Mountain State Matters

The Appalachian Regional Commission just launched a new site in cooperation with National Geographic: Visit Appalachia. The site offers driving tours throughout the 13 states that comprise the region of Appalachia.

The website is pretty well done, but has a couple of problems. Here are some pros and cons.

Pros:

• The layout. It’s cool…it’s like driving in a car. I like that it’s interactive, yet easy to follow and not confusing.
• The navigation. You can browse driving tours by state, theme or route, which should make it easy for anyone looking to plan a driving tour throughout Appalachia.

Cons:

• I don’t like the way the designers chose to scroll down the page. There’s not really a scroll, but instead you have to click and drag the arrow bar. This is a mild annoyance.
• This is a big one: it doesn’t always work. Although subsequent tests have proven that many routes do work, the first one I tried didn’t. The page for the Coal Heritage Trail (from Bluefield snaking up through Welch and Mullens to Beckley) worked beautifully, but when I clicked on “Visit Route Website,” the homepage for West Virginia Byways pops up. To find the information for the Coal Heritage Trail, I had to search that web page (the correct site, for anyone interested, is located here). Similarly, when you click on the “Google Map” link, you’re taken to a Google Map which doesn’t display the correct route (and instead takes visitors up I-77).

Anyway, just my two cents. The website has the potential to be a really awesome resource for anyone looking to drive around Appalachia, but these little bugs need to be fixed out first.