Problems in general:

-The background image of the tall buildings is complete madness – overpowering, dizzying. The girly logo clashes with the masculine steel skyscrapers. Do we really define Arlington in “tall steel buildings”? I use a variety of monitors, and even on low resolution, the background image takes up too much real estate. Focus should be on CONTENT, not buildings. I would leave the background plain or do a overlay so its not so intense, and put the focus on the story photos and advertisements. Right now the background fights with other visual elements – that was OK for 2000 but not 2012.

-The width of the left column is too small.

-Photos in the real estate section extend beyond the container. Also in that section, the navigation disappears – not good.

-Fonts under sidebar widgets: The body font, though sans serif, is very difficult to read. Its different from the news story body font, which is odd. Cute fonts are good for 1) artsy websites and 2) headers. Stick with Arial for body text since this is a news site. Also, the headers for “Featured Events” “Recent Comments” “Twitter Feed”are too small, font is really wierd and hard to read.

-Search box is visually not user friendly. With the dark color and link, it looks like something is wrong rather than “type here”. Search box on the navigation menu is even worse, especially since you can barely see “Search Articles”

-Not all photos load on iPhone 4S

-Crime map gone I would rather have the old site back just for the crime map.

- Where are instructions how to submit photos for a story?

Forum issues:

-I completely dislike the new forums. Some Issues I’m having:

-The body font, though sans serif, is very difficult to read. Its different from the news story body font, which is odd. Cute fonts are good for 1) artsy websites and 2) headers. Stick with Arial for body text since this is a news site.

-When replying to a post, the reply doesn’t go under that post – that was an integral part of the banter.

-No ability to rate comments – thumbs up/thumbs down was another integral part of the banter

-Page numbering at the bottom is too small.

-Page numbering for main forum – there are too few numbers – currently it’s 1, 2…70. Would be helpful to have a few more numbers.

-There is a text editor for comments, and HTML code displays , but bullets don’t show on submission. Bullets are great – why not show them??? It seems the WSYWIG/text editor isn’t working in general.

Others, it would appear, would like comments to be censored. I completely disagree. People should be able to come on here and make any comment they wish. Everyone always posts at their own peril. They may be lauded or laughed at by the reading public. This is called free speech, and I value it greatly. I for one appreciate that you leave pretty much everything up and treat your readership as responsible adults, as most of us are.

However, I do still see +1, or + whatever instead of what would be a more efficient barometer – a voting system for comments. So they may rise or fall on their own merits.

Is this something you might consider in the future?

Your original comment wasn’t clear that you were describing a timestamp search, and thus your searches were for comments added on a particular date. I.e., your search for “19th” was working because the old comment style was timestamped “November 19th, 2012…” It was not a search for the 19th comment on the story.

Simple solution is to place a comma after your search term, which will work most of the time.