ROTTEN TOMATOES: SITE UPDATE: Rolling Out Changes Comments

SITE UPDATE: Rolling Out Changes

by RT Staff | January 16, 2008

Summary

As you can see, we're rolling out a new design. We're very proud of it, but we're aware that not everything is working perfectly yet. Back to Article

(101-113 of 113 posts) | Reply

tudorw writes:
on Jan 19 2008 12:38 PM

Two weeks ago I was directed to your site by a dedicated movie fan and loved the search engine. Type in the movie title and Voila ! a list of reviews to pick from. What happened ? Now you give us Google which is on my browser anyway. My love of your site is now rapidly fading and my eyes are bleeding !

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sansured writes:
on Jan 19 2008 04:58 PM

I'm sorry guys, I really want it to be great, but this new design is an absolute catastrophe. It's very poorly organized and aesthetically horrendous. I just wasted 15 minutes simply trying to access the 'RT Top 50 Horror Movies'. All I wanted was a simple list, but every link (5) I clicked on failed to deliver. I'm begging you, please give us the old format back. Everybody that I've talked to detests what's happened to our favorite movie site. If this format prevails you are going to lose millions of loyal fans.

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spamtrap6 writes:
on Jan 20 2008 11:55 AM

The feature I used most on Rottentomatoes was the DVD tab on the review page for each movie, telling me when it will be available on DVD and what versions are out on DVD. Guess what feature is missing from the new Rottentomatoes? You guessed it.

Another feature I used all the time was movie title search. On the old site, if you typed a unique film title into the search form, you were taken directly to the review page for that movie. Now, you get a handy (?) Google-type search results page that doesn't give you anywhere near the same information that you used to get. For example, if you searched for "A Star is Born" one the old site, you'd get a list of three movie reviews, showing the year of production and the names of the lead actors for each. Do this search with the new site, and you get Google-type results for three versions, with links to the three reviews, along with 7,500 less-relevant links. If you read the two lines of text that appears after the search results, you probably can figure out which link takes you to the review of the 1937 Janet Gaynor version, which the 1954 Judy Garland version, and which the 1976 Barbara Streisand version, but it's strictly a matter of luck that these names appear in those first two lines. Want to know any or all of these versions is available on DVD? So do I, but this new site won't tell you. Want to narrow your search down to film titles or people as with the old search function. Sorry, you can't. Now you just have to wade through 7,500 crap listings hoping to stumble across what you want. But at least the contrast of the blue background and the burn-orange title strips is stunning.

The graphic design of the site is a matter of personal taste, and personally I couldn't care less, but when you remove the content that people actually rely on in the process, what's the point? The original Rottentomatoes site was primarily ABOUT THE MOVIES. Not some nitwit blogger or feature writers opinion on a movie-related topic. Not rumors about some picture that may or may not be made in a few years. Easily located compilations of reviews of actual movies, with information such as whether they were available on DVDm their MPAA rating and the reasons for it, etc. This new site may or may not appeal to your new target demographic, but it is NOT Rottentomatoes.

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Mr Sean writes:
on Jan 21 2008 01:39 AM

Spamtrap6 (above) said exactly what I had to say. I used to search for a movie and the old search engine gave me a list of appropriate titles/year/leading actors. Now when I search I get 1-10 results of 22,100. IF you are lucky one of the first five results may get you to the info you need (review/rating) but it has been my experience so far that you will not find what you are looking for. Someone has ruined a great web site, goodbye Rottentomatoes.

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Mr.Crowley writes:
on Jan 22 2008 03:05 AM

Spamtrap6 hit the nail on the head, especially about the search results. When I am searching for a film I don't need thousands of different results. The reason I come to rottentomatoes and look up movie info is so I can avoid just that. For instance, I just searched for "The Assassination of Jesse James" and I am given 15,400 different results. What the hell? As far as I know there is only one film with that title, so why so many links? Then, to top it off, none of the links actually bring me to the movie page.

Come on guys, I know you are trying to get with the whole "web 2.0" thing, but frankly I don't give a damn about community or Joe Sixpack's movie reviews and journal entries. I couldn't care less about celebrity gossip. I come here for one thing, to easily and quickly access movie information; to get a quick gauge of critical response. The new site does away with that ability. Most importantly, unlike the old site, the new site is not intuitive at all.

I hate the new design and I think you need to give visitors the ability to use the old one. I signed up after all these years just for this rant. That is all.

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Voiceguy writes:
on Jan 23 2008 07:05 AM

They seem to have deleted the announcement letter from Atchity about the changes.

All of the negative reaction has to be a tremendous embarrassment for Fox Interactive Media, which owns this site.

I have already posted extensive comments in a different thread (the one that seems to have disappeared) about how much I hate the changes. I have not seen any response from "the management," even to acknowledge that they're listening. That seems to me to be a mistake, because the problem is only going to get worse.

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Voiceguy writes:
on Jan 23 2008 07:19 AM

Correction to my earlier comment about deleting the announcement -- apparently it just scrolled out of existence. I found it here:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/news/1703265/

At the moment there are almost 250 comments posted about the changes, most of them sharply negative.

VG

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Rockslide writes:
on Jan 23 2008 07:58 AM

I'm glad that you guys at RT listened to a couple of the major voiced concerns. There are still a ton more to take care of. The site used to be quick, clean, and to the point. Now it is still too bloated and over-embelished.

You listened when a ton of us said to move the news up to the top from the bottom. However, now you have the "meet a critic" box right between features and news. No offense to any critic but, who cares about reading the life story of some obscure critic for who-knows-where? Why is this given such a prominent spot? Why do you put so many small niche interest items right in the prime real estate? Please move off the critic section and the fresh people section to some niche corner of the site, they don't need to be taking up front page space. I again ask you to make the front page focus on news and reviews, everything else should back off in importance. All the clutter is making me go elsewhere, like superherohype, comingsoon, eni, and even yahoomovies. Please clean up the site, you used to be my favorite!

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tgmilazzo writes:
on Jan 23 2008 05:28 PM

I wound up here because I couldn't find the old letter regarding the new changes. I may not be coming here for movies anymore but I was kind of enjoying checking in on all the negative posts and to see if anyone from RT has responded yet. It's kind of like watching a car accident, don't want to see it happen but absolutely can't look away. Everyday I'm more amazed that RT isn't changing back and won't even respond. I keep trying to use the site and it is such a pain it's not worth it. At least every time I check in to see the comments I see a new suggestion for a different site to check out...

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wbwng2k writes:
on Jan 24 2008 01:42 PM

I liked the look and interface of previous RT website design...And what happened to "Cream of the Crop" critics' column??? More later as I use the site more...

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Rachie Rainbow writes:
on Feb 05 2008 10:13 AM

I've counted on Rotten Tomatoes all these years for movie ratings and it's done a great job! With the old design, it was real easy to check if a movie was good: just do a search of the movie, click on it and see the rating.

The new design is now so confusing! There's a search field hidden in the page, and it throws out a hundred different links when I type in a movie. I can't find the Tomato rating of all the critics easily anymore. Now I get ads, news, and other stuff I don't need. I come to Rotten Tomatoes to get the rating and it's the hardest thing to find now. Sometimes the search throws out a 0% rating when the movie has already been rated by critics. *scratch head*

What I like about the new design: pretty graphics, but that's about it. So I hope the web designers are listening... I'm sure a lot of money has been sunk into the new design. But it's not functional anymore. The old design was simple, beautiful and focused. Definitely one of the best websites out there for movies. So hopefully you can fix this soon. Thanks!

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Mr Sean writes:
on Feb 08 2008 09:07 PM

Thank you RottenTomatoes, it seems someone is listening. I have to withdraw my earlier rant about the new search engine. I just popped by to see if things were any better and the web site now has the previous type of search results. Good move.

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Stormico writes:
on Feb 18 2008 02:15 PM

The site is an eyesore now, is missing the features that once made it a great site, and sadly has become nothing more then a billboard for IGN to rent out space to advertisers.

Time to find a film site.

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