Dire (Alnwick District Council)

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	Alnwick District Council
Date:	17/04/01 (106 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Help me....I'm Struggling here

Disadvantages: From start to finish

Ask anyone who lives in Alnwick and they will probably tell you that the Council are a bunch of bumbling fools with about as much life in them 50 year old tortoise. They do little for the community and it always seems that the new swimming pool is always going to be built next year, or the new sports centre will be started as soon as the 'planning permission' comes through. The thing is, by the time they finish I won't be here, because I intend to leave the dump that they call Alnwick as soon as possible. Perhaps the council can't be blamed for all the towns’ woes, but they're definitely a good place to start. I could also ramble a little about the sorry excuse for a paper that graces our district too, but that will have to wait for another day.

So, on visiting their website I expected nothing special at all. The site lives over at http://alnwick.northumberland.gov.uk which seems to me a little cumbersome to type in to the browser.

If there is one thing to say about the site, it is that it is very minimalist. The front page loads surprisingly quickly, but once it has loaded you realise that its because its all white, and there’s nothing actually there. There are 5 pictures, two short paragraphs and the contact information at the bottom. No nice coloured backgrounds, just a terribly positioned background picture of a lion. If I had made this in FrontPage then I would unhappy with it, but the sad thing is that the council will have paid someone to make this.

The page houses two links which lead either to the 'Visitor Guide To Alnwick District' or 'Economic Development Opportunities'. It's quite obvious that this site has a dual purpose, on the one hand it is here to draw in tourists, but on the other hand it also wants to attract business. Infact, the site even advertises that the region is home to a section of the Jus Rol company (along with 3 other companies). No offence to Jus Rol, but
if they rank as one of the top 4 businesses in the area then god help the area!

From the home page the site does split up in to two separate sections, the tourist guide and the business side of things, so I will cover each in turn. Surely they can't be as bad as the home page.......can they?

Tourism
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On clicking the link you may have to shield your eyes, this page contains colour!!! Well almost, it has a blue-green gradient running left to right at either side of the screen leaving the centre white. The left hand side looks nice as it fades from green to white. The right hand side should surely then fade from white back to green, or so you would imagine. But no, instead the white page is met by a bar of solid green fading back to white. In other words it is the wrong way round!!

The page itself is a little better than the last. A (poor quality) colour photo of Alnwick castle sits in the top left, next to a chunk of writing. The writing simply says Alnwick is beautiful, nice for tourists..........you get the idea. Underneath here are four links to different sections of the site, entitled: 'About Town', 'Outstanding Beauty', 'Out and About' and 'Country Life'.

Each link is accompanied by a terribly drawn picture. They really are so grainy that if you can make them out you deserve an award! Of particular note is the picture that accompanies the 'Outstanding Beauty' link. It appears to be a Tucan, which as everyone knows, are one of the species indigenous to the North East of England! One has to wonder how some of these web designers got their jobs!!

Still, as I'm writing the review I thought it fitting to at least visit each of the topics to see what they offered.

'About Town'
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Clicking this link brings you a page red in colour. It makes you wonder why most sites even bother to have a consistent layout. Three pages
so far all with a different (crap) style. Maybe they were just hedging their bets, surely if they keep going one page will look good.......but on second thoughts, I doubt it.

What you get on this page is one photo of the inside of Alnwick Castle, and one brief description of Alnwick itself. Weighing at a whopping 204 words this obviously describes the whole district in great detail, basically it just lists a few tourist attractions and...........that’s all.

If you want to learn about Alnwick then I would suggest reading some of the ops on Dooyoo about the town. Most writers could teach this site a thing or two!!

'Outstanding Beauty'
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I may have slated Alnwick before, but it is a nice place to live. It is pretty and is home to many areas of interest, from castles to beaches with museums in-between. You don't notice as you travel day to day, but when you go elsewhere you do realise how pretty and unspoilt Northumberland is.

Shame this page wouldn't tell you that.

It seems obvious to me that you fill this page full of good quality photos of the great bits of the district. The Castle when lit up at night looks beautiful. But what do they show you..........a poor quality painting of an island with some dodgy flowers in the foreground. It makes me want to come to Alnwick so much, just like I want a hole in my head!

'Out and About'
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What can I say, this page does not exist!! You click the link, and the page does not turn up.

Not wanting to miss one of their 'GREAT' pages I even used an FTP program to scout about their server in search of the missing page. It does not exist at all.

Rearrange the words, workmanship and shoddy!!

'Country Life'
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Ah, if only country life were as nice as this page makes out.

Golf, walking, fishing.........obviously what e
very country dwelling person spends their life doing! I’ll go and tell that to the farmer up the road who works night and day to scrape a living. I'm pretty sure he would just LOVE to be able to do all the things this page mentions.

Of course I'm just picking at the rather inappropriate title. Nothing to say tourists can't have fun.

This page re-uses the backwards-gradient style, this time in a nice shade of green. The solitary picture this time is of Cragside National Park and is of undeniably good quality for this site, but mediocre compared to any other site.

The writing is nothing special, and if it were a Dooyoo op on the topic I would have to rate it useful or somewhat useful rating.

Not what one expects from a County Council website!!



And that completes the tourism section. Four (bad) pages, one of which didn't even load. Very brief chunks of text about generic things to do in Alnwick District. There are no links to further information or even to the web sites of some of the attractions in the District. Combine this with the awfully poor quality pictures and this website looks like a shoddy token effort on the part of the council. I wouldn't want to visit Alnwick after reading what this page says, and I doubt you would either.

The date at the bottom of the site is 1997, so obviously it is frequently updated by the crew at the council. Considering the recent foot and mouth disease a lot of the walks and attractions are closed, and although a number have reopened this site gives no information as to which are open as usual. That is information I would consider useful as tourist. Whoever made this site should be embarrassed. I could knock up a better one in 10 minutes and although I haven't looked I am pretty sure there will be better unofficial Alnwick sites out there. Go elsewhere, not here!! Dooyoo would be a better place to look for information and thoughts of pe
ople who both live around Alnwick, and have visited before.

Business
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So, the tourist section is shoddy. Surely the business section will be better; after all it is important to attract business to a region.

Think again.

If the other pages were poor, a whole new word must invented for this pages lack of quality, all I can say is whoever made the site must have liked fuzzy pictures and graphics. To show the great workmanship that has gone in to the site, holding the mouse over one of the images reveals the images name and size, and not the end result of clicking it.

Still, for any prospective business owner who makes it past the awful decor and shoddy white on grey text, there are two links to choose.

'Why Come to Alnwick?'
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Good question!!

The answer? To lazily display three quotes from business owners in Alnwick saying how much they like the place. Wow.

In a shock move on the part of the website, there are a number of sub-categories. That must've taxed the web designers’ skills!!

They are....

Financial Assistance
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This ever so necessary page contains 47 words in the main block of text.

Basically it says they might give you money dare you start a business.

The Right Connections
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This bit tries to say Alnwick has good transport links. Yes, it may be on the side of the A1 Trunk Road but for anything else it is bad. The train station is 5 miles away and airport 30 miles. Not exactly close!!

Accompanied by a most interesting picture, of a road! Bliss.

People That Count
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This bit tries to make out that the work force in Alnwick is better than elsewhere.

There are no stats though, just wildly made claims with no evidence to back them up.

Quality of Life
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Propaganda is all I can say.

Alnwick is this, Alnwick is that!! It isn't special. I know, I live here!!

This page makes Alnwick sound like Eden. Just a shame it isn't!! It tells you of rivers in which to fish, sports facilities and shopping centres, neglecting to say that they are mostly 30 miles away!

Business Parks
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The second main topic in the Business Section is about the business parks in the Region. There are basically two main business parks, the Lionheart Enterprise Park and the Coquet Enterprise Park. These are basically places where you can set up a business, but judging by the photos on these pages then they are pretty empty. Of course, with the site not having been updated since 1997 things could, and probably have, changed a lot.



Well there you have it. Every inch of the site covered in detail. It may seem that I have wrote a lot, but I literally have gone through every single page in the site. Maybe it's just me, but I thought the whole point of the Council was to run the District for the people that live in it. Yet as I read through the site I found not one line of it that related to me, and I live in the District. As useless as they maybe the Council do lots of things and it would be of great use to people in the area if they actually had a news section on the site. The potential is limitless.

If they were to put details of upcoming meetings on the site then I could easily see if any were of relevance to me. They could advertise local events that are happening in the area. When I was younger they often ran sports events in the summer holidays, but many were rather devoid of people. If the site was updated regularly then people could check what was happening. People might not visit the site a lot at the moment but if it were updated it could become a centre of the community. Still, any kind of innovation is probably beyond this lot.
r>I am pretty sure that this web site is nothing more than a token effort, just to say that the council have a website. I am guessing here, but there was probably some kind of government drive to get every council online with its own web site. The thing is, they might as well not have bothered. The site is full of text which goes along the lines of 'Alnwick is great' but with no real evidence as to why. Claims are made and not backed up, and there are no links for tourists to get extra information.

So, I have slated the site, but I feel it only fair I suggest ways to improve it.

1. Make it look half decent

As is, the site looks amateur (although most amateur sites look better than this). A bit of colour on the home page would be a good start, as well as changing the pictures to make them look a little less fuzzy. More colour photographs of the area would go a long way to convince people to come to Alnwick.

2. More Information

Tourists don't want to read 10,000 word books on Alnwick, but I would like to see a little more about Alnwick as opposed to the brief writing on the site. Also some more specific information would be nice or at least links on where to find it. Figures to back up claims would be nice too, rather than just saying something is true why not prove it too?

3. Something for the Locals?

It is a little ridiculous that the Council provides no information for the locals, but then I doubt it should be much of a surprise. Just a little information about what’s going on would be nice!! Except that would mean the site would have to be updated regularly, which leads on to.....

4. Update the Site More Often

I seriously doubt that this site has been updated since the day it was created. Everyone knows that a successful website must be up to date, especially considering the impact that Foot and Mouth disease has had on tourism.

Four small tips which coul
d improve the site massively. I doubt anything will ever be done. Of course, the other thing to do would be just to delete this poor excuse for a website. It brings shame to our region!!

You may have guessed, I don't like the website. Take a look for yourself and see if I have been too harsh, let me know what you think!

If this is what Local Authority web sites consist of then we don't really need them. I doubt this place could be of any help to anyone, and to think time and money were wasted on it!!

Keep away.