New BETA version of BikeRadar

Jeff Jones

This hasn't been fixed yet. Try logging out when you're on the home page then logging back in. You should be able to then go to the forum.

apreading

That seems to have fixed it - weird! I guess logging in again must have set a cookie or something that I was missing?

Jeff Jones

It's because there are actually two cookies (one for the site, one for the forum). It's how things were handled on previous bikeradar but doesn't quite work on new BikeRadar. We'll change it so that there is one cookie/login to rule them all.

Jeff Jones

barikhan wrote:

Is it possible to get access to old articles? I would like to read http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/articl ... sts-28838/ again, but it has now been taken off. I had access to it last week. I presume it may have been removed as a clean-up operation for the new style changes etc? Cheers

A further update on this: That original link (with /fitness/) should now work.

Thanks for spotting this, it would have affected a lot of articles.

meanredspider

Jeff Jones wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

I was looking at the Colnago new bike article just now. Each time I'd scroll down to the images - which were there - they'd disappear leaving just a blank space. More scrolling, more pictures doing a vanishing act in front of my eyes. I'm using an iPad with latest IOS.

That's definitely odd - we'll see if we can reproduce it.

Try clearing your browser cache and cookies as well. We've made a number of changes over the past couple of weeks and you may be seeing cached older stylesheet bits that are not right.

You know, I used to be always doing that when I worked in web development but have no idea how you clear the cache on an iPad (ETA - found it but it made no difference - other than to get the cookie approval again)

It's still doing it tonight on the Domane review. If I hold my finger on the page as I scroll down, the pics remain but as soon as I lift my hand off, they disappear.

Jeff Jones

meanredspider wrote:

Jeff Jones wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

I was looking at the Colnago new bike article just now. Each time I'd scroll down to the images - which were there - they'd disappear leaving just a blank space. More scrolling, more pictures doing a vanishing act in front of my eyes. I'm using an iPad with latest IOS.

That's definitely odd - we'll see if we can reproduce it.

Try clearing your browser cache and cookies as well. We've made a number of changes over the past couple of weeks and you may be seeing cached older stylesheet bits that are not right.

You know, I used to be always doing that when I worked in web development but have no idea how you clear the cache on an iPad (ETA - found it but it made no difference - other than to get the cookie approval again)

It's still doing it tonight on the Domane review. If I hold my finger on the page as I scroll down, the pics remain but as soon as I lift my hand off, they disappear.

Thanks - we'll look into that

bikebuoy

Guys - this new version is absolute shite.

I don't mind development and improvement but this is just an absolute mess....
Don't think I'll bother to visit anymore if you think this is 'progress' and acceptable.

isto

I think there are a lot of issues with the site - even for a Beta version, it seems that not much testing was done before deploying the beta version and maybe hoping for the best. This might have been due to a tight deadline but in my opinion it would have been best to delay until a reasonable amount of system testing had been carried out.
These days focusing on cross browser testing and relevant tests on mobile devices should be a priority before releasing a BETA version.

Beta versions generally have issues that need ironed out but these should not result in time consuming firefighting measures required by the development team.

Just an opinion.

Jeff Jones

isto wrote:

I think there are a lot of issues with the site - even for a Beta version, it seems that not much testing was done before deploying the beta version and maybe hoping for the best. This might have been due to a tight deadline but in my opinion it would have been best to delay until a reasonable amount of system testing had been carried out.
These days focusing on cross browser testing and relevant tests on mobile devices should be a priority before releasing a BETA version.

Beta versions generally have issues that need ironed out but these should not result in time consuming firefighting measures required by the development team.

Just an opinion.

More testing would have been nice but we did do a hell of a lot before opening the beta up to invitations. There's only so much you can do before things slow to a crawl, the project loses momentum and the developers get moved onto other projects.

There comes a point where you have to put it live, bugs and all, and use that pressure to fix stuff quickly, which is exactly what's happened. That's not finished yet. That will be followed by features that we planned to release as part of the redesign but were put on hold.

bugdoc

I didn't use the earlier version but I do like the Beta version. While it can be tricky to create a route and edit it on-the-fly, I found looking at already created routes just fine. I have two issues. The more serious one is that when I download the GPX file neither my friend or I can load it our our different Garmin software or units. We get an error msg. The KLM for Goggle Earth worked great. My second issue is that features I add can only be seen if the user clicks the "show on map" button. It would be better to have the features I added show on the map when users open it. Now I have to tell them to click the button. Not a big deal.
Thanks for your efforts. I'm hoping you will explain to me or fix the GPX issue as I hope to create a bunch of routes and include the links in an upcoming publication on "Cycling Sarasota and Manatee Counties" Florida.
Charlie

Angus Young

Jeff Jones wrote:

More testing would have been nice but we did do a hell of a lot before opening the beta up to invitations. There's only so much you can do before things slow to a crawl, the project loses momentum and the developers get moved onto other projects.

There comes a point where you have to put it live, bugs and all, and use that pressure to fix stuff quickly...

No. I'm sorry, but just no. Iron a few things out, sure, but to suggest the way to produce websites is to get to a certain point where it's still full of gaping holes and then go "F**k it, let's go live." is ludicrous. This is not a workflow, this is just shoddy work. I produce websites and there's not one of my clients who wouldn't show me the door if I were to suggest it was time to go live with a site in this state. I like the new look and I'm not experiencing most of the reported issues, but the number of complaints in this thread suggests a site that is simply not finished ('finished' as in, not ready for release). Either the management is not being demanding enough of their developers, or the developers are taking advantage of a lack of knowledge amongst the management. Either way, something's broken.

Dr-Chars

Yeah - this is pretty crap. Doesn't give me the news I want quickly and I don't want to hunt for things! Big advert on the top is very annoying too.

In fact, generally I am put off both the Bikeradar phone and website by the huge blanket adverts that take time to load and are fiddly to remove; they are usually advertising products I have no interest in. I often find myself elsewhere for bike news.

jimmythecuckoo

UCP is back Jeff.

Good times.

Jeff Jones

Dr-Chars wrote:

Yeah - this is pretty crap. Doesn't give me the news I want quickly and I don't want to hunt for things! Big advert on the top is very annoying too.

In fact, generally I am put off both the Bikeradar phone and website by the huge blanket adverts that take time to load and are fiddly to remove; they are usually advertising products I have no interest in. I often find myself elsewhere for bike news.

Not sure what you mean - the big ad is the same size on the new site as the old (acutally they come in different sizes but that hasn't changed). The new site's home page has more stories visible than the old, at the expense of some videos.

What news do you want quickly?

Angus Young wrote:

Jeff Jones wrote:

More testing would have been nice but we did do a hell of a lot before opening the beta up to invitations. There's only so much you can do before things slow to a crawl, the project loses momentum and the developers get moved onto other projects.

There comes a point where you have to put it live, bugs and all, and use that pressure to fix stuff quickly...

No. I'm sorry, but just no. Iron a few things out, sure, but to suggest the way to produce websites is to get to a certain point where it's still full of gaping holes and then go "F**k it, let's go live." is ludicrous. This is not a workflow, this is just shoddy work. I produce websites and there's not one of my clients who wouldn't show me the door if I were to suggest it was time to go live with a site in this state. I like the new look and I'm not experiencing most of the reported issues, but the number of complaints in this thread suggests a site that is simply not finished ('finished' as in, not ready for release). Either the management is not being demanding enough of their developers, or the developers are taking advantage of a lack of knowledge amongst the management. Either way, something's broken.

Calling it full of gaping holes is a stretch (true, it wasn't pretty in older IE). Every website has bugs, that's the nature of the beast, and big sites that have to serve millions of users contain a lot more bugs. Some you can only spot when it's live because they won't surface in a testing environment. They will get identified and fixed.

The biggest forum bug was present on old BikeRadar for a long time. It's only been fixed now because we have enough developers working on the site.

That's not to say our process was perfect. There are a number of lessons we've learned that will be useful under a new structure in future.

Angus Young

Jeff Jones wrote:

Calling it full of gaping holes is a stretch...

Oh, I think most people would categorise a blank page in place of their control panel or being sent in endless loops as gaping holes. These are not 'bugs', they're fundamental ommissions and should feature pretty high up on the 'to do' list.

fukawitribe

Jeff Jones wrote:

The new site's home page has more stories visible than the old, at the expense of some videos.

Really ? I'd certainly have put money that it doesn't - at least not without a good deal of scrolling.

Jeff Jones

Angus Young wrote:

Jeff Jones wrote:

Calling it full of gaping holes is a stretch...

Oh, I think most people would categorise a blank page in place of their control panel or being sent in endless loops as gaping holes. These are not 'bugs', they're fundamental ommissions and should feature pretty high up on the 'to do' list.

Definitely. The blank pages bug was on the old site, it just got a lot worse over the last few months. We had very limited support during that time unfortunately.

The endless loops was prioritised as soon as we spotted it.

Decender

Please provide a link back to the old site.

This is not a Beta site, it is demo you might present early in project as a proof of concept, calling it an alpha site would be more valid. It not professional to place blame on the developers for failure to manage the redesign.

This redesign has taken a website that did what I expected 99.9% of the time, to one that works maybe 50-75% on a good day. It is incredibly slow, often freezes, produces blank content and pages. I also often end up on advertiser pages that I have not deliberately clicked on due to pages reformatting as I tap on something. This is from an up to date iPad.

I will check back in month to see if sanity has been restored.

DrLex

Jeff Jones wrote:

It's because there are actually two cookies (one for the site, one for the forum). It's how things were handled on previous bikeradar but doesn't quite work on new BikeRadar. We'll change it so that there is one cookie/login to rule them all.

Is there a timescale for this change? I can log into the forum, but not into the site. An attempt to post a comment on the main site only gives me a drop down list beginning facebook and lacking a 'bikeradar' option.

(Chrome with cookies enabled on a PC, if important. It's also not obvious how to log in to the main site, but I guess that's probably been mentioned in the previous seven pages)

fukawitribe

DrLex wrote:

An attempt to post a comment on the main site only gives me a drop down list beginning facebook and lacking a 'bikeradar' option.

They're only allowing comments via the external logins (G+, social media etc) listed. Jeff has mentioned that they may allow comments via under the BR login in the future, if they get the time and resource. So currently if you don't have a login to any of those, have privacy concerns (e.g. allowing BR to access all your contacts inter alia) or don't want to spend time making sure your comments aren't visible elsewhere - you're hosed i'm afraid.

Jeff Jones

Timescale: I honestly don't know yet but will be able to look at the List tomorrow to see what we can realistically achieve in the next 4-5 weeks before we transfer to Immediate. The main issue is going to be when/what we need to do to migrate the site to new servers. There are also a few bugs that still need nailing, including the login system so we may be able to do some of it but not all.

DrLex

fukawitribe wrote:

DrLex wrote:

An attempt to post a comment on the main site only gives me a drop down list beginning facebook and lacking a 'bikeradar' option.

They're only allowing comments via the external logins (G+, social media etc) listed. Jeff has mentioned that they may allow comments via under the BR login in the future, if they get the time and resource. So currently if you don't have a login to any of those, have privacy concerns (e.g. allowing BR to access all your contacts inter alia) or don't want to spend time making sure your comments aren't visible elsewhere - you're hosed i'm afraid.

Thanks for the reply; notwithstanding privacy concerns, my thoughts and views aren't of sufficient importance to warrant the use of an external log-in, so I'll keep my participation to the forum.

dag_on_a_bike

Still far from complete.

For instance, you can't leave comments if you are logged in with your Bikeradar account. Seems to insist on Facebook, twitter etc.

mattv

Still absolutley dire. No improvements made. I used to look at the site and post regularly, now I've not been on for nearly a week. Had to log in on a work computer to write this post, as the endless loop login bug still exists. The adverts cover the content (which is much less than before and far more video-based, no good for phone users on patchy wifi or 3g), graphics look bad, nothing works. And it still loops on a PC as well.
I cant be bothered to waste my time any more. I may check back in a month to see if it works, but hopefully by then I'll have found another resource as good as this one was.

velo-city

Also have problems constantly getting locked into a loop between beta and old when accessing forums from iPhone. Just can't get logged in and keep getting bounced back to beta site.
Slow menus. Horrible to use on mobile devices (ios)
Unusable.

diamonddog

Really poor, far less intuitive than the original.

thescouselander

The new site is an utter catastrophe. The only reason I can leave a comment now is because I am already logged in on this computer but I can't login from any other device as i just end up going round in circles. In fact I can't really look at anything but the front page on my phone.

The new site is not ready for public release - would be be possible to roll back to the old site until this mess is sorted out?

ski99

Wow,
I used to visit the Bikeradar site daily, and just thought I'd give it a try this morning to see whether it's got any better.

It used to be easy to navigate, fairly fast for my remote broadband speed, and on the initial "tell us what you think" feedback I think I covered most of what everyone else has posted on here. That was roughly a month ago, and yet it's still very poor.

I realise that behind the scenes there's a team working hard designing and deploying the new site, but the reduction in hits must be traceable. It's nice to have a fresher site, but surely not at any cost? Not everyone has super-whizzy fast broadband and can load hundreds of adverts and pictures in a second, and that must be reducing the numbers of site visits dramatically.


Needs to be resolved.


Quickly!

matchstickwarrior

As a commuter/everyday utility cyclist, I was finding Bikeradar to be increasingly lacking. Changes that geared it further and further towards competition cycling meant it provided less and less useful information on commuter equipment and real-life cycling issues. The in-depth editorials of old were increasingly replaced with ever more pointless videos that gave no useful information. With re-branding, it seems now to be completely irrelevant to me.

El Correcto

Hmm...still pretty user-unfriendly. Visiting the site has gone from a routine pleasure to an unwieldy chore. I'm pretty fond of BikeRadar so I hope you can figure it out. Meanwhile, I'm with the other posters that will let you get on with trying to work out the bugs and will check back in occasionally to see if that's happened. Good luck, and see you in a few weeks! Happy TDF, everyone!