You’ll probably have spotted that the site now looks a bit different. We’ve been working on a new design behind the scenes for a while and, while we’d planned to hold off on pushing it live until Christmas, we’ve done so slightly early.
This is because for about a month now, the site has been creaking a bit. This is partly due to traffic and the size of the comment database, but that’s been aggravated by some very aggressive botNet activity targeting the site. For those wondering: we get targeted by these a fair bit, not just because we’re running on WordPress but also because you – our readers – are often surprisingly important people. That means we’re a juicy target for bad actors to try to stick malware on to try and get into your work networks. Don’t worry everyone, we’ve got your back!
I’ve been working on a new hosting setup to mitigate both of these, and optimise even further a whole bunch of bits of code that have to do a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes. This has included migrating to a new overarching host, increasing our server and database power and a whole bunch of other stuff I won’t bore you with.
This is all more expensive but thanks to your continued support via Patreon we are within budget and I’m confident we can continue never to run ads on the site (livin’ the dream). Thanks to everyone who donates. Honestly, we couldn’t do this without you.
Anyway, all of this does mean we’ve pushed this new design live slightly sooner than I would have liked. I think I’ve finished knocking the edges off of it, but modern web design is an ever-moving target of weird browser and device combos. So if you do experience any issues, please DM me on Twitter or comment here with your device, your browser and the screen resolution. I need all three of these things to be able to spot and fix any issues, which I will do if I can.
Hey! where has ‘active articles’ gone?!
Yeah… about that… sorry, but I’ve had to leave this out of this version of the site. I know people like it and I know it is useful, but it is also the heaviest hitting piece of code, in database terms, on the entire site.
For that reason, I need to leave it out of this rebuild, hopefully temporarily, just while I benchmark the new design/setup and make sure it is running faster and smoother. What I will promise to do over Christmas, if the site is performing better overall now, is look at putting it back in on the slide-out sidebar for you all.
Anyway, thanks for listening, thanks for reading and thanks for donating. Now if you’ll excuse me, we’ve got a certain Christmas Quiz to prepare!
All the best,
John Bull
I have to say I rather like the new design so far.
With regards to the heavy duty queries such as the Active articles – move them to an on-demand action and the impact on the site should be far more tolerable 🙂
That’s one option, certainly, and something I’ll probably look at if I can’t fully restore it.
I think the refresh pushed an updated RSS file so a bunch of old articles appeared to be new to RSS readers. Not a great deal you can do to undo that, but if you get a bunch of unexpected activity on older articles, then that’s why.
@richard.
I had to nuke the old WP instance from orbit, so yes. That may well be the case. Cheers for the heads up.
Active Articles certainly sounds like something that could benefit from a backend cache of some sort to reduce database load, which I presume WordPress supports. I’m glad the new design isn’t a major upheaval.
There does appear to be a permanent bottom navigation bar now, at least once you’ve got past the main article body, but before you hit the bottom of the page. I’d rather have it inline on the page after the article but I know that this is subjective.
Love the new site layout – works very well on mobile too!
Hmmn, clicking on an article title doesn’t lead to the top of the article but (in the case of this page) the top of the comments. Also, doesn’t putting the new comment box at the top encourage ‘tl;dr’ posting?
Also agree with Sykobee – substantial piece of screen realestate eaten by the bottom bar (wider than my three chrome lines at the top!)
Cache, and only generate if required, the ‘active articles’ box every ten minutes should be more than sufficient.
One really *great* thing – I can now tab from comment to name to email boxes!
Another point (gah, edit option needed!) – The sliding header is somewhat annoying when you’re about to click on it and it shifts during the operation such that the click ends up going on to a different article.
Re actives, does the format allow for a “last comment at dd mon @ hh:mm” addition on the title sub line?
Sorry but this is awful. Jumps around all over the place, scroll down and you find you’re in a different article, that wretched wide bar that takes up a large proportion of the screen (especially on a laptop). Remember the old adage “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Please, please give us the old screen back.
Restoring either/both the “Active Articles” &/or “Recent Comments” needs to be done as soon as practicable … please.
Oh, the typeface is AWFUL – please slightly larger & sans-serif. Darker? Maybe.
Times New Roman – or whatever you are using looks horrible on-screen for some reason.
The look is more modern & professional like a magazine rather than a chat forum.
The reply quote looks enormous. I (opera) don’t see the bottom bar at all on this article and only when scrolling much lower on others. No ‘preview’ to confirm posts?
Navigation is ‘missing’, can there be a shortcut option for a pop-up, or behind a corner icon logo.
Bring on the seasonal challenge.
Good in general, though I feel like the “Read more” links at the bottom of each article are in a bit of a silly place. Every substantial article gets hundreds of comments, so the vast majority aren’t going to scroll down that far. And if they DO scroll down that far it’s probably deliberately right to the bottom of the page to see the latest comment. You could put it right under the article before the comments but there’s another site that does that (MSDN Blogs) and I don’t like it either because on mobile I often forget there might be comments hiding beneath the irrelevant (to me) content.
If you want to keep it (and I imagine it’s useful for more casual readers so don’t think i’m dismissing it), I would suggest putting it on the side. Otherwise it just gets in the way wherever you put it.
I really do not like the scrolling header articles. It is an impossed on the reader speed of movement. There are the five dots that anyone who is internet savvy knows indicates five headlines available so why have any animation at all? I presume on a taplet or mobile this indicates a swipe availability.
The text as I type in this comment box is on the small side, I guess half the size that it is once posted.
There really is no point on having the “Recent Comments” sidebar populated with multiple comments from the same article. Better to have a time stamp of the last comment from each of the last 5 or 6 articles that have received a comment. In the current form it will be impossible to keep up with the commentariat.
The “SPONSOR US FREE DOWNLOADS SHOP” links appear to be a reminder of ancient history. Is their presence a sign of new things to come? It seems to me that an About us and a Contact link would be more useful, especially for newbies.
…and why is the text grey not black?
Also have now noticed that comment entry does not remember my details from the last comment just made.
No comment on the design, but I would really encourage separating the ‘Friday reads’ (and the nonsensical ‘Monday’s Friday reads) into a separate section.
There is so much fabulous content on this site buried beneath a series of links articles that, although useful, do not warrant the space afforded to them.
Reading to the bottom of the comments I get to the wanting to comment on a comment (as is the speciality of LR where the article is just the kick-off of the discussion) but I’ve then got to swipe up many times to get back to the comment box. At least on this tablet I’m not getting a base bar.
So far I wouldn’t call any of the issues people have raised showstoppers, but some do represent a major change to the ease of use of the site.
I’m not convinced that the large swipeable banner is useful, as it’s not obvious how to get to the actual list of articles.
I miss the active articles links too, maybe a separate page for this would be less demanding on the DB, rather than appearing in the sidebar of every page.
Sounds like the site has been under a lot of pressure. I can understand why you had to make the change.
It makes me really happy that the new site uses a proper email input on the comment form, so my phone can auto fill it.
To add to the chorus solutionising active articles: if your database supports materialised views, this might be a good use of them? It would mean the active articles would only be recomputed when someone comments, not on every page load, so the common case would be cheap. Unlike a cache it wouldn’t impose any delays on seeing new comments.
Very nice. I like the new design, it looks even better on my phone than a laptop screen
One thing though, why do we need to know how long it will take to read an article? I’ll try to avoid ‘old man shouts at cloud’ mode, so I assume there is a genuine need for this – screen readers perhaps?
Echoing Alex …
WHAT “bottom bar” is this that is spoken of?
I can’t see one, either.
[ Using Google Chrome ]
SUPRISE – still rather taken aback, considered views later.
However, have we the room at the Royal Oak next Thursday Evening?
December 12th, the day there should be a full service into Waterloo
to enable us to see everyone before Christmas
@Within the Inner Rail nope, SWR still running the strike timetable on that date.
I don’t like sites with dynamic changes flickering away, so the top bar is annoying. It looks very big on my desktop, and I miss the feature I use most, the latest messages column. So I do hope you can bring that back.
Is the favicon missing?
If you want to follow the most recent articles, sign up for feedly.com and then add http://www.londonreconnections.com and then pick “Comments for London Reconnections”.
Works a treat and you can reach each comment without having to wait for the whole page to load.
Also keeps the load down on the server!
(There is an app for phone use and a Chrome Extension too)
Apart from the completely missing non-visible “Bottom Bar” whatever that is supposed to be …
Can I make a plea for a “preview” facility, as we had before, or something similar?
Typos R us
And I know I make typos & so does everybody else … so can we PLEASE have at least one more line of defence? ( Having just seen some more of mine, oh dear… )
Hmm. It looks very nice, but I think I’m having the same trouble as some others who have used more technical language; the way the main heading keeps changing without me telling it to do so is disconcerting, as is that part of the screen not moving when I scroll down, with the full text sort of sliding up over it. Also, intuitively I would expect the box for me to comment to be after I’ve read others comments, not before.
(and ditto to previous comments re the mysterious “bottom bar” which I either don’t have or don’t recognise as such, having looked for it on both an HP PC using Firefox and Edge, and a Samsung tablet using I think its own browser. Sorry, wouldn’t know where to look for screen resolution! )
If the changes are necessary though I’m sure I’ll manage to live with them!
Why is the site still selling subscriptions to LR magazine with the promise of bi-monthly magazines, when there haven’t actually been any new issues in years? I presume the magazine is dead.
I thought I would get used to the large banner, but I still find it intrusive, and it hides the new articles.
Looks like Salon.com 20 years ago I’m afraid: It looks better on a coffee table than on screen…
Hating it! Navigation is (worse than) pants and just can’t be bothered looking anymore if I have to spend ages thumbing through the same stuff again to find what’s new…
A month on and I am not yet beginning to like it. Still irritating.
On Chrome / Windows 10 I am still to see the “mythical” bottom navigation bar.
I’m pretty neutral on the redesign. The only thing I’m really missing is the active articles. There were several times over the Christmas break that I came to the site to find 5 ‘recent comments’ on the same article, and no simple way of finding if there were any new comments on any of the other articles.
This redesign almost agressively hides new articles – the large swipeable banner is not very useful, and hides the list of articles.