Website layout

I quite like the overall look, but, as constructive criticism:

please, please, please have a link to most recent comments/ posts on the front page, so that you can go to comments with a single click from the front page.  The reviews, articles blogs etc are great, but the community aspect of road.cc is very important.  This is not at all to knock the writers-  indeed, I would say that a really special feature of the site has been the interactivity/ discussions between the reviewers and writers on the one hand, and readers on the other in the comments/ posts.   It is brilliant to see the reviewer responding to questions of criticisms of his review.  This is in danger of being lost.

A much more minor point, but a clearer distinction on the front page between news and reviews would be good.

I've checked in a few times but this is the first time I've actually bothered to log in since the changes.

I'm only checking to see if it has been changed to be readable or usable. Eventually I will stop.

There are enough comments in this thread to show what is wrong. The comments were a major feature and a way into stories and discussions. The whole community feel that it had has disappeared in a stroke.

I'd be interested to know what, if any, research or feedback was used to develop this new site.

It's not simply a matter of "I liked the old site". I just don't see how the new version sets road.cc apart from any other cycling website, which is why I'm hardly visiting any more.

No doubt the proof is in the numbers of impressions so maybe we're all wrong.

Hey guys, can you add a fix so the website opens in the feedly app browser? You've got 1,000 subscribers who can now no longer view the site via the app.

Have been a regular for over 5 years now, put up with the London centric thing and the "daily Mail"  of cycling click bait stuff but the new layout pffttt,  Bye, Bye.

First of all I don't mind the new layout and the main thing this upgrade has done was fix the issue where pages were taking 10 times as long to load (2-3 seconds) if you were logged in as opposed to if you weren't (0.2-0.3 seconds). Now that's fixed the site seems zippier. 

As with others I've got some reservations, so here's my wishlist:

• Return latest comments, forum posts and blog posts to the front page. Seems to have been a noticable drop off in comments since the new site went live and I think this is a contributory factor.
• The ability to see more articles on the front page. If I click the "More" button I'd like to see additional articles added to the front page rather than taking me to the archives (where there's only 10 articles per page and you often have to click through multiple pages to find the one your looking for). Whether this gets implemented or not, the "More" button would be useful at the bottom of the list of articles rather than the top. Otherwise you get to the bottom, realise the article you're looking for has gone and have to scroll back to the top to get to the "More" button.
• The "x Comments" hyperlink to take you straight to the comments on the article, not to the top of the article. In a lot of cases I've already read the article and I'm more interested in the comments - would like to jump straight there.
• A user preference setting to be able to default comments to "Oldest first" rather than "newest first" on every page. Just the way I like to see 'em.
• A list of "My comments" - maybe a new tab in the "Account" section so I can revisit the comments of an article from the point where I've posted on it.
• For some reason, neither Firefox or Chrome now recognise the comments box as a text field, meaning auto-spellchecking doesn't work in it. For pedants like myself, I hate making posts with spelling mistakes

All the suggestions primarily aimed at getting better user engagement with the site. I've definitely found it less easy to find and engage with what I want since the upgrade. Hope they're useful.

Is anyone taking note of these comments?

I'm getting seriously pissed off with all the CRAP ads cluttering up the Home page.

I don't mind ones that are relevant to cycling but what do I want with red diesel, PPI and other rubbish?

And I'm also missing the preview of previous comments.

One week on, and I just don't get on with the new layout at all.

The biggest issue remains the lack of the home page's "Latest activity" right hand panel, such as "On the forums..." latest comments  and new blog posts. Hiding that sort of thing makes the site look like it's just an unresponsive news aggregator, rather than an active meeting place between fellow cyclists (I too don't like the word Community).

Putting an advert where you think it might be a news article is sneaky and underhand.

Scrolling on an ipad is very juddery - possibly related to the pointless mini-zoom animation when you hover over a headline image.

The forum sorting issue appears to be resolved, but I don't recall there being sticky posts before which always remained at the top of the list.

And please don't auto-subscribe me to thread comments.

All told, it's simply not as good a site to visit as it used to be. 

As I said previously I don't really like the new layout. 

I used the right hand side of the previous home page to access individual comments, forum topics, news stories and blogs. It is now far far more inconvenient to access those. 2 or 3 clicks as opposed to one. Not much of an inconvenience but at my home broadband speed it's not great.

Also the news stories were in a logical ordered list which was easy to see as you scrolled down. The new layout just seems to be completely random.

its a shame really. I'll try to stick with it but really the negatives of the new layout outwhiegh any positives. Not that I am aware of any positives so far.

@phillbrown

Thanks for the feedback. Totally get what was said. I would say, why not just ask then?

However most of my concerns have been listed by edster99 so I won't just repeat.

What I'd like :

Clear distinction of ads / articles especially on home page

Home page to have initial view of content, not adverts.  (i.e. the top banner which I expect to see as site title is an advert.)

Not so much white space - it looks like the content is randomly thrown on a big white page

View of latest comments

Remove " in front of the quote link

Bring back comment editor

Don't autosubscribe to mails for thread comments

Take the rotator ads off the front page.    I dont mind 'real' ads, but rotators make it look like the site look like it is for adverts, not content.  That is actually what I come for.  The content is getting drowned out.

Aye Aye! I've gained a delete and edit button!    but now the " in front of the quote button looks even more bizarre 

As difficult as it is to hear that a planned upgrade has felt, to many, like a backwards step and even put some off from visiting the site as often, is there any official feedback from the road.cc team please?

I'm not averse to change and refreshing things at all but the old front page used to feel like an invitation to participate, the new one feels like a barrier. More often than not I was drawn to an article because of someone's comment in the 'latest' section or the signs of general argy and bargy in the forum. This, sadly feels more corporate, less inclusive, less good. Sorry

Oh dear.   I only ever vist on the desktop site :  Messy, messy, messy.  The 'quote' marks are very odd.  Losing the edit button is bad.  There's excessive quantities of white space everywhere.  Advertising is 'effective' - i.e intrusive.  Definitely missing the 'latest posts'.  Not much liking the fonts, but that might just be a user setting I can sort out.  Yes it's quicker, probably, but that never bothered me much anyway. 

If this is a solution to a speed problem, I'm a bit disappointed.

How the hell do you find your way around the site. No way to select various pages. Surely a list of sectiosn, eg forumn, reviews etc should be on the front page. Had to search for the forum via google to get here to moan.

Less news on that page but big enough to be read from space.

Cycling weekly here I come. Sorry.

Hmm interesting.

Take a perfectly good news page , remove most of the news and pretend its better.

Its bloody awful.

Where has the Fantasy Cycling gone?

Please bring back the Forum latest comments feature.

The site no longer loads in my RSS feeder, feedly. I guess you want me to see your new site!

I'm liking the good work I would recommend a darker font against the alternate grey background in the forum list of topics, the contrast levels are just wrong, ie there's not enough contrast.

Also it feels like there's a lot of white space in the bottom half of a lot of the pages. Plus the menus don't quite feel right, like they need either a bit more content or a bit less padding.

Other than that the load speeds are great, hopefully you'll get a good solid SEO boost instantly.

Cheers

Tony

http://bikesy.co.uk

edit: saying that I've just done a pagespeed insights and you're only scoring 49 which you could easily raise. Give me a shout if you need our help. Mark's got my details.

In the forum why does the new comments indicator not disappear when you goto that page and why are you not taken to those nerw comments? A tad annoying to say the least. Yes speed is good but come on tech guys it can't be that harrd to sort this issue out after all it worked on the old platform.

Hate to be harsh on what surely has meant a lot of work, but I do agree with the style over substance sentiment espoused by others here. On the flip side, it does look very pretty. Maybe this is a carbon brake track situation, an upgrade that has some advantages and some disavanges and you kind of learn to deal with as it gets better over time.

On a more specific note: a little more shading would be nice, particularly for stickies, sidebars and stuff with in thin baby blue fonts; I definetely miss the promimence of news and comments in the old site; and while it is much faster for my desktop  the layout has caused some issues for my iPad particularly on Chrome.

And another thing. All the 'likes' have reset on the 'Pictures of Your Bike' page. They're all back to zero.

and although I have an 'edit' button, when I go to edit a post there is a message saying "This field has been disabled because you do not have permission to edit it".

This website suddenly got a whole lot less compelling. Not all change is better.

You used to be able to use a photo that when clicked on linked to a larger photo hosted externally. Now the photo in the forum is just a tiny link arrow.

This change has ruined a lot of the 'Pictures of your Bike' forum.

I really miss the 'latest forum comments' section on the front page.

So many websites are going this way, mobile optimised and look terrible on a PC or laptop. Is it beyond the wit of web designers to adapt to the device on which the site is viewed? Plenty of websites do that now.

It feels sad

Agreed with all above. With ads and product reviews all mixed in together, the 'News' items on the front page get swamped. There will be less comments and less traffic, panic stations will sound. It looks more like an overblown shop not a community website. Well it is free, but expect further evolution.

I don't mind the layout on my full web browser (not tried it on mobile yet), but losing the comments isn't a good move.  When I come to the site, I first scan the headlines, then the latest comments in the side bar, clicking on the interesting ones.  Without the comments, the site doesn't feel as accessible.  I'm presented with a series of articles, but lack the ability to engage in the conversation without dropping into each article and scrolling down.  Sure, the number of comments against the story will tell me if anything is being posted,  but that doesn't tell me if they are worth reading - I don't know, for example, if an article about infrastructure has descended into a helmet debate!