Sunday, May 28, 2017

Want to go to Omaha's gay day parade? Good luck.
The Heartland Pride website is a hot mess.

Click to enlarge
Less than three weeks before the start of Gay Pride events in Omaha/CB, the website with the details of such is a navigational nightmare with scattered details, pulldown menus that don't match their pages, dead links and information that is two years old. 
     2017 will be the fifth year since Jean Stothert became mayor that Omaha's parade will be held in a different state.
     Want to go to the parade anyway? Then play the Heartland Pride Adventure Game / Website!
     Let's begin, shall we?
     The parade date is under the home tab, but without a time or location.
     So it's probably under the events tab right?
Click to enlarge
     Well, yes and no. It's not on the pulldown events menu but it is on the events page.
     There, an icon links to the Pride2017 tab contents, which list a map and the starting time — but not a date, which is under the home tab, remember?
     (The map is an model of clarity. We're guessing that whoever did it didn't do the rest of the web site. Too bad. The map was generated in 2013, but we assume it's still current and that the route hasn't changed.)
     Back to the the events tab pulldown menu:
     It lists four events and a calendar — which shows no events for May and no way to navigate to June.
     The events page itself lists 7 events, not just the four on the pulldown menu, (excluding the worthless pulldown menu calendars):
  • The River Ride description is for 2015, two years ago.
  • The Parade link (not on the pulldown menu) takes you to the aforementioned 2017 tab — which doesn't have the parade date (that's on the home page, remember?)
  • The Royalty Pageant takes you to: "Ooops! This page could not be found!"
  • The Pride festival icon (for 2015) takes you to a schedule for 2016, not 2017
  • The Candlelight Vigil icon takes you to a 2016 schedule as well
  • The Rainbow Run icon takes you to another "Oops! This page could not be found!"
  • The Youth Pride icon on the events page is the ONLY LINK on the page which has current time, date and location information.
     What a disaster and a huge waste of time for web visitors. Contact the people responsible here.
     Below is some current information, from the home page. Good luck finding more details.
Saturday, June 17th Heartland Pride Parade-Council Bluffs Iowa
Saturday, June 17th Pride Riverboat Cruise (Pre-Party and After Party details to come)
Sunday, June 18th Heartland Pride Pageant @ Club Vibe
Friday, June 23rd Heartland Youth Pride @ Stinson Park
Saturday, June 24th Heartland Pride Festival @ Stinson Park
Some constructive criticism to those who should know better:
  • Facebook should NEVER be the primary scheduling venue for an organization. 100,000,000 North Americans don't belong to Facebook.
  • Don't leave obsolete information event information on current pages of your website for TWO YEARS
  • Don't be link-happy on your website, or you'll end up with the spaghetti that is Heartland Pride. More links are harder to maintain if people move on.

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