New site design

[pedrospeeps]

This is fun!!

If you have a room with an infinite number of monkeys in time they will reproduce the old cyclingnews website….but you have to have an infinite amount of time….I have until Friday!

How could they have rolled out a new website that needed so much doing to make it work...well when I say work, I use the term loosely for me it is NOT working.

See yer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Everyone,

We've deployed a huge bunch of improvements to the site this morning. Here's a quick breakdown so you can see what's been done. We have more work going on as we speak and I'll post back once I know the date for our next deployment of fixes and improvements.

• Made it easier for our editors to display multiple images on the site
• Simplified the navigation in result and report pages
• Improved the format of results displaying
• Some of you complained about how results displayed in IE. We hope we’ve fixed this but please send us your feedback if you’re still having issues
• The RSS issues that you’ve raised have now been fixed
• We’ve also added an ‘About Us’ page
• Ads were overlapping and sometimes missing but this has now been fixed. This was a browser version specific issue (i.e. if you have IE 7.5.3 you will see different to IE 7.6.4) so worth mentioning that if users can still see it we'd like to know
• The Tour de France stage descriptions are now displaying properly, with maps and comments from Jonathan Vaughters. (We’ll be making some tweaks to these pages in the next 24 hours) so please accept that these pages are a work in progress
• Eliminated various pages that were throwing back 404 error messages
• Improved some styling issues with text displaying
• Removed redundant sponsored links from races

Thanks for your patience

Daniel
__________________
Managing Editor Cyclingnews.com

 

[brightstorm]

problems now less problems

pedro,
i dont think you'll ever be happy with what CN staff are doing. You complain when theres stuff not working and now complain when stuff not working is being fixed.

 

[pedrospeeps]

missing the point

pedro,
i dont think you'll ever be happy with what CN staff are doing. You complain when theres stuff not working and now complain when stuff not working is being fixed.

I am not sure you understand my point. Being only one of ten people (I know) that likes the new site, makes you one of a very small band of people. I can not make you understand my point, you will just have to read what I said at the top of the email to understand fully. Enjoy cyclingnews, I have one more day of this forum. I haven't logged onto the new site since about the 18th June, I am not interested in these people anymore. If they are unable to understand the points made in this forum and not revert back to a great, easy to use website, then they will go down, as the advertisers pull their adds and readers move on. I hope you can be constructive and help them through this time, I am sure your positive feedback is most welcome as the vast majority of feedback is negative.

See yer...at Velonews???

 

[pedrospeeps]

If PepsiCo can!!

If PepsiCo can admit they make a mistake and return, then I think Future can do it too. It is not too late. You could flip the switch on the old website over night and be ready for the Tdf

Good on you PepsiCo...please email Future and cut and paste this news item...we can help change their minds, it just takes a few people. This forum is nearly done, but the movement to change back has just started, and may finish with a new owner!!!


From the news today!
2. Tropicana's Botched Redesign

Tropicana drinkers, it turns out, are as passionate about packaging as they are about pulp. That's why they rebelled when parent company PepsiCo and consultancy Arnell overhauled the juice line's packaging in January as part of a $35 million branding campaign called "Squeeze."

Tropicana fans said the simplicity of the new design reminded them of store-brand generics. And who wants to be mistaken for a generic consumer?

Within a month, the public's flogging by e-mail, phone, and blogs forced PepsiCo to bring back the old straw-in-an-orange cartons. Other parts of the campaign remain, but PepsiCo will probably think twice before it tries updating this icon again.

 

[Emory Ball]

If PepsiCo bla bla bla bla

Didn't you say you were leaving to go to Velonews?

 

[pedrospeeps]

Emory Ball drops the ball

Didn't you say you were leaving to go to Velonews?

Emory Ball Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2009Posts: 7

Quote:Originally Posted by pedrospeeps If PepsiCo bla bla bla bla
Didn't you say you were leaving to go to Velonews?

I hope you are feeling appropriately belittled with your insignificant 7 posts so far and PesiCo bla bla bla post directed to me and now see what the great work the constructive posts and feedback have been able to do by changing Cyclingnews policy (written in blood earlier in this forum) on spoilers.

If you now feel so moved, you could put your shoulder to the wheel and try and get Cyclingnews out of the ditch and get them, by public support to remove the stupid carousel flash at the top of the website, this would be so much better than posting your negative posts.

With the start of the Tdf I will be too busy to continue this forum and wish my fellow loyal former cyclingnews contributors like Dim and Manolo well, and hope to meet them in another forum in time.

I do wish you well, but hope you are now shamed into helping the situation, rather than using a non constructive post to try and get your point across, what ever it was? And you are right, I am moving on to Velonews, or cyclingfever, until cyclingnews gets their act together, it seems you have more time at your disposal than I do. I hope you can put your free time to good use and continue a healthy forum full of constructive feedback, rather than your feeble attempt to denigrate me, I think that backfired with the removal of spoilers, by feedback pressure.

Kind regards

Pedrospeeps

PS Bye Bye Cyclingnews IT's Friday

 

[Emory Ball]

Emory Ball Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2009Posts: 7 - Snipped more boring self serving crap

Wow I feel soooo belittled cause I haven't wasted tons of time whinging on the forum.

Not really though.

You sir are and *** and the place will be better with out you around please hasten off to Velosnooze so you can read the 2-3 race results the manage to post a day and the 2-3 stories. CN may have issues but I guess I must read faster than you cause that is just not enough content for me.

 

[scottsmack]

Spoiler-free!

To CN:

I stayed away from CN until i could watch the first TDF on Versus here in the U.S. because I was afraid of spoilers, but when I got to CN to read all the Stage 1 fallout I was shocked to see no spoilers! The JS option is a perfect solution, and thank you for defaulting to spoilerfree. You got me back, and I would guess a whole lot of other folks too.

Thanks for listening.

 

[blutto]

To whom it may concern,

Well here we are, cycling's biggest day, the Tour....and what had in previous years been a most pleasant experience...that is following the Tour on Cycling news....is much less so....

Simply put, the new site is a disaster.If todays stage coverage is best you can do, do us all a favour and take your ball and go home. Variations on this point have now been brought up several hundred times in this thread. Is anyone listening? Is anyone home?

Please, for "the love of god", and this might get your attention,( because nothing else seems to have), your bottom line, you know that thingee about clients, cashflow and stuff, listen to the wailing of longtime Cyclingnews users.Go back to something that actually works...and elegantly I may add.

Please, just bring back the old site "and no one will get hurt" or to put a nice spin on this, everybody will be happy....like REAL HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...and your long-term financial viability will not be in peril!

Yours Humblblee

Blutto

 

[jobertel]

Live Coverage Problems

I don't know if your new technology gives you the choice. But the live coverage kinda sucks. I am often unable to read the live coverage in real time (like today, I led a tour), but I like to read it later as if it were happeneing live. So I scrolled to the bottom and what do I see, THE FINISH RESULTS! Doh! Now I have to pretend I misread that Fabian Cancellera had won.

Reading up is awkward; please find a way to have the live report read with the oldest time on top, so even folks picking it up in the middle of the event don't get screwed up as it updates. And PLEASE put the results at the end.

Was this website just change for the sake of change or was their some technological necessity to change it?

John B.
Burlington, Vermont

 

[blutto]

To whom it concerns( part deux),

In my excitement to punch out my first post I forgot to mention my biggest problem with your presentation of today's Tour stage....the live coverage scrolled in the wrong direction for it to be read as a story...and then to compound the blunder ( as John the previous poster pointed out ) you dropped the results at the bottom of the page...BRILLIANT...NOT...

...while this reverse scroll format may be the norm in some parts of the world it doesn't cut it in your biggest market..please see below..


Cyclingnews.com users come from these countries:

* 45.2% United States
* 7.3% United Kingdom
* 6.2% Germany
* 5.3% Australia


.....so the question is... given your unbelievable response to your viewers to this point...what on god's earth are you doing to this site and why?...are just incompetent or just way out of your depth...

...again I ask you ...just return the old site ahd everything will be fine...because as it stands you are really mucking up a great site...

Yours Humblblee

Blutto

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

Race Stats

To the Editor, to Susan,

As i said many times before, i have no problem with the new design if the users are given the same complete information as on the "old" site. But it is still incomplete.

For Example: I am still waiting for the complete Results for the TT-Championships of Sweden (only 5 riders are listed; this weak information i can get on any "cheap" site). The results of Belarus are completely missing, both TT and Stage-Race! Imagine those races were held more than one week ago.

Such mistakes just did not happen before. Thats why i liked cyclingnews always.

But i still have hope

 

[nmwildog]

ball buster

Emory,
apparently you didn't get Pedro's point as you are too busy trying to be a smart a**. If you will take the time to read the previous 105 pages of posts you might get a clue. If, as I suspect, your attention span is too short please just keep quiet and speak when you are spoken to. Like any well behaved child.

 

[antonia]

heck of a job

It's been weeks of patching now, but this site still feels like a bunch of plumbers given the job to refresh the Mona Lisa. For some reason I assume CN the highest concentration of expertise and passion in the world of cycling. But somewhere in the pipeline has to be sitting a real ape.

WHY change the live report? Why change the format of the ITT results? It's a well established standard to give the full time for the winner/leader and the time gaps for the followers. Now you give us the full time for all the riders. WHY change it? Did anybody complain? You want us to do the math? We're right in the middle of what is generally considered the most important race in the world. You're doing this job for centuries. It's ridiculous.

WHY change the live report format? Did anybody complain? If you change it, at least change it consistently. You can't have the latest entry on top of the page and the current standings at the bottom. It's a mess.

You repeatedly pronounced the same level of information as before. As mentioned by others it's in fact still a regression of information. For some of the national championships you now only give the first 25 finishers. It used to be a full list of results a year ago.

I still love this site. I tried to live without it. I keep coming back. You just keep it painful.

 

[Anonymous]

WHY change the live report?

Technical error, about to be fixed.

http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=1810

Why change the format of the ITT results?

I assume you mean the results in the live report, as these results here are as they have always been:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/96th-tour-de-france-gt/stages/stage-1/results

The results we post at the end of a live report are always a provisional rush job, and sometimes we don't have time to work out time gaps. For example, at the end of the 2007 prologue: http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/road/2007//tour07/?id=live/tour070

 

[titan_90]

Where is today's News Edition?

 

[masterstt]

Results

Having just read the Editors comments re fixing bugs, I certainly don't see any improvement. Check out the Giro Donne - pity if we wanted to see actual results as you can't - they have been chopped off!

As for live feed of the 'Tour', or trying to find information quickly, I have given up - the 'Le tour' web site is far more friendly and loads quicker.

As for pages loading quicker - well, if it takes 10secs for a Forum page to load, I can't see how that is quicker, and other pages in the system are just as bad - I got sick of timing them as had better things to do and will find the information elsewhere.

I'm not against change, but how about testing things properly and don't impelement just as a major tour is coming up which you know is popular with not only cyclists, but also the 'average joe blow' - will put them off the web site very quickly!

Still very disappointed with the site despite the claims being made by the editor! I have worked in IT long enough to know you don't put something out until its been well tested and 'vetted' by real users, not just those in the office!

 

[Greg Johnson]

Where is today's News Edition?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/editions/first-first-edition-cycling-news-monday-july-6-2009

It's the first thing linked under 'news editions' on the homepage.

Cheers
Greg Johnson

 

[BroDeal]

I am liking the new design more now that a lot of the issues have been fixed.

It would be nice if there were more than three news editions where you can see the headlines of the items contained within.

 

[ianfra]

I don't think it has improved at all. I sent the editors a polite email and had absolutely no response. The typography of the results listing is absolutely disbolical. And navigation is still very difficult. Indeed, if you were a CN virgin then you'd be unlikely to find the full results of stages. As I said much earlier the site has not been designed by people who look at it from the perspective f someone who's not been to this town before! The signposts have been put up by people who know where they are going. So PLEASE someone - tell me the best alternative site to visit. I am now getting my Tour de France info from the official TdF site. What CN lacks now are the results of smaller races so I wish to find a more comprehensive site somewhere.
GREG: Can you not listen to your readers before we all drift away?

 

[Greg Johnson]

I am liking the new design more now that a lot of the issues have been fixed.

It would be nice if there were more than three news editions where you can see the headlines of the items contained within.

It's coming along. There's some things that have been fixed that still require more attention - like the 'view full gallery' links that don't work as a user would expect in multi-stage races. But we're continuing to iron out all these details.

Not sure how many more editions we can expand on the homepage due to page length. With that said, I see no reason why we can't expand many more on the news (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news) page - there's plenty of space. Will add it to the list.

Cheers
Greg Johnson

 

[Anonymous]

Having just read the Editors comments re fixing bugs, I certainly don't see any improvement. Check out the Giro Donne - pity if we wanted to see actual results as you can't - they have been chopped off!

They are showing here for me, on the page linked from the home page:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/20th-giro-donne-2-1/stages/stage-3/results

If you're not seeing them, then my guess is that you need to clear your browser cache or force-refresh to get the most recent version of the CSS.

 

[arrhythmia rules]

Sorry but I have given up. Go onto the site and check for recent news stories - go to the latest news section and thats a scroll where it used to be in front of you. Only there are news stories above it not listed. Its just a confusing mess. I read Pez for news stories, well written informative even if the latest gossip is sometimes a bit slower.

Live report. Velo news is now much better.

 

[andrewblackford]

I have been using this website for years as my main link to obtaining news from the cycling world but have only joined the forum pages today. I have to say I prefer the old website to this new one I find it complicated to navigate round and preferred all my stories to appear under one click on link. However my main gripe concerns the checking of results I have not been on a computer accessed the site and been able to view for example how many minutes/seconds the rider in say 161st place in The Tour is behind the leader. The adverts/links that appear on the right side of the screen seem to encroach on this important piece of information. Maybe it's me and if so what am I doing wrong? But at the moment I just want the old site back.

 

[Greg Johnson]

Maybe it's me and if so what am I doing wrong? But at the moment I just want the old site back.

Not you, it's your browser. We've had a few people report this issue - their browser has cached the old CSS.

If you hit F5 to force the page to completely reload, that should solve your issue. If not, drop us a line at cyclingnews@cyclingnews.com.

Thanks
Greg Johnson