New site design

[Returnofthewolf]

Maybe I am the odd one of the lot, but I REALLY despise the new design.

Ditto, BIG thumbs down. It was perfect before.

 

[Toaster]

Cyclingnews editorial guys, I think you have not understood the main selling point of your site. Simple to use with the information at your finger tips and easy to read and navigate. Just like Wikipedia, you had a simple uncluttered layout and were easy to use, that's why it worked.

Right on!!!

Also the daily News digest is/ was key. I don't have to have each article linked, like you now have. The daily digest with the article needs to stay...if that goes...many user will too.

Keep it short , simple short....not the fancy stuff please.

 

[adithorp]

What is it about "New and Improved" that makes me think "Altered and ruined"?

The new look is slow and clunky. It's not just my connection; At work it won't load properly at all. The pictures, headlines and text all overlap.

I've been a reader for 10 years or more but I won't be any longer if this is how it's going to be. Pages opened quiker back when I first started to read it than it does today. I don't want fancy banners. I'm not interested in animated headlines. I want news and results...and I want it easy to find!

Does anybody know of a good site for cycling news?

adi

 

[Mikael]

After having watched todays stage in the Tour de Suisse I did something I have done 100s of times before. Went to cyclingnews.com to check out the profile of tomorrows stage. Of course I noticed the new design and thought well ok. I found the Tour de Suisse section, clicked on stage 4 and found nothing !

Looking around at the Tour de Suisse I found a lot of information was missing that used to be available, no preview, no live report from completed stages and also no access to the Tour de Suisse of previous years. Of course I also found the archive.

But like others I would like to encourage you to keep publishing as much as you have always done and not cut down on contents. Also I would like if the archives would be updated so that in 2015 we will be able to go to cyclingnews.com to check out what happened in stage 3 of the Tour de Suisse 2009 - just like today we can find everything about what happened in
previous years.

Cyclingnews is called the Bible for a reason and that reason is that at cyclingnews.com you can find anything you want to know about a cycling race and you just know that if it is not published at cyclingnews it is not available. This is the position of cyclingnews in the market and what makes your site unique compared to all the others.
Profiles of a stage can easily be found at the website of the race and websites of newspapers, sportspapers, tv-channels etc also have up-to-date news, interesting interviews and blogs about cycling. But cyclingnews is (hope it is not used to be) the place where you could find everything in one place.

 

[allezkmiec]

STRONGLY dislike new design

I hate to pile on here, but I too just registered to voice my displeasure with the new site. All the things I loved about the old site (fast load times for dialup, clean, uncluttered page design, no race results spoilers, front-page links to Live Reports, etc) is gone. It's been replaced by a hamster-dance mess of animation and clutter and far too much Flash. Many of us out there are still on slow connections; the new site is very slow-loading, and bogs my computer down like crazy.

I hope the site's admins will take the dozens, if not hundreds, of negative comments about the new design to heart. We all love the site and appreciate it greatly... that's why we're all posting about it! Please bring the site back to, if not the old design, at least a version with all the salient features of the old design. Change for its own sake is no good at all.

 

[allezkmiec]

Add me to the list as well. Epic fail.

 

[Anonymous]

good god.. what have you done..

Positives...
the layout of the page for the tour de france is nice with all the stages down one side and tour related news on the other

negatives....
+how much wasted space, with more and more people using netbooks, or mobiles to browse the old primerly text site was great.. this is just a bloated mess
+where is the race calender gone with all the years events on.. i cant find it anymore
+in fact what the hell have you done with all the races.. (the races down the left.. either have pics with all of them, or pics with none of them.. whats with this shoddy some have pics some dont design)
+ i just simply dont like it.. the ease of use (which is really what GOOD webdesign is about) has just completely vanished
+mobile use.. works with opera mobile on full screen.. on re-rendered view (bearing in mind nearly 30% of mobiles run opera) is a complete mess... all the info you need ends up at the bottom..

if it wasnt the main source of information i wouldnt be coming here anymore, its that awful... if anyone does know of somewhere more functional let me know..

sorry guys.. big thumbs down from me

 

[titan_90]

I agree with the previous three posts. I liked the old design, much easier to navigate and see what you have already read. And I loved how all the days news was posted in one single update other than huge stories. It looks like a bikeradar.com clone

 

[fergnago]

i thought i had gone to bike radar by mistake

 

[titan_90]

I assume you've adopted the bike radar format? That is not a good thing. The old site was great in so far as you could read all the news on one page. You did not have to navigate about.

The simplicity of the old site was it's beauty. People seem to confuse complex functionality and multiple menus with design flair. Think about the design classics of the modern era they are classics because of their simplicity.

I'm afraid it's far from being a triumph.

+1

It is horrible bring back the old site! If I liked bikeradar I would of used the original we don't need a clone of a bad design

 

[Anonymous]

Cyclingnews editorial guys, I think you have not understood the main selling point of your site. Simple to use with the information at your finger tips and easy to read and navigate. Just like Wikipedia, you had a simple uncluttered layout and were easy to use, that's why it worked.

i think that is a very good example.. a concern that was expressed before the switch..

it will be very interesting to see over the next few months how traffic compares with previous years.. or if competition springs up from somewhere

 

[fourstagesinoneday]

there seem to be a lot of recent results missing in the new design compared to the old one still at:

http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/


Tour de Korea, Kor (2.2)
June 5 - 14: Stage 8 - Full results, Stage 7 - Full results, Stage 6 - Full results, Stage 5 - Full results, Stage 4 - Full results, Stage 3 - Full results, Main & start list

Iurreta-Emakumeen Bira, Spa (2.1WE)
June 11-14: Stage 1 - Full results & report, Main & start list

Ronde de l'Oise, Fra (2.2)
June 11-14: Stage 1 - Brief results, Main

34th Thüringen-Rundfahrt, Ger (2.2U)
June 7-13: Stage 7 - Full results, Stage 6 - Full results, Stage 5 - Full results & photo, Stage 4 - Full results, Stage 3 - Full results, Stage 2 - Full results, Stage 1 - Full results, Main

Tour de Luxembourg, Lux (2.HC)
June 3-7: Stage 4 - Full results & report, Stage 3 - Full results, report & photo, Stage 2 - Full results & report, Main & Preview

also some new pages seem to be empty e.g.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/durango-durango-emakumeen-saria-1-2

=======

tried new site on my mobile in both Opera Mini and Nokia Symbian and it's basically unuseable. Far too much flash + too many elements. Why the background image? Takes forver to load even using the phone on WiFi.

 

[E.Boss]

I don't like it either, if it stays this way, then I will definitly switch to other sites.
The points allready made in this topic, I totally support.

Another thing is the site on my mobile phone. Normally when I'm at work I view Cyclingnews on my mobile phone, worked nice and fine. Now it is comlete garbage, it just doesn't work.

I really hope things will go back to how it was, because this is more then dissapointing. Trust me, I'm not the negative type, but there is nothing positive to mention.

 

[ehudk5]

Can't really find anything...

Bad design.period.

You tried here to compact the entire content to take less space with the same amount of data, it's BAD.
Can't really follow any results properly, I was sure that I browsing in BikeRadar site!!!

At least 1/3 of the width is being wasted on publicity!

You can't claim to be a very informative site, while spending 1/3 of the page width on publicity.

Example:
When clicking the news tab, we're getting 2 titles align to each other:
1. The News Headlines Last updated: June 15, 18:21
2. News Editions Last updated: April 20, 20:08

The 2 titles has 2 months difference!!!

 

[titan_90]

Simple and elegant beats cluttered and hard to navigate any day, bring back the old site.

 

[whatajoke]

i won't get used to it...

People hate change. I will get used to the changes. So will almost everyone else.

Here's a change that I won't get used to: the main page now show's who won a particular stage. Back in the day, and I've been a follower of cn.com for a long time, they took away the live feed after stages. Many voiced their opinion and they brought that back. Why? Because with races in so many geos, and not always televised or streamed, you can't always "watch" the race. Reading the play-by-play was the next best thing.

Now, though, they've ruined even that, by showing the winner on the main page.

That stinks. It isn't something I will "get used" to. And, it was the only reason I ever came to this site - because they have the best live feed for the races.

 

[E.Boss]

Please bring back the old site, this really is awfull.

- The topics you haven't read would normally be lit up. Now you can't see if you read something or not.

- The results, looks everything but nice.

- Where are the profiles of the stages?

- Navigation has become worse

- At work I visited Cyclingnews on my phone at least 5 times a day. This new site just doesn't work on my phone.

- If it stays this way, then I will probably be a regular at other sites like cqranking, because this just doesn't work for me. After years of visiting this site daily, this is a real let down for me. I can only hope everything will go back to normal.
What was the reason to change it in the first place?

 

[awesometown]

Improve your experience in firefox...

If you are using firefox load up adblock pro. You can block out the flash nonsense (hey that works literally and figuratively!) at the top of the page. It makes it that much less painful.

 

[Mikemcee]

Ugh

Terrible. Bring back Bill's!!

 

[whatajoke]

Do not want!

I do not want to see spoilers for race info. I have always liked being able to see the live report, stage details (where did they go?) and other information about races without seeing results, just in case I want to see TV/video first.

This

(by the way, this is the most annoying message board ever. i cannot use my real name because the syllables, when combined, have letters that combine to form a bad word, and because you cannot give a one-word reply. "please keep your replies to 10 characters or more... thus this note... the new cn.com site and this message board are, in internet parlance, "teh suxors.")

 

[coloradochris]

Really?

After supposedly having lots of feedback and working really hard on the new site, this is what you came up with? The old site was much more user friendly and uncluttered. True, the new site has a lot of stuff, but that is just what it is, stuff. The old site had all the info right there on the opening page, now it seems hard to find which news is new or old or not something I want to read. Please get rid of the excess and make it simpler for those of us who are not tech savvy and just want to be able to find the news and maybe some tech articles. These things used to be readily available, and now I have to spend time searching for them. Thank God for RoadBikerWeekly. Remember, bigger doesn't mean better, better means better. And lastly, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Keep up the good reporting though.
Chris

 

[JimVehe]

I to just register to add my name to the list of those who do not like the new site. I used to check this site many times a day, not any more

 

[manolo]

New design

I agree with several others here. The old site was better - warmer - easier - familiar. It'd be very nice to go back to the old one. But I guess after spending all this time and effort redesigning. it won't be changed back. I left VeloNews after one of their redesigns. If I happened to find someone who was cloning your old site I'd leave in a heartbeat. It's annoyingly overdesigned. There was a certain charm in the old one. It almost felt like a newspaper with it columns. I think you should keep all of the elements of the old one. It's a nuisance that once you to navigate a news feature page the right hand side is so full of advertisements, I feel like I'm looking at a newspaper shopper. I hate it. It's prettier, but I hate it.

 

[ElChingon]

I hope to see this thread referenced in the "Whats hot on the Forum" blurb

 

[awesometown]

I hope to see this thread referenced in the "Whats hot on the Forum" blurb

Even if it was, you'd never be able to find it!