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About road.cc’s new design: what we've changed and why

We redesigned the site, here's why. We hope you like it!...

You might have noticed, but road.cc has changed! We’ve rolled out a new design. For lots of reasons.

Why have you changed it?

We haven’t redesigned road.cc for about five years, and it was due a revamp. Since then we’ve added a number of other websites to our portfolio, and we wanted to make it easier to find content from those sites too: it’s all about bikes, after all, and many of you ride lots of different bikes. We've added a top menu to give you access to the newest content from all of our sites.

new multi-site menu

The majority of our traffic is now on mobile. That wasn’t the case five years ago, so this time around we’ve optimised the site for smartphones. We’ve been working a lot on the load speed of the site, and we’ll continue to optimise the site so it loads faster and is easier to navigate on the go.

We’ve fully redesigned the home page, with the aim of exposing more of the site’s content and giving you as a reader more to choose from. Nearly a fifth of our page views are of the home page, and we want people to have as many options to read on as possible.

We’ve increased the number of featured slots at the top of the home page, and reduced the duplication in the sections below. The news live blog is a major part of our news offering and we’ve prioritised that: the latest live blog will always be at the top of the site.

road.cc review filters

For reviews, we’ve added filters to the review sections so that you can find the products you’re looking for more easily. On the individual reviews we’ve separated out the key facts so you can get an overview of the product’s performance, and read the full review if you’re interested in more detail.

We've moved comments to a threaded display and the default is now to show the newest comments first. This is for a number of reasons. If you want to comment but don't want to go through the whole thread, then the commenting box is now at the top. and replies to comments sit in a logical way so you can follow individual conversations. You can still change the ordering of comments as before if you prefer a different view.

Some of it needs fixing

Obviously there's some stuff we know doesn't work quite right. You can't see the comment ordering menu on mobile, for example, and you can't click on the comment count icon to take you straight to the comments. And hawkinspeter can't upload any squirrel images. But we're working through them and they'll be sorted in due course.

There are so many ads now!

There aren’t any more ads than there were before. We’ve changed the sidebar ad logic so that they stay in view for longer when you’re scrolling down the page, so at times it may feel a bit more ad-heavy, especially if you’re on a big desktop screen. We’ll continue to work on the balance of ads and content. For the redesign we’ve tried to keep the ads out of the main copy flow to make the site easier to read.

What’s next?

After fixing all the stuff that we broke in the redesign, the next step for us is to integrate our websites further, so it’s easier and more understandable to move between road.cc, off.road.cc and ebiketips. The road.cc redesign will be rolling out to the other websites, and there will be more content from the other sites on the home page of road.cc.

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

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59 comments

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jollygoodvelo | 4 years ago
0 likes

Getting used to it slowly.  If I could request one thing it would be a mode where all content is listed in 'most recent' order regardless of type or priority...?

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dave atkinson replied to jollygoodvelo | 4 years ago
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that's the case basically everywhere except the very top of the home page.

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Hirsute | 4 years ago
0 likes

Not liking that latest comments are on one page only and that you have to swipe across to see them.
Whereas other items are listed vertically.
Much better when latest comments was visible across the site.

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ktache replied to Hirsute | 4 years ago
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But they have been slowly moving up the homepage.

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Hirsute replied to ktache | 4 years ago
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Have they ? I seem to be swiping down as much as ever to find them

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ktache replied to Hirsute | 4 years ago
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They were below forum topics and opinions.

I think from "their" replies to our requests that "they" understand our need for easy access to coments.

Fingers crossed.

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Hirsute replied to ktache | 4 years ago
1 like

I can only accept your better observation!

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ktache replied to Hirsute | 4 years ago
1 like

And I have yet to see multiple posts.

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dave atkinson replied to ktache | 4 years ago
1 like

latest comments coming to all pages soon

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ktache replied to dave atkinson | 4 years ago
0 likes

Cheers Dave,

I have been impressed by the backward compatibility of the archeive articles, and somehow you've even managed to nest and thread the comments that have used quotes.

A little niggle I have experienced is when I try and click on the Road.cc logo to go to the homepage, even without going near the top bar, the offroad and ebike.cc articles will drop down and take me there.

I'm still intriuged by Bike Live, but McAfee keep warning me not to go there.

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matthewn5 | 4 years ago
2 likes

I miss the listing of the most recent comments that used to float under the adverts on the right hand side of the page. Is that coming back?

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NPlus1Bikelights | 4 years ago
2 likes

Please remove link hijacking on embedded tweets sources (they wrongly go via Skim Resources the same as ad referrals). Also pretty sure against Twitter /IG TOS.

 

Edit: typo.

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peted76 | 4 years ago
0 likes

Top bar rollover for latest news is clever, I likey lots (although I'm currently getting a couple of broken images when hovering over road.cc, which are: NMOTD and LiveBlog.

Also search in the top bar is very logical, good positioning for that.

Single sign on is great.

Loving the new live blog format. 

Getting used to the new layout and seemingly extra content view on the home page, but loving the lack of duplication.

After an initial shock, I'm loving the comments changes, they seem more logical in a slightly strange way.. cause.. new. 

Is there a new font being used or font size? I can't reference the old site so can't quite put my finger on it.. either or, the site just seems calmer and more serene because of it. 

Top job team.

Also, today I discovered a new squirrel - 'Malabar giant squirrel', you're welcome.

 

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hawkinspeter replied to peted76 | 4 years ago
4 likes

Thanks.

//i.imgur.com/7IwnWdO.png)

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peted76 replied to hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
0 likes

Don't be a secret squirrel, how do I embed images?

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hawkinspeter replied to peted76 | 4 years ago
1 like

Just put a link to the image (not the web page) between [ img ] and [ \img ] tags. (Without the spaces - I put those in so that they weren't recognised as tags).

The image will have to be accessible in everyone else's browser, so http://imgur.com is a good free image hosting site that can be easily used. In firefox, you can right-click an image and choose "view image" to get the URL for the image itself.

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dave atkinson replied to hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
2 likes

the image upload button will be back though, in due course  1

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ktache replied to dave atkinson | 4 years ago
0 likes

Thank you HP for that, and thank you Dave for the promise of the simple way.

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Organon | 4 years ago
2 likes

I just haven't come back to the site so often since the change. I mainly look on desktop and half of the screen is now ad space. I can't tell what is new or old, it's just a mess. I hope this works for you on mobile, but it isn't working for me. 

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mdavidford | 4 years ago
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Defaulting to threaded comments is fine if that's what the demand is for and there's a way to switch views*, but it's pretty infuriating that it doesn't remember my preference, so I have to toggle the view on every page I visit. Hoping this is a bug, rather than a design decision?

[*although this is no longer working properly for me on Galaxy Tab S4 - it was initially, but now I can't select from the menu using touch - have to connect an external keyboard and use arrow keys and Enter. It also doesn't recognise me tapping the comment area to begin writing - have to tab into put using the external keyboard.]

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mdavidford replied to mdavidford | 4 years ago
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So it seems like the comment ordering menu works fine as long as I'm not logged in, but as soon as I log in it flips over to the shonky version that doesn't work without a keyboard.

Remembering my preference is still not working.

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Hirsute | 4 years ago
2 likes

I'm quite happy to pay for an ad free login, but I'm not sure the option is available. Other sites use this facility but maybe it is a scalable option only.

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dave atkinson replied to Hirsute | 4 years ago
1 like

not yet... but watch this space, etc

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brooksby | 4 years ago
3 likes

I'm sorry Dave but it really doesn't work for me. I don't want to spend so much of my data allowance on sucking down adverts, since nothing seems to work if I'm using an ad blocker . I liked being able to see latest comments on a forum post or article, before logging back in. Doesn't work for me at all, I'm afraid.

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Luca Patrono replied to brooksby | 4 years ago
0 likes

It doesn't play nice with dedicated ad blockers, but NoScript will work if you selectively target domains.

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CygnusX1 | 4 years ago
3 likes

By the way. particularly like the summary on the live blog allowing you to jump to a story of interest

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CygnusX1 | 4 years ago
3 likes

> And hawkinspeter can't upload any squirrel images.

Literally laughed out loud at this. He must be going nuts!  3

Seems to be an issue with loading the comments on the desktop version, butis okay on mobile - which is my main device for accessing the site.

Although this could be related to ad-blockers (i run ABP on my laptop, and they loaded - a little slower than I would like - after I disabled it for the site). I notice someone else commented they had something similar with μBlock.

Anyway, appreciate the work done by the tech fairies (and all the hacks banging away at keyboards to bring us all the content)

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hawkinspeter replied to CygnusX1 | 4 years ago
1 like

//i.imgur.com/MQODB47.png)

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peted76 replied to hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
2 likes

He's back in business!

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Hirsute replied to peted76 | 4 years ago
1 like

No that was a simple image link using BB code

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