The Batavian site update

This morning you're seeing a slightly revised home page for The Batavian. It's no radical change -- we didn't get away from the basic layout, which has proven an easy format for readers to read and a successful model for the ads of local businesses -- but the design is a little cleaner.

We also added a long- and much-requested feature, a Facebook "like" button on stories (we need one on individual comments, too, but that will take some time yet to institute).

The other significant change is how ads are displayed. Except for the few premium positions on the site, the ads will now randomly shuffle on the page every time you load the page.  

In other words, you visit the home page and then come back later and reload it the ads on the left and the right that are part of the shuffle system will all change locations.

It's a random redistribution of the ads on the page ensuring each local business's ad gets mathematically equal appearances at each position on the page, from the top to the bottom.

Previously, I had to manually move the ads around about once a day.  

Giving ads an equal distribution should in itself lead to more clicks on ads. Also, the human eye is naturally drawn to things that change on a web page, so people who visit the site will see a different order of ads each visit.  

One last note, there was some bad code in the old site's layout. The new site has a fresh set of code controlling the layout, which should add (and initial feedback seems to be indicating this is true) a bit of improvement in the home page's load time.

Thank you to our IT guy, Nick, a Batavia resident, for his work on the redesign. We have more improvements to the site planned.