{"id":8102,"date":"2009-05-19T11:05:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T09:05:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-05-19T11:05:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-19T09:05:00","slug":"cosatu-website-a-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/8102-cosatu-website-a-disaster.html","title":{"rendered":"Cosatu website a disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) made headlines over the last few days for opposing Telkom’s sale of its Vodacom shares to the UK owned Vodafone.  Cosatu was unsuccessful in its bid to stop Vodacom’s JSE listing, and has now threatened to boycott Vodacom, vowing to continue to fight the deal.<\/p>\n

With all this attention focused on the trade union many people may have visited the Cosatu website<\/a> in search of information about the organization or their latest news.  These visitors are however in for an unpleasant surprise.<\/p>\n

The Cosatu website epitomizes poor web design, with color combinations like red and yellow, and flashing buttons which have disappeared from mainstream web design years ago.  The website also does not have any consistent layout and navigation.<\/p>\n

While the failure to adhere to good design principles may be overlooked, the numerous broken links and viruses residing on the website are less acceptable.<\/p>\n

The Cosatu website informs visitors that a short summary of statements can be viewed at a given URL.  This however leads to a dead link.<\/p>\n

More serious is the fact that the company’s press statements page, a key resource for journalists and interested parties, is infected with a virus.  The most probable cause is that the website’s security was compromised and code was inserted into the page.<\/p>\n

Cosatu was asked for feedback about their website, but did not respond by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

Cosatu website discussion<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t