h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi all,

We just wanted to give you a progress report on the fixes we've been working on for the new H2G2. First of all, we'd like to thank you for your patience, especially in these uncertain times.

We also wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who reported errors on the New H2G2 Feedback thread before the 7 February cut-off. A few issues were brought to our attention after that date but, like we said in our previous announcement, we'll endeavour to fix the critical ones regardless of when they were reported.

We had wanted to complete the work and release all the changes to live before the end of February, but it has taken longer than expected, so the next release is still a little way off. We've still got a way to go, but we wanted to assure you that we're doing all we can to bring the functionality of the new site up to par. We have more time now to test and re-test the new site in a fully live environment, and your feedback is crucial to helping us in that process. We aim to complete this work before we put a full redirect in to the new site (but we'll be keeping the old site live on a different url for the foreseeable future).

Although we haven't done a major release to live some bugs on the DNA GuideML side have already been fixed and should be visible. These include:

* Smileys should now be displaying correctly in posts
* The oversensitive filters have been fixed so that you should be able to post Smileys
* Center tags should now be working on Entries
* As should pictures in tables
* Clickable images should now be working too
* Categories and Search were pulling in non-H2G2 articles. That too should be fixed
* Footnotes should be displaying correctly
* A and U numbers will soon work in posts (as will category CXX numbers). And we're also working through a list of new shortcut links to Named Articles for Entries, which at the moment include: categories solo month Scout Picks Search Coming Up Peer Review. More will follow.

We understand that is just the tip of iceberg. More fixes are yet to come, and will be live in a future release. In addition users are still getting an unacceptable amount of HTTP 500 Internal Server errors. That is also something we'll be aiming to fix for the next release. Hopefully this won't be too long in coming. The Entry CMS is still a bit too unstable to use, so we would ask you to keep editing Entries on the old site for the time being.

Thanks again for your patience.
Chris
H2G2 Editor

andI ain't moving from "old" hootoo, until I'm kicked out

I'm not leaving the old h2g2 until I can navigate to first unread post and I can see when new posts are made.

Does search within conversation work yet?

P.S "Edit" button!

*sniggers*

Count Zero, you can see when new postings are made in the Conversations page, but there is as yet no link to the first unread posting, nor have we any promise that there will be.

Clive, the search within conversations does not appear to be working yet.

>>>>>
Does search within conversation work yet?
>>>>>

No, but it's on our list. Cheers

Ah, but what about the "link to first unread posting" then? Is it on your list or not? I ask because I'm waiting for that one before switching to barlesque as well

Actually, Gnomon... I just tested it and clicking on the "ten minutes ago" under "latest reply" did indeed take me to the latest reply.



I'll still have to hit F5 of course since it doesn't auto refresh and also I'll probably right click so I can open the convo in a separate tab, but it seems to be and improvement from where it was the last time I tried it.

Yes as the Count says, it doesn't auto-refresh, but it should link to the latest post. There is still an issue with the blue 'unread' tinting on the PS Conversation page on certain browsers but we're working to fix that.

Forget to say, if you have any questions about the remaining bugs, please fire away and we'll answer as many as we can.

ok here goes, it ain't working so why change from something that works, progress it ain't

hi and thank you for all your work

Although we haven't done a major release to live some bugs on the DNA GuideML side have already been fixed and should be visible. These include:

does 'the DNA GuideML side' refer to our old site here or the new barlesque site?

if it refers to the old site... i am using the old site in brunel and i have had no problems
ie i have not seen a need to fix any of the things you mentioned

if it refers to the new site maybe you should not use the 'DNA' designation?

things are very confusing here for us nonprogrammers

Hi fluffykerfuffle. Yes, we should probably clarify. These are all bugs that were to be found on the new site. The 'DNA side' refers to 'back end' stuff, in other words core functionality such as GuideML, which wasn't working correctly on the new site, but was unaffected on the existing site. These bugs are being addressed by our DNA team in-house, and are being looked at first. Underneath the bonnet, H2G2 is still being powered by DNA, but the 'front end', or 'user facing', part of the site is now being served by a new BBC platform called Forge. This work is being done by an external company called Aerian. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Oops, I spoke too soon. I take it that when it does work, the "latest reply" link does NOT take you to the first unread post.

Also, I just tested it again and it took me to the original post again. Maybe it only takes you to the latest post when there is only one page of posts (10).

thank you

and while i have you here...

i am now pretty sure that the glitch in 'who's on line this site'
reflects postings to threads that those researchers are connected to...

DNA was not on the list...
i posted a belated happy birthday message to him in his message space...
and then DNA was on the list

and this is reminiscent of the 'last posted' glitch, found under a researcher's name in their personal space...



hope that helps work out that kinda thing

It was triggered just by you visiting his page. I tested that last week or so. DNA would have shown up even if you hadn't posted a message. My best guess is that when we see inordinate numbers (thousands) online that may indicate when either the servers are doing some sort of backup/maintenance or a search engine is crawling the site.

yes count i saw that posting of yours
interesting theories
and i say... the more the merrier
because they may help them work out the snags

perhaps the glitch depends not just on visiting someones ps
but also depends on where you are posting from
within or without the UK
within or without the BBC
windows or apple or linux or...
male or female

just joking that last one

I had wondered why the settings screen now asks for your gender, fluffy

>>Yes as the Count says, it doesn't auto-refresh, but it should link to the latest post.<<

Eds, can we at least have a text-only page with a list of our conversations, even if it's not a pop-up and doesn't auto-refresh? It'll be much quicker to re-load on a slow connection like mine, and we can still use a combination of browser settings to emulate the old functionality.

'Eds, can we at least have a text-only page with a list of our conversations, even if it's not a pop-up and doesn't auto-refresh? It'll be much quicker to re-load on a slow connection like mine, and we can still use a combination of browser settings to emulate the old functionality.'





Eds, can we have the old system with the addition of a Barlesque skin and we can still use a combination of browser settings to emulate the new functionality.