Jump to content

Lets be honest about this site


Miki
 Share

Recommended Posts

I have tried a few searches over the last few weeks, none never really that succesful. I have been timed out on numerous occasions, I have had many periods of slow and very slow speed, even though I am on ADSL. There are glitches all over the show, I have the dreaded yellow page of unreadable text regularly come up.

So all in all LF, you surely have been sold a bum steer. If anyone of us members had bought a computer with a programme like this, we, well I certainly would have, marched straight back in to the shop and slammed it on the counter and demanded the money back, wouldn't you ?

I do not go on many forums but all the others are much faster. I will say the site is still excellent in its content and in its membership but, the site itself, surely has to improve in to a much slicker, much faster site than it is now.

Admin have promised better days ahead, just like Spurs really !!

Seriously though, when will this site ever be a "proper" site without the constant problems ?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 59
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

[quote]Be thankful. If this site was faster, I'd post even more. Logging on to LF is becoming a daunting prospect.[/quote]

It is what make me log in as well. The mystery, will it be slow, will it be fast (wasn't that a song we used to sing?) will I get the screen of doom, will I ever get to the Post bag from the Owners thread in less than a month.....................

I await the hundred SB posts a day when LF send the bailiffs in to the sods who sold 'em this pile of c***.  Don't 'old yer breff, as they say in Peckham 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm sure I don't remember it being like this when running the previous forum software (or am I being “blinkered” ?)

Also, from memory I cannot see any great new features in this forum software. In fact as a non Internet Explorer user I recon I'm worse off. Again, am I forgetting any previous frustrations ?

Over the last week or so I have the impression that there are fewer postings - again, I have not counted and its just an impression.

Do other people have the same/similar or totally different opinions ?

However, it has to be said, it is free, we don’t pay for using it, so I hesitate about being too critical.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No I still don't like the new format. Yes I still find it slow. Yes, I think less people are posting. I think part of this is due to the fact that you cannot reply direct to posts - or you can reply to them, but your reply could be 3 pages on and completely out of contexts by the time the reader gets to it and then they haven't a clue what you are talking about. I still cannot understand why the old system was thrown out. I believe that we have lost a lot of good people over this. The only good thing that has come out of it has been that there has been less temptation to me to break off from my work to look at it and when I do find time to visit LF, there is a lot less to read after as much as a week compared to when I used to visit it daily. Therefore, my visits are much briefer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote]No I still don't like the new format. Yes I still find it slow. Yes, I think less people are posting. I think part of this is due to the fact that you cannot reply direct to posts - or you can repl...[/quote]

Jill,

You can use the quote option as above if you are responding to a comment in the first couple of lines or cut and paste the relevant section if it is elsewhere and put it into italics if you want. Unlike yourself I certainly prefer the new format as I can go straight to the last postings without having to plough through the whole topic time after time  looking for any new postings.

If there are fewer postings, I think it is more likely to be as a result of the slowness of the site as  many members like to pop in out if they have just a couple of minutes to spare, unfortunately, this often is not possible when the site is on a go slow. I feel when this problem is righted we will see more activity.

Baz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I cannot use italic, bold, colours or anything just plain text - because although I use a PC I do not use Internet Explorer. Other forum software systems allow formatting, etc. from non-Internet Explorer browsers (which thus support MAC's, Linux, Unix, etc. as well).

From your response you have noticed that you can only “quote” the first few lines of a message (the forum software decides how much to include. On other forum software systems (e.g. phpBB) you can select which text from which messages you want to quote. When answering several points from one (or more messages) you can properly quote the texts you are responding to properly within your message.

When you get an e-mail notification about a reply, the e-mail link takes you to the top of the first page of the thread. Other forum software is a bit smarter about these links and take you to the page containing the message the e-mail is notifying you about. Some systems will even scroll the page to the exact message.

Some forum software will use the e-mail notification link to de-activate and re-activate e-mail notification. This means that for a popular thread you only get one notification that says “you will not receive further notifications until you visit the link”. The link in the notification e-mail takes you to the topic and “silently” re-enables the notification e-mails. This feature stops you receiving loads of notifications for the same thread.

And the list goes on.

Many of these features are relatively minor. However, it is often the minor features that make a bit of software a pleasure to use. With such “convenient” features people tend not to notice they are using a bit of software and can concentrate on the information and what people have written (basically the software just “gets on with it” and “does the right thing”). This LF forum software has all the signs of an immature software product. If you compare its “offering” to even some of the more entry level forum systems (e.g. the “open source” free YaBB system), it is weak. Whilst I’m sure subsequent revisions will improve, so will its competitors (it’s a “race” and the others have not a significant head start”). The architecture the forum system developers have selected has imposed constraints on where they can go.

Again I note that we do not pay for use of this forum and thus are in no position to be critical.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unfortunately the forum software was imposed upon us by Living France's publishers' IT people, who insist that ASP.net (a Microsoft system) is the only way to go. I don't know if these problems are general to ASP.net forums or if it is just the particular implementation that they chose for Archant's sites. Maybe sombody who understands software could throw some light on it?

What is definite is that the old software cannot be reinstated, and neither can any of the other forum programs be used on Archant's servers. So I for one am very sorry for everybody who is continuing to experience problems. It's not James' fault, in fact if it wasn't for him we'd be even worse off, I can assure you.

We have been promised an improved version of the software which is supposed to iron out the bugs (as we are being honest I would have expected a program that has reached version 3.4 to have had all the major problems ironed out and to work fully on a good selection of browsers, not just IE6). We have also been told that once certain issues with the rest of the LF site have been sorted out it, and the forum, can be moved to a different server platform that will improve speed and, hopefully, reliability.

However, we are not exactly holding our breath. The software developer's own website promised an August/September date for release of version 3.5, and is now saying that they are still working on it and are unable to give a target date.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting and please do not take any of my comments as being critical of individuals working for LF.

However, you made reference to “was imposed upon us by Living France's publishers' IT people, who insist that ASP.ne t (a Microsoft system) is the only way to go”. This is the classic scenario of IT “long term strategic architecture …” (and many thousands of other buzz words). A previous comment I made (very dull one) was that IT groups can often select “strategies” for their convenience rather than to meet user functionality. Putting it bluntly, such IT groups are generally expensive, invariable destructive (in that they have a very negative effect on users) and, in my experience should be changed. They are not helping LF but are rather hindering it.

Any IT group that “imposes” an inferior solution on a group of users (either internal or external) is not meeting the aims of IT. I can say with 100% confidence that Microsoft is not the only way to go. This IT group is absolutely wrong in saying Microsoft is the only way to go – it is merely one of many ways to go. Many successful companies do not go “the Microsoft route” (remember that Apple, Sun, IBM, etc. are all running successful businesses and they are not all Microsoft).

Whilst there are no requirements about subscribing to LF to participate in the forum, LF might want to remember that many participants will be LF subscribers and the quality of the form is reflecting of the company (all be it “some publisher’s IT group’s fault).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If LF are constrained by their publishers IT groups inadequate performance, they can look at having the forum hosted externally by a 3rd party company. This is neither expensive nor difficult and can be seamlessly integrated into the main LF “traditional” web site.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Without going into politics, and as I don't work for Living France or its publishing company, unfortunately I don't think your sensible suggestion is possible. The old forum was hosted by just such a third party, and it was a corporate policy to bring everything in house and standardise things that meant this had to change.

Although I don't work for Archant I have worked for large publishing companies in the past and that experience makes me sure that such publishers don't see their IT departments as 'inadequate'. I'm not saying this is the case at Archant, but certainly at other publishers, IT managers' decisions are made, and adopted by the company, with a view solely to standardisation and cost saving. Ease of use, fitness for purpose or keeping magazine staff, readers and advertisers happy are very low priorites indeed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote]Interesting and please do not take any of my comments as being critical of individuals working for LF.However, you made reference to “was imposed upon us by Living France's publishers' IT people, who ...[/quote]

Yeah, but.... very few people get sacked for choosing Microsoft.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree. Having worked in IT for too many years it always bugs me a bit when IT people lose sight of the entire reason for their existence – the users (employees, customers, suppliers, etc.). Forget about them and there is no point to what IT is doing. I have seen it in many companies (and probably been guilty of it myself) – you become wrapped-up in “architecture long term strategic implementation planning ….” and the users suffer.

I realise I might be a little bit “outspoken” but if LF want a forum, better to have one that works than one that doesn’t. If their own internal IT resources cannot provide one then go elsewhere.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Over the last couple of days I have noticed that this site is loading very much more quickly.

EDIT

On second thoughts - it is quite variable. Sometimes access is quite fast (though not upto ADSL expectations) and other times quite plodding. Perhaps it it related to time of dasy and traffic levels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought that - some days it takes ages, even on 1Mb broadband. I get timeouts waiting for individual pages to load, and I think that is because they are being updated with a new message at that moment.

On the Charities thread (where Wendy was pitched off) for some time I was seeing a third page with no messages on it.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

One aspect that may be helping things is that I recon there are far fewer people logged-on at any one time. There used to regularly be two (or more ?) lines showing the names of current users. Now most of the time it is a single line.

Also, I recon there are far fewer posts being made, which should speed things up. However, many of the (fewer) posts seem to be being duplicated by the forum software which is now making some threads difficult to read (as you can get e.g. Post A, Post B, Post C, Post B again, Post c again.

Because of speed and functionality issues I think people just are not bothering any more - which ironically is helping the speed (but not the software bugs).

I'm now finding it such "hard work", much of the enjoyment of visiting this site has gone and other French forums seem to be working, have lively and informative thread to the point I'm now asking myself "why" ?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote]One aspect that may be helping things is that I recon there are far fewer people logged-on at any one time. There used to regularly be two (or more ?) lines showing the names of current users. Now m...[/quote]

I'm guessing that the list of members shown as logged on or "active" may be only a proportion of those viewing. With 5000+ members - even if that's an inflated number as suggested by Will-le-C in another thread - I guess it's likely that while there may be a dozen registered users logged on and therefore 'visible' to participants, there may be many many more than that using the site and accessing threads but 'invisible' to the naked eye.

Re the response times of the site, I find that for the past few weeks now, I've been mostly unable to access the popular threads - 4 pages+ - as I just get timed out messages. Which is a shame as I love to see how far long-running threads have moved away from the original post!

Carole
Link to comment
Share on other sites

a couple of things please.

 

I have a short attention span and as a consequence get fed up when iit's painfully slow, as it is this afternoon.

 

However, I read and post far more frequently because of the layout and I really like some of the features. I don't know if they are integral to IE, but I like to be able to read the first few lines of something to see whether or not I want to open it up fully. Mind you that might just eb because it takes for ever to load when you try

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's Sunday 05 December and already this morning I have had more time outs than the Harlem Globetrotters. It usually get's back to normal by clicking "refresh" but it's a flipping strange way to read through posts on any forum.

James, go and see Mr Archie Archant and give him some stick from us poor suffering members.

Don't laugh but, it's got that bad, that this afternoon I have been easily talked in to going to a telethon boot sale. Just hope they've got my size.................

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A previous post referenced costs of the forum software. I have no knowledge of the particular software being used. However, the “forum standard” software phpBB is free. phpBB is used by many (some massive) forums and provides a high level of functionality and performance. Less used (but also free) is yaBB. Not quite as nice a user interface as phpBB decent performance, decent reliability and free. I thus think it unlikely that LF/Archant paid for the current forum software (which is not phpBB).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any IT group, when implementing a change to a system always has a “contingency plan”. I.e. what to do if it goes badly wrong. Contingency planning is part of being an IT professional.

The number of users on the site is dropping off fast. The number of posts seems to be dropping fast. Should this trend continue then it is possible the forum will become used by the few rather than its previous broad contributor base.

The performance is only one issue, the bugs and functionality issues will not be resolved by a hardware upgrade.

I would suggest that LF seriously consider implementing their contingency plan.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share


×
×
  • Create New...