Trust us, it looks a lot better if you’re on Prodigy.

So, PhillyMag launched their new, years-in-the-making website today (although we are assured that this one did not cost $500K to build) and… meh. The pros: It looks a shit-ton better than Philly.com (not saying much), and, ah, well, that’s about it. The cons: They’ve pretty much buried their blogs. None are mentioned by name on the front page, which is either a gross misstep, or a sign that PhillyMag, as evidenced by this mostly, has lost its blog de vivre. Are they pulling the plug on The Daily Examiner? Do you care? More to the point, do you want to know the best stores to shop this month? Same as it ever was.
Which got us to thinking: You know, PhillyMag’s web presence has been so half-hearted and half-assed for so long that it’s a kind of tradition. This led us back to The Wayback Machine of course, to find the most startling detail in all of this: PhillyMag’s best website might have actually been its first. I mean, look at that little bat guy! That wasn’t just some random clipart, folks, that was a legitimate branding exercise! He was on every page! Plus, the polls — they paid somebody for them! Hilarious, I know. But you know what? At least in 1996, PhillyMag had no qualms about telling you, in bright colors and low-grade HTML, just how stupid it was and just how proud it was of the stupid people it was all for. I don’t know just how they’d integrate that into the new site, but, oh wait: It’s covered.
Previously: Best Of Philly: We Read It So You Don’t Have To

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 4:00 pm.