DMNews.com has relaunched with a new design and a new back-end, both done by us at Netconcepts. On their blog, DM News' founder and publisher Adrian Courtenay talks about the relaunch and gives us such glowing praise that I feel myself blushing!

A few new features worth noting:

• The entire archives have been opened up. No more passwords required!
• Articles support both comments and trackbacks.
• Deep links to old articles have been maintained through 301 redirects.
• The site now offers RSS feeds. Not just one main RSS feed, but every category has an RSS feed.

I just had a peruse around the Huffington Post, and I have to say, I was disappointed by the lack of a search engine (which is just bad usability) and no ability to post comments or trackbacks. In my mind, a blog without comments is not a real blog. Real bloggers accept and encourage feedback; they engage in a two-way conversation with their readers. Otherwise, the bloggers are in their ivory tower - fingers firmly plugged in their ears as they sing loudly "nah nah nah, I'm not listening". The NY Times proclaims in its review of the Huffington Post to "Get ready for the next level in the blogosphere." But it's a step backward in the inevitable evolution towards a more conversational Internet if comments are disabled and discouraged.

As Hugh McLeod so adeptly explained/illustrated, the conversation within your company (or, in Arianna Huffington's case, within her clique) is separated from the conversation taking place in your market by a "membrane." Blogs poke holes in that membrane by facilitating a dialogue between your company and your market. Disabling comments and trackbacks in effect stifles that dialogue and makes the membrane impermeable.