Website layout

I’ve checked in a few times

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
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.

First of all I don’t mind the

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.

One week on, and I just don’t

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. 

@phillbrown
@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.

Super Domestique wrote:

Super Domestique wrote:

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 had a good chat with Tony, the Editor, at the weekend whilst out riding and he said that they are fully aware of the comments that have been made along with peoples concerns of missing features/things in the wrong places. He told me that the team are working behind the scenes on building a “snagging list” of all of the changes/adjustments that may need to be made and will sit down with the developer to iron out any creases.

What would be far more useful for them is, rather than a list of comments informing them of which website you are going to read in future, constructive comments for example:

“The features I valued on the old site are:

• The recent forum topics
• The recent comments
• The ability to edit pre-upgrade comments/posts e.g. Metric Century Challenge“

Let’s all accept the fact that the site has now changed and, as much as we love or loath it, it’s not going to change back to the old site any time soon so we have to learn to accept and embrace it. Anyone who struggles, needs to read “Who moved my cheese? by Dr Spencer Johnson.”

giff77 wrote:

mattsccm wrote:

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.

 

there is a box with a number of lines on it towards the top left. Click on that and a drop down menus appears. It’s on both the mobile and desktop versions. 

Not for me (on Chrome). Actually the menu-ing system is ok.  Its the entry to every section being at most 10% content , and the rest advertising etc… thats really not working for me.  Its a shame but I’m going to be visiting a whole lot less.