NPR developer here. We launched some changes to the text site this morning.
NPR set up a text site in late 2001. A developer reworked the text site in 2005. We have made very few changes since then.
The site is a set of a few PHP scripts querying our MySQL CMS database directly with no caching. The HTML and JS were aimed at providing a decent mobile experience in 2005. That included a lot of hacks and workarounds for extremely defunct platforms.
The newsroom asked us to make some improvements. The main features:
- display more news stories following editorial order rather than reverse chron,
- remove the obnoxious interstitial "read more" view for stories,
- put the text site behind Akamai like our other web properties,
- configure HTTPS on the text site (still in progress and won't be the default due to TLS overhead)
It should be a lot faster and more pleasant to use.
Thank you to everyone who made lots of noise about CNN's text offering. There is a small contingent of developers at NPR who love the text site to the point that they've created replacements as personal projects. They were very excited to improve it for the public!
NPR set up a text site in late 2001. A developer reworked the text site in 2005. We have made very few changes since then.
The site is a set of a few PHP scripts querying our MySQL CMS database directly with no caching. The HTML and JS were aimed at providing a decent mobile experience in 2005. That included a lot of hacks and workarounds for extremely defunct platforms.
The newsroom asked us to make some improvements. The main features:
- display more news stories following editorial order rather than reverse chron,
- remove the obnoxious interstitial "read more" view for stories,
- put the text site behind Akamai like our other web properties,
- configure HTTPS on the text site (still in progress and won't be the default due to TLS overhead)
It should be a lot faster and more pleasant to use.
Thank you to everyone who made lots of noise about CNN's text offering. There is a small contingent of developers at NPR who love the text site to the point that they've created replacements as personal projects. They were very excited to improve it for the public!