New website

[Andrew McHarg]

That's irresponsible. An old system should always be backed up. I can't see the new system ever being as good as the old one. This is a CS loss.

Andrew

As usual, you make sweeping comments without qualifying anything you write. Only once do I recall you actually being specific about something on the new website (the history archives) which was quickly fixed. Since then nothing contructive has come from you whatsoever, despite myself (and others) answering many of the concerns people have had as best we can. And, as I've alluded to before, it's actually a fact that none of the features that existed on the old website have been removed from the new website, as you seem to be suggesting. You also fail to see the big picture (which I have also written about in the past) that the changes to the website have not only been for the benefit of front-end users, but mainly - in fact - for the benefit of people who give up a hell of a lot of their own time to keep Chess Scotland running for little or no remuneration. Many of the backend facilities (that you cannot see) now exist to allow us to distribute the significant load of maintaining the website and keeping the content good and relevant across a wider array of people, as well as creating a system so that when some of our current contributors step aside (as is inevitable) it's much easier to pass the job onto someone else (i.e. they don't need programming experience or a crash-course in web design).

Obviously I appreciate that not everyone is going to like the new website and there will be differences of opinion regarding the way that things look etc. But, we are listening to the feedback, as I can demonstrate with a few of the changes we have made since the website was launched:

1) The Google ReCaptcha has been removed from the login box of the website as the feedback we received was that it's a little OTT. I agreed, and we removed it.

2) The results page had a long list of results (unlike the old file structure) and it was difficult to find the ones people were looking for. I agreed, and we have introduced a tree menu file structure into it to make it easier to find results.

3) The website has had some problems working on Samsung Galaxy phones due to a technical issue. I have spoken to those who have experienced this problem and a fix has been identified and will be implemented shortly.

4) George suggested the website had a lot of white space, that the font appeared large and there was too much space between rows of text. Others have suggested that the font is slightly too light. I've written this feedback down and our plan is to review it and make some subtle changes to the font.

5) Another of George's pieces of feedback suggested that scrolling down to find what he wants was a more obvious requirement on the new website than it seemed to be on the old and asked if we could budge everything up a bit. I don't really agree that this is an issue, but I accept it's a subjective thing. Unfortunately we are limited in this regard as it would be difficult to rearrange everything to make it look more squashed. But I did move the Upcoming Events module up on the left-hand column so that it's easier to access without scrolling particularly far down.

There are other things, but I'm not going to list them all. The point I'm making is that we are listening to feedback and taking action where we agree with the feedback to make the website better for the users. And we will - of course - continue to do this.

Now for some more facts. The website took approximately four months to create, from start to launch. This included my time and the time of another programmer. Obviously we weren't working on it full time; we have other jobs as well. Months since launch have now past with no serious technical malfunctions or performance issues. As you should be able to imagine, the process of undoing all of this just to revert to the old website would be extensive, time consuming, and - despite what you may think - a technological leap backward. And, short of the new website having a complete meltdown, it's not something that I would personally consider doing. So your suggestion that someone seconds your motion to take this step is remarkably asinine. As Andy said - this simply won't happen.

So, perhaps instead of your continued negative comments you could instead write some constructive feedback that perhaps we can do something about?