These errors should be vanishing from national park websites as the Park Service staff works on implementing changes in advance of the agency's centennial.
While the 100th birthday of the National Park Service won't officially arrive until August 25, 2016, it's not too early to work on improving the agency's many park websites. And the agency's webmeisters are doing just that.
"As we prepare for the centennial, there will be several improvements made to NPS.gov," Park Service spokesman Jeff Olson said. "These improvements include a reorganization of content, responsive design for mobile devices, and a new look and feel for the site."
And while there are many times these days when you might run into a "Requested Page Not Found (404)," staff are trying to root all those out and present a more enjoyable web experience for visitors.
"Parks are taking the time leading up to the centennial to make content improvements. Web authors are being offered training on how to perform content inventories, evaluate online content, and create content strategies for their public websites," Mr. Olson said.
"There are minimum content requirements for park websites'and most provide far more than that minimum. The content strategies parks create in the coming months will help guide decisions about their online offerings and how they can best use limited resources to make improvements to those offerings by 2016."
Comments
I am glad to see that the NPS has realized how dated and broken the NPS web is at the present time. Creating a useable web site is real work and worth the money and time that has to be devoted to it.
I must say however that I am not optomistic about the success of this effort. There have been many efforts to "improve" the web and in my opinion all have failed. This is a result of poor management, lack of trained people, resources and too much of a top down approach. Any success of the NPS web effort is the result of talented and hard working lower level employees who have gone over and above the resources and time given to them to do this work.
If the NPS is serious it will hire managers who know and support this technology and place the maintance of the many park and program web sites as a critical element in their performance standards. The problem is not so much a money issue as it is a management issue.
If you need an example, then visit the National Park Service History web site (http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps_NEW.htm) which has been under construction and not updated or corrected for three years. Take a look.
If you still need convincing then look at "Classic" National Park Service Publications (http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/classics.htm). Every link is broken.
Finally, I sure hope Director Jarvis does not find out that the Directors of the National Park Service web page (http://www.nps.gov/history/history/hisnps/NPSHistory/directors.htm) no longer exists.
Perhaps this information is not important.
Judging from what I see in your links, the old website is still live, but they didn't go through and remap all the links to direct and forward the URL to the new site where similar pages already exist. That's always a tough game, because there can be so many pages on a website, and when you do a complete rebuild, somethings old pages get lost in translation. I've been through many website rebulids in my lifetime, and that's never easy. I did find a link to the director on the new site, but didn't find any writeup like the previous page you pulled up. That one string is also very convulted. "history/history/hisnps/npshistory"... wow, who thunked that one up? Talk about redundancy overkill.
http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/director.htm
Well, the Indians sure as hell saw what was coming, which is more than I can say for us. Sure, I use search engines and do research on the web. And of course I use and write for The Traveler. But I also take note of the end of civility that all of this "technology" has lately wrought. Look at many folks here, for example--how often Kurt has to cut us off. Consider how many people now hide behind the anonymity of the web, most recently, those attacking my friend who wrote an article why parents should vaccinate their children. The hate mail he got on that was sobering, and of course, totally anonymous, at least the worst of it . And let us not forget everyone "tracking" us to see what we buy and do. In the old days, they had to take a survey at the supermarket. Now they just feed us "cookies," which yes, I erase every day.
I remember when houses came with porches; I remember when World War II veterans were raising their kids. I remember when we had clubs and talked to one another. I remember the FAMILY vacation, and talking around the dinner table every night. How was your day, Alfred? Now, just visit that campground in Yosemite. Who is looking at the sunset anymore? Well, a couple folks, while the rest are all "linked in." Sure, things change, but don't call change progress until you know the progress that came before. This country progressed right past the civility and patriotism that made it great. I saw it and felt it every day. Now, we are making lots of "deals," but dealing from the bottom of the deck.
Facebook? I barely use it. Twitter? A waste of time. Texting? I prefer the phone. I thought we left the telegraph key back in the 19th century, although I still recall the Morse code for SOS. If something is worth knowing--and certainly critical to know--I will know it by the end of the day. Meanwhile, I don't need to know that you just got out of the shower, which was the conversation I heard at my coffee house last night. Who's picking up the kids? I don't care to know. The world should not be a phone booth. What happened to silence? What happened to community? What happened to looking up when people approached you instead of gluing yourself to the screen?
Now, every professor I know says that giving a lecture is a waste. Everyone is on their smart phone. I'm glad I missed it. I really am.
If the world is so great, why are so many people unhappy--and working twice as hard as they did 30 years ago? Could it be because they never read 1984? Or even saw the movie? Here's another movie you should see: The Best Years of Our Lives. It won the Academy Award for best picture in 1946. There is the country I grew up in, not perfect, but sincere. It stuck together through thick and thin. It knew honor, sacrifice, and courage. All we know is the phone.
The cliff notes response: If you actually paid attention to the facebook feeds, you would see many are paying attention to the sunsets/sunrises in our NPs. Its' a big phenomenon. And yes, I read "1984", "Brave New World", and many other distopian fantasies. Yes, we are merged with the machines in order to better facilitate our survival on this rock. If you want to lecture, put it on youtube, and hope someone watches it. Maybe you'll gather a following, if you are convincing enough, because no one has time for the old fashioned way, especially if it is a waste of time. Let us scrub and scroll past the mundane. : )
And I find myself pursuing a middle ground between Al and Gary's responses here. Is this a great and wide country or not, for a wide diversity of opinions each to be "right" in our own worlds.
[and, proving I'm not the most technically competent, deleting a duplicate entry]
Yes, Alfred, I think a lot of us look back fondly at "the old days." I find myself worrying more, however, about the possibilty that we are losing our moral compass.
Porn is acceptable. A movie like "Seven Shades of Gray" grosses millions of dollars while grossing out only a few of us who are then condemned for being too conservative and closed minded. Look at the lack of any honesty in our Congress. Look at the increasing dishonesty and greed of corporations and Wall Street. Look at the deterioration of the family.
I could go on and on. It's hard to separate my fears of declining morality from technology because technology is what makes garbage so easy to spread.
I just hope there will be enough people who might still be willing to stand up for what's right to keep everything from sliding into the sewer.
The NPS websites, imperfect as they may be, are refreshing islands of hope in a landscape of sludge.
I sure hope Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker doesn't hear about this effort to improved NPS web sites. After he finishes with cutting money for colleges and universities in Wisconsin who knows where he will go.