C-Ville + WordPress = Great New Site

C-Ville discovers WordPress, and the result is pretty slick. Simple, clean design, great font, disqus commenting …

I love that they kept things local:

Ryan DeRose and his company Vibethink—a one-man team when we signed them up, and a five-person shop on the Downtown Mall now—built the new version of c-ville.com. Ryan and Matt Clark, who also worked closely with us, attended Western Albemarle and Nelson County high schools, respectively, so we kept things local. What really sold us on their team was that they shared our ideas about what makes a good local media site, and they cared about our paper’s role in the community. We wanted to make something that was easy to use (for us and for you); we wanted to strip away unnecessary distractions from the content; and we wanted to create a platform that we could constantly modify and improve as things changed. We wanted a site that would show up well on all your devices, that integrated social media seamlessly, and that showcased our photographers and writers.

Sadly, a quick (not in any way conclusive) test shows that their old permalinks are dead. Example here. And here. And here. But … a search for Will Goldsmith Biscuit Run does work, which is great. What a shame. I don’t envy anyone moving from an old site to a new one (because I certainly couldn’t make all my old links work on a new site), but I can lament the loss of historical record, as I did when the Daily Progress essentially deleted all of their archives in 2008.

I’m hopeful they’ll be fixed.

Update: via Twitter:

@jimduncan Thanks Jim! As a member of the team who did the site redesign, I can say that the permalinks and 301s will be done soon.

— Jake Minturn (@jakeminturn) August 21, 2012