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I don’t know about you, but I find it a really difficult to keep up with all the news and blogs about Russia.
What I really need is one page that I can visit once every morning, while I’m drinking my coffee, where I can see at a glance what dozens of online newspapers are writing about Russia. Oh, and it’d be nice to have another page exactly the same where I can check out all the Russia blogs.
I couldn’t find a site that did what I wanted (Alltop:Russia is ok, but only has a few sites), so I decided to make my own… Russian News Online.
Russian News Online is a really simple site.
There are only really two pages. The Russian News page displays the latest headlines from each of the top English language news sites covering Russia. The Russian Blogs page displays the latest post from each of the top English language blogs about Russia.
Once you see an article you like, you click on the headline, and you’re taken to the original article.
That’s pretty much it.
(OK, there’s a little bit more. I’ve added pictures and video news too. If you click on a video, you can play it right there in the site, rather than having to go off to Youtube.)
The site is a bit rough around the edges at the moment – as you can see, design really isn’t my strong suit – and because it pulls news from so many different places, it can be a bit slow to load at times. But I’d really value any feedback about whether there are any news sources / blogs I’m missing, and whether anything doesn’t work properly.
If you find Russian News Online useful, please bookmark it, and tell others about it.
Great idea! We absolutely needed something like this.
Very good news! And yes, it’s what we’ve all been longing for… all of them confusing Russian news in one place 🙂
This is going to make my life much easier! Thank you!
Looks really good, and I think it will be a useful resource for many people.
May I ask what were your criteria for selecting the blogs? I understand that you aimed to choose the top blogs, but it would be interesting to know how you defined that.
This is really terrific. One thing – the link from the blogs page back to the news page “Click here to switch to Russia News page” actually links to the blog page again.
I’ll definitely be making this a regular visit, so thanks.
Thanks everyone – it’s good to know that the site is useful to others as well, rather than just me. I really value any feedback, bug-reports, ideas for sites I’ve missed and suggestions for improvements, so please do leave a quick message below.
@ Liz – the criteria for selecting the blogs, and putting them in order was partly planned, partly random.
Basically, I picked out the top few blogs which I thought really had to come at the top and, well, put them at the top. Then I had a rough stab at grouping some of the others into broadly thematic groups – music, personal, economics, frivolous, etc. And then, because I was never a patient man, I bunged the rest in pretty randomly!
The news sources were selected on pretty much the same basis, although they presented one extra complication – not all news publish an RSS feed. For most I’ve managed to find a technical work around, but for a few I’ve either had to leave them out until I can find a working solution. A few more, I’ve had to push down the page further than I would have liked because they load slowly, and make it more difficult for the end user.
Clearly my selection is never going to be perfect for everyone, so I’ve settled on what I hope will be a fairly happy medium. If I’ve left anyone out, it’s probably due to oversight, rather than anything else, so please do tell me. And I’m always open to recommendations for new blogs that I might not have seen!
Somewhere further down the line, on my wishlist, is a facility allowing people to re-order the sites based on what they prefer to read first.
@ James – thanks for the heads up. I’ve fixed the link now. Lesson – never try to mess with things at the very last minute…
Thank you, thank you!
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best of luck with new site 🙂
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Great website. Keep on doing a good work, and who knows? One day you may be awarded the Order of Hero of Russia (I’d have to check with VVP first though)!
Love the new site…it would be awesome if you had one for Russian-language sources as well
@ Jesse – Russian language sources – for both news and blogs – are definitely on the to-do list!
Wow. There are no words.
You deserve some kind of medal for this.
Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You…