page: they want to get to the dam home page!!! Make the menu system more intuitive.

 

[Nitro]

Then, once you are at the damned page:
http://www.patriots.com/homepage/

You are treated to a browser halting flash-heavy page with an ad that creeps over half the page if you accidentally put your mouse cursor over it. It takes so much of your processor that it takes three hours to switch to a new tab in your browser. If you click on half the links they bring you to a new page, rather than staying on that page. The video player isn't particularly reliable. If you accidentally go over a menu item the menu pops up and doesn't go away unless you stop the video. Then when you do click a menu item you often have to work through a labyrinthe of links to get to the content you actually want.

loads in 2 seconds and works fine for me

 

[DarrylS]

I have no issues, gets the info I need when I want it..

 

[RayClay]

I'm not talking about the content, but the design.

First, go to:
http://www.patriots.com

Excited for some good content? Too bad: your eyeballs are slapped with a bunch of ads, and you are invited to 'Jump to the Patriots.com homepage.' What the hell is up with that.

Then, once you are at the damned page:
http://www.patriots.com/homepage/

You are treated to a browser halting flash-heavy page with an ad that creeps over half the page if you accidentally put your mouse cursor over it. It takes so much of your processor that it takes three hours to switch to a new tab in your browser. If you click on half the links they bring you to a new page, rather than staying on that page. The video player isn't particularly reliable. If you accidentally go over a menu item the menu pops up and doesn't go away unless you stop the video. Then when you do click a menu item you often have to work through a labyrinthe of links to get to the content you actually want.

All around a huge steamy pile of horse dung.

The Dolphins have a better site. The DOLPHINS. Yes, the same crappy flash (they all use this awful format probably NFL hired one company and they used the same crappy-design infrastructure for all of them). But the video is better, no creeping black plague ads.

Example of a great Pats-related site other than this one? The all things Bill Belichick site:
http://www.allthingsbillbelichick.com/
Now THAT guy knows how to make a web site.

A weekend without a game...here is something that has been stuck in my craw for a long time now.

Suggestions: switch to anything else. Drupal, Ruby, basic CSS. At least make it W3C compliant! Take out the stupid flesh-eating ad. Make patriots.com the home page. Nobody is going to patriots.com to get a link to the Pats home page: they want to get to the dam home page!!! Make the menu system more intuitive.

I agree. I avoid going there unless absolutely necessary.

I wrote them an email about how much worse the site was and they wrote me back. My complaint was there was no link to presser transcripts. They wrote the convoluted method of finding them but avoided the question of the layout just sucking.

Write them an email, the address is on the page. Maybe enough emails and they'll rethink.

NFL.com has turened a great site into a chore with bogus stat categories (no ypc for RBs?) crappy adobe movies andlinks that bring you to crap other than what it said on the link.

Patriots.com is worse, though.

 

[patsfanofNC12]

Yea I have been expierencing these same problems too.

 

[Wax Frog]

It also sucks and bites!

 

[JR4]

There is a Solution - for any website that has excessive ads or
just images you don't want to see.

Get Firefox browser and get the add on Add Bock Plus from
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/recommended

Then add to the block filter list: http://ads.thekraftgroup.com

Works great - no ads just the good stuff.

if you see other images you wish to block ... no problem.

 

[alamo]

Yes, I have problems with the homepage also. Just yesterday I wanted to check the roster and after my browser grinding to a halt (i.e. wait 30 seconds and looking at the graph of CPU load in the task manager it's pegged at 100%) I gave up. I then went in through NFL.com directly to the roster and it was fine.

I am using Firefox, maybe that's a problem. It's not the flash, I have a flash blocking extension and none of it was running.

 

[RayClay]

There is a Solution - for any website that has excessive ads or
just images you don't want to see.

Get Firefox browser and get the add on Add Bock Plus from
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/recommended

Then add to the block filter list: http://ads.thekraftgroup.com

Works great - no ads just the good stuff.

if you see other images you wish to block ... no problem.

Ad Block is a godsend, but the design still sucks. Why do you need blank blue screens instead of attractive pagees with links to clips.

Plus none of the clips will work until you disable adblock.....

 

[apricissimus]

loads in 2 seconds and works fine for me

Me too, but I have a fairly newer computer (about 1.5 years old) and I take care of it like it was my baby. (I'm using Firefox, btw)

I do agree that the website blows though. It's pretty poorly designed for all the reasons the OP mentioned. And really if a lot of people are have a hard time loading it, then it unnecessarily complex. It ought to be simpler so that ALL computers can view it easily.

 

[JR4]

Ad Block is a godsend, but the design still sucks. Why do you need blank blue screens instead of attractive pagees with links to clips.

Plus none of the clips will work until you disable adblock.....

What do yo mean?
If I click Wes's interview is shows his lovely face and then click the image and
the clip plays. All this with adblock active.
Check your filter list you may have blocked unwanted items from this page.
the only thing I got blocked is ads.thekraftgroup.com.
Works great.

 

[oldskool138]

Plus none of the clips will work until you disable adblock.....

Yeah and even them it plays for about 15-20 seconds, stops, and then 5 minutes later you can watch another 15-20 seconds...rinse, repeat. I've been forced to go to NFL.com to get highlights and interviews.

 

[JR4]

Yeah and even them it plays for about 15-20 seconds, stops, and then 5 minutes later you can watch another 15-20 seconds...rinse, repeat. I've been forced to go to NFL.com to get highlights and interviews.

well you have something else interfering.
It's not adblock or firefox. Maybe you got a virus or a worm :scared:

 

[oldskool138]

well you have something else interfering.
It's not adblock or firefox. Maybe you got a virus or a worm :scared:

It's weird because my work computer is the same way (the video is not blocked by the server, I checked) and I use Firefox for web browsing.

 

[TheSparks1]

Couple Things About Website Design from a Computer Graphics Minor in College:

1) Nobody uses splash screens anymore (this is a useless introduction screen you first when going to a website). They used to be popular when the World Wide Web first commercialized, but now they're viewed as just a waste of time. For whatever reason, the Patriots have one?

2) User should always be 3 clicks away from whatever they want to find. This isn't always the case at Patriots.com. The first click is the splash screen.

 

[JR4]

It's weird because my work computer is the same way (the video is not blocked by the server, I checked) and I use Firefox for web browsing.

Have you brought anything home from your work computer?
Maybe what's there is now at your home computer.

Suggestion:
get your browser ready to play the clip
start task manager and click on processes tab
Click CPU time then start the clip.
Watch which processes are are using the time.
On mine its System Idle Process and firefox.exe
If you see other processes working note them then google them
to see what they do. You may find something undesirable.

 

[oldskool138]

Have you brought anything home from your work computer?
Maybe what's there is now at your home computer.

Suggestion:
get your browser ready to play the clip
start task manager and click on processes tab
Click CPU time then start the clip.
Watch which processes are are using the time.
On mine its System Idle Process and firefox.exe
If you see other processes working note them then google them
to see what they do. You may find something undesirable.

I have brought my work comp home but never connected it to my home network.

It's really kind of a minor inconvenience since most of the stuff is on NFL.com...but I'd like to watch some of the podcasts in the upcoming week. I'll give it a shot.

 

[patchick]

Couple Things About Website Design from a Computer Graphics Minor in College:

1) Nobody uses splash screens anymore (this is a useless introduction screen you first when going to a website). They used to be popular when the World Wide Web first commercialized, but now they're viewed as just a waste of time. For whatever reason, the Patriots have one?

2) User should always be 3 clicks away from whatever they want to find. This isn't always the case at Patriots.com. The first click is the splash screen.

This is all true if the primary goal of the site is usability and information retrieval. Alas, it is not necessarily true if the primary goal of the site is to get you to buy a jersey. Anyway...

I do agree that Patriots.com is unnecessarily fussy, but it also packs in much more information than most team sites. Anybody have an example of a great NFL team site they'd like the Pats to mimic?

 

[Fire_The_Muskets]

This is all true if the primary goal of the site is usability and information retrieval. Alas, it is not necessarily true if the primary goal of the site is to get you to buy a jersey. Anyway...

I do agree that Patriots.com is unnecessarily fussy, but it also packs in much more information than most team sites. Anybody have an example of a great NFL team site they'd like the Pats to mimic?

I like the site in general, quite a bit of info on there, plus kristina akra on PFW is smoking hot, but the forums are uber lame inho....

Anyone having video problems, try updating your Windows media player, it helped my start and stop video problem......

 

[RayClay]

This is all true if the primary goal of the site is usability and information retrieval. Alas, it is not necessarily true if the primary goal of the site is to get you to buy a jersey. Anyway...

I do agree that Patriots.com is unnecessarily fussy, but it also packs in much more information than most team sites. Anybody have an example of a great NFL team site they'd like the Pats to mimic?

Their old one. Simple as that.