UKH

We are very pleased to announce a major change to the UKC and UKH web sites. Work on this has been ongoing for several months and the aim has been to create a more modern-looking site that reflects the changes in the way people browse with particular focus on functionality on mobile devices.

Please give your feedback on this thread.

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Much cleaner, really like it!

Looks amazing.  Much nicer feel to it...... well done guys

OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 and Google

I have the same problem as others have reported: no forum icons visible.

Microsoft Edge browser, can't switch back to "day mode"

I'm going to add a workaround for old versions of Safari that can't render SVG images.

Hmm, that's a weird one. Thanks for the report, I'll sort it out.

Nice job, thanks very much

It makes a change... but I'm more or less up to date on my software and have seen no issues so far on OSX High Sierra/Safari.

I would have liked to have been able to switch views from UKC to UKH at the top rather than scroll all the way down.

As a designer though - 'New logo' is pushing it a bit  ; )

Like the little up arrow on my phone in the forums but what about making the down arrow more obvious like this too?

Have been meaning to suggest up/down arrows on the log book pages too for a while to massively improve usability. It takes some scrolling to get to the bottom/top of most large crags with hundreds of entries (Stanage for example), which is particularly annoying as if you click on a climb to view something then press back it seems hit and miss if my browser remembers where I've scrolled down to and being able to go to the top and bottom would speed this up and for when you want to go back to the top menus.

I had this issue as well, logged out and back in and no longer happened.

Really like the update, cheers Paul!

Fixed that.

Good improvement on my android mobile well done. I think I miss the red in the logo. Its all a bit black but that's about it. And red straight on black wouldn't be very clear I know. Good work. 

Thanks, I fixed the Edge bug. It wasn't just me Andy Ovens - UKC and UKH has done a lot of work too!

I like the inclusion of a dark mode. Could even be a little darker, in my taste. The background of this box to enter the text for example. But I've recently become a dark mode fanatic

Like it, with a few things...

"Please remember the Posting Guidelines before you post." is black on grey in Night mode

Forum topics view is too big for my taste in my browser - too much space above and below every thread name, thus too much scrolling and less overall view (others might disagree though).

With Night mode on, it's possible to switch to Light headers, breaking their visibility (black on grey again). Errata - just the footer, the header switches ok.

At least in Safari 12.0.3

I can't make the Directory search work at all on either Android phone or Windows PC. Hope I'm not just being dim. 

Well I hope I am just being dim really. 

I'm enjoying the limited amount of time I've spent on the new site. I have noticed two issues with 'dark mode', which I feel could be improved when you have the time. They are both low priority, but I suspect also quite quick to fix. 

1. The winter climbing forum logo is practically impossible to see in dark mode. All the other logos are fine, which means when one looks like it's missing I know which forum it is. 

2. As already mentioned, the forum post box looks very bright after your eyes adjust to dark mode...

Thanks for all the hard work,
Mehmet

This should be fixed now. May have to visit this page first to clear the cache fist https://www.ukclimbing.com/clear_cache.php

Fixed, many thanks. 

Ok the font is subtley different but let's hope French Connection don't don't try and sue....

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frenchconnection.com...

The forum search for > 6 months doesn't appear to return any results no matter what is searched for

the recent search is fine

Looks good but if I'm in day mode and switch light headers then camera mountain speech bubble boxes become invisible on android chrome.

Like it a lot.

I'm sure I already posted this twice:

Don't know if it's deliberate, but non-UKC hyperlinks in the forums no longer open the linked page in a new tab, but replace UKC in the current tab instead.

Its all about modern and nicely spaced out and such but I am not keen on the black. It a bit like some weird hacker's forum from back in the mid naughties .

Agree that the forum topics are too spaced out on Android on my mobile. It makes it much harder to quickly scan through them.

Not really liking the monochrome theme, it's very bland and doesn't really give the site any identify. I must admit though that it is much cleaner, and generally more accessible and usable.

Not sure if it's a caching issue, but the Top10 photos page still shows the old logo even after reloading. Other pages all have new logo. Chrome v72 on Android 8. I am enjoying that the annoying scroll-jump-lock mechanism doesn't seem to be active on the Top10 page anymore. 

Likewise, on Android I can't search forums. For example a forum wide search of 'older messages' for the term 'crampons' returns no results. 

Glad to hear someone else mention this. I definitely find it annoying; I hope it doesn't stay that way.

You posted in the old thread and I replied to you that it had already been fixed. If you spot an instance it's not working please drop me a link to it. Thanks

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/info/search.php?forum=0&dates=0&n...

I think that bug has existed for years. It only works (+6 months) for the other fields. The way the database is setup for the forum messages makes it impossible to do a global search. We will be implementing Elastic Search for the News, Articles, Gear and Forum posts in the future that will make this possible.

The top 10 sets the cache time to the next Sunday (when it will change) so you'll need to force refresh to see the change (Ctrl+F5 on PC) if you have it in your local cache.

The scroll snap is one of the new features built into browsers in 2018 and seems to work/not work at random intervals.

I didn't see the other thread but I've noticed the link thing myself: every link which shows the blue "number of clicks" beside it has opened in the UKC window for me, instead of in a new tab. There's only one link I've seen which opened in a new tab and that didn't have the click counter next to it. 

I'm using Chrome in Windows 10 on a laptop.

2 points - in the Forums the list of topics appear to have bigger gaps between each topic (and maybe the font size has become bigger?). Would prefer the the topics 'squeezed' together like they were before so more can be seen without scrolling.

Also, I often switch between UKC and UKH - could this be done at the top of the page (like it was before) instead of having to scroll to the bottom. Thanks.

I find it doesn't work for any instance

http://bbc.co.uk

Incidentally, if I just type "bbc.co.uk" it no longer converts to a hyperlink, I need to add the "http://" 

No major glitches, kudos for implementing Dark Mode... But said dark mode will need still working on, as every time a page reloads/refreshes it will flash to first white and the apply the dark mode... Not very handy and highly annoying. Have a look at how the dark has been properly implemented, like on DPReview.

We've now changed the way the link opens, so it should always be in a new tab if its an external link, so hopefully there shouldn't be any more issues with that (like opening in a new window). Thanks for letting us know!

Thanks, that's great. Noticed it was fixed this morning and wondered if I'd been imagining things!

Yes, the link is fixed now.

But I still don't get a link if I type bbc.co.uk rather than http://bbc.co.uk - this used to work.

I'm 99% sure that there has never been anything in the code to identify URL's, there's so many .whatever domains these days it would be a nightmare to identify them correctly.

Hi,

Got two Macs one with 10.10.5  On this you can't see any icons of the forums.

On the Mac with OS 10.11.6 I can't reply to messages and also a lot of pictures are not shown.

Thanks

Heike

Hi Heike,

The forum icons not showing on older browser should be fixed today.

Are you using Chrome or Safari on the 10.11 Mac?

Hmm. Well I never type the http prefix and I'm sure it's always worked for me. But maybe it hasn't and I've just never noticed!

I've just started to get "500 Internal Server Error" when navigating around. 

Don't know if this is your end or facebook's, but when I click the "share to facebook" link on an article, I get a facebook error page saying "App not set up: This app is still in development mode, and you don't have access to it. Switch to a registered test user or ask an app admin for permissions."

Safari

Come across quite a few bugs so far:

- Can't load more comments: internal server error

- Quite a few climb photos not loading (e.g. UKC tirpentwys)

- Icons like left / right / close not working on photo viewer

- Just clicked back to the homepage and got another server error....

Personal Opinion on the design

- I really like the layout of the Latest Articles section on the homepage, but the latest news section feels clunky & doesn't show enough content. Far too dominated by the large advert on the right. Additionally the video panel is a bit odd, with weird spacing between title & description, a strange video size. I personally would rather see a few videos I could then click through & view, instead of just one larger one. 

- For photo of the week on the homepage, it would be good if the smaller images were larger so you could see more of them. It would be quite good if it was a gallery where you could scroll left & right to see all images, or click on a thumbnail which would replace the main image in the gallery. I'm using a widescreen monitor, so surprised that the images are still so small.

- The forums look a lot cleaner & easier to use

- The additional functionality on directory & articles, especially being able to filter by category, is really really good. 

- Glad to see the site is now more accessibility friendly

All in all, a great improvement  - but I hope the bugs are fixed soon  

Looks fine on year old Android and Edge. I think it is fair to say though that if you were building the UKC website from scratch it wouldn't be starting from here.

There is a small issue with images in the cards that have a white background breaking the rounded corners at top left and right of the card. It looks as if the card border disappears when this is the case.

I think the 500 errors were a combination of the newsletter going out announcing the site changes which lead people to checkout the site, at the same time it was still sending the remaining emails and the unfortunate recent news regarding the death of Andy Nisbet and Steve Perry leading to another mass influx. I think it would've been OK if I'd realised the newsletter was still being sent and paused that over lunchtime.

It doesn't help that when you get a 500 error that you've probably already pressed refresh a couple of times and each request is CPU time on the server.

It seems to have calmed down a lot since about 3pm and we're not getting anymore 500 errors.

It think quite a few of the bugs were due to the server being overloaded around lunchtime as described above.

I did update the photo viewer this afternoon too.

Thanks fixed the Facebook share links. You'll need to force refresh a post page to see the new link. Should go to sharer/sharer.php instead of dialog/share

Why is it that updates always mean less information available on the screen?

I'm talking about the forums, and I only use them on my phone.

In the old days I could scroll down the list of posts, and across to see who'd started it. A few years ago this functionality went from the main forums but remained in the pub. Now it's gone from the pub too, so I have to click on a post to see who started it. Obviously it's not a major problem, but I just wonder why this is considered to be an improvement?

I see comments about a "cleaner" look, which as far as I can tell just means more white space between lines, and therefore more scrolling. TBH there are far worse sites than UKC for this, some resemble an ocean of empty space with a few lines in it. I'm at a loss to understand why this is considered a good thing. As far as I'm concerned the closer packed the text is on screen the less scrolling around I have to do.

Incidentally, my post above is the first time I can remember submitting a post of more than a couple of lines without random question marks being inserted. Have you fixed something? I'm using Chrome on Android 8.

Predictive text still doesn't work properly on UKC though...

I thought that predictive text had improved quite a bit though on my android. It used to be totally unusable, now it's not

I'm intermittently getting an "ad block is in use" message, despite not using one (on this machine). I have two tabs open, one giving that message and one not.

Using Chrome on Windows 10. 

I do have a vague feeling I saw this occasionally before the update actually...

Oh, the Darkmode white flicker on page refresh/reload happens both on Win7 + Chrome (71.0.3578.98) and also on MacOS Mojave + Chrome (72.0.3626.96).

Also happens on iOs and Chrome (something).


Oh, and also the input fields are white... Not good....

I definitely had it quite often pre-update. A simple refresh always cleared it, so I never bothered reporting it.

Although I have UKC whitelisted, the ad bl*cker still keeps an eye out for links with malware, and there seems to be something about UKC links to advertisements that triggers the malware alert quite often.

As you say, refreshing gets  rid of it - or puts up a different ad without the problem - so I've never reported it either...

In addition to the above (no reply??!!) If I try editing a log book entry which has a note log associated with it the box goes massive and you have to scroll down for ages to get to the update/cancelled/delete buttons.

Noticed a few more bits

Also in the logbook the top/bottom ukc banners adjust to my screen width but the actual log doesn't quite fit so you have to slide left/right as it doesn't quite fit. Annoying.

If you click on a individual logbook entry everything resizes there too except for the "give feedback", " add to logbook " & "add to wishlist" buttons with the last one going off the edge of the screen.

The video icon/link shows up on all log book entries even though there is no videos but the icon which appears as a grey box containing a number which corresponds to the number of photos of that logbook entry which takes you to any photos just appears as a white space/hidden if there is no photos but you need to click on that to upload a photo.

Regarding the grey box icon a better icon which is self explanatory should be used as demonstrated by sending a link to someone recently who doesn't use the site and telling them to look at the photos of that logbook entry they had to be told to click on the icon with a number on it!

Not to do with the changes but the moderate crags link is hidden within the menu of your own logbook, very strange why not have it on the top logbook drop down?

same with the Ticklists which are also hard to get to, should be on both menus like "conditions", " latest scents" and the "diary" is (although it's called diary in one menu and activity dairy in the other could it not be consisted)? Talking of ticklists would be nice to be able to comment on them to make suggestions/highlight errors like the wrong route but with the same name or similar name being on it. Spot the VS on this: https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/set.php?id=1434

When moderating a crag the "add buttress/divider" goes of the edge of the RHS. And the sort left to right appears as "left to rigl" on my screen until you click on the drop down, bizarrely there are go to the bottom/top arrows here but not when on public view of a crag.

on a crag the drop down menu to take you to the weather only seems to take you to the weather on first loafing the page, if you then for example go to guidebooks if you select weather again it does nothing. Also none of these links drop you down the page to the relevant section so it appears nothing has happened.

When viewing a crag map it you try scrolling down from the top if you accidentally touch any of the map you just scroll within the map not the page, could it have some sort of freeze when scrolling, or introduce a down button as suggested above?

PS it was good to see the like/dislike thing removed of a particular thread recently

Reference the Forums.
Maybe just me, but in 'Night Mode', the 'ROCKTALK' and 'WINTER CLIMBING' icons could perhaps be a bit more distinct.

Other than that minor niggle, just loving the look of 'Night Mode'!  

Hi Paul,

I don't know how you're getting on with this but forums icons still not showing. I've also noticed I can't enlarge thumbnails of photos attached to crags.

I'm using safari on my iPad with iOS 10.3.3

Cheers.

Amazing site.  Why don't more people in Europe log their routes on ukc instead of 8a.shit ?  I try to raise awareness abroad whenever I can.  Keep up the good job.

Same here with missing icons, on an iPad with iOS 10.3.3 and Chrome browser 71.0.3578.89

Definitely feels fresher and clearer and, what's better, actually feels like it is designed for monitors rather than the way so many redesigns feel like they are just for smartphones and tablets. Thumbs up from me.

Links only work on second click for me (Firefox/Win10)

Three capital letters, black on white, isn't a logo. That probably took under a minute to create. I hope you didn't pay for it.

Tried to use the "Report Abuse" function, and there's no submit button, just cancel.

Was this on the Forums?

I really like the new changes, very clean look. 

Galleries are currently missing the stats (average rating, number of votes, top 10 etc). 

Same for me, have to click on links twice before they open. Firefox on Mac OS 10.13.6

Yes, spotted a post that appeared to be spam, clicked on the "report abuse" button within it, got the expected form but no submit button, just a cancel button spanning the whole width of the modal.

The link to UKH  and vice-versa is annoyingly at the bottom of the page, and not the top. Why, as it means much more scrolling to get to it!

Thanks, fixed that.

Whilst you're doing some updates perhaps you could fix one other oddity: Profiles include 'age' which unless updated every year quickly becomes meaningless (just changed mine from 44 to 60). Perhaps 'year of birth' might be more 'future-proof'? If you're database include update logs (i.e., when was the age last changed) then you might be able to update everyone's age with a script?

I'll have a look at that on Monday. I assume there used a be a script that ran once a year to increment them since mine's 2 years out of date and that coincides with that last time we moved server.

Hmm. Mine was 16 years out of date. Have I really been on UKC that long? 

Couldn't agree more!

Apart from that, the icons are now back on my dated Safari, which is good. 

The main forum column must be narrower and the ad sidebar wider as, annoyingly, the 'Posted by' is frequently truncated. Don't like that. The whole forum column feels squashed. 

I've whitelisted the site with my [can't post the word]. So could you please stop using flashing ads. So annoying and distracting! 

We can, and do, pass this message on to our advertisers from time to time however many of them work with agencies so the message does tend to get lost. We aren’t in a position to dictate the type of advert companies use though so I’m afraid that it is something we will need to live with. 

We are still fully committed to maintaining as closely as possible our outdoor-related only advertising policy and we will try and keep it unobtrusive and subtle avoiding a certain type of site which I am sure everyone is aware of. To this end we turn down big advertising requests and ‘guest articles’ at a rate of around 1 a day.

Thanks for your feedback on the other aspects of the new site.

Alan

I don't like the new way in which Photos of the week are presented. There are two aspects that irritate me. Firstly there is no information about the route or climber - you have to click on it to go that info.  Plus each picture seems to grab into a particular position rather than a smooth scroll. There was one last week that I could not view because it was 'grabbed' by the previous & next ones.

Other than that I think it is a cleaner look which I like.

I'm another user who normally blocks adds on all websites I use but who from time to time makes an exception here. But it rarely lasts long as the 'flashing' adds (better described as a short series of images which change every few seconds) are too distracting. If, one day, I can't block them I'll stop visiting the site. Please try to get your advertisers to see that these adds are self-defeating.

That said, there are many websites which are much, much worse

Hi,

Like the new look of the website, especially the dark theme.

However, with the dark theme enabled, on the captions for the videos on https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/trade_show_reports/ispo_2019_-_new_clothing... the box is white with white text making it impossible to read the captions without selecting them.

I also whitelist UKC for my ad-blocker, the ads are unobtrusive and relevent to my interests.

Using night mode on the log book page still has a big white banner between the logo banner and list of climbs etc.

Also on the forums the blue ice axe colour is hard to make out using night mode, although that could just be my eyes.

I held off commenting for a little while to see if I would get to like it. On the whole, I think it’s neither here nor there. The new layout has its pros and cons. Swipe across or scroll down - apples or pears. The new logo is new, which is probably a good thing in the marketing world, but I wouldn’t say it’s any better or worse than the old one.

So I’m afraid I don’t think these changes have made much difference. Not better, not worse, just a bit different. That’s neither a bad nor a good thing.

I’m much more interested in content - which has improved year on year in terms of both quality and quantity, so well done on that!

Fixed that. Might need to force refresh to see the change.

Fixed those two. You'll need to force refresh to see the updated My Logbook page as it only properly refreshes if you add new climbs to it.

Fixed the flash of white whilst switching between pages in night mode.

Thanx, did notice it yesterday (or today)...


A lot less annoying.

When replying to a forum post, the link to the posting guidelines (in the "Please remember the Posting Guidelines before you post." just above the form) is broken. It points to /forums/<forum name>/info/guidelines.php but seems like it should point to https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/info/guidelines.php.

Thanks, that's sorted.

These should look better in night mode now. Part of the fix for them to show on old browsers also had the nice side effect of being able to style the parts of each icon via CSS so a lot of them are lighter in night mode now. There's been quite a few more night mode tweaks here and there.

Windows 10 and MacOS Mojave have native dark mode in the OS now. Safari and Firefox will have the capability to detect if the site supports dark mode soon too.

I can confirm that they are now nice and clear.
Thanks for that and the other improvements that you've introduced recently.
Much appreciated!
 

Only a slight niggle, but they're still a bit indistinct when viewing 'Recent Postings' in a User Profile.

In night mode on my Android phone, the screen flashes white when I move between bits of the site. Can that be fixed? Thanks

I get that in work, but not in the house.  I assume it's got something to do with Network Speed.

Spotted another to add to the ones above. 

When using the Add Logs from My Partners page when you press process the links at the top on the following page you are taken to do not have spaces between so appear as "LogbooksMy Logbook"

Ps Liking the new up arrow 

Thanks

Before it was how the Nightmode was implemented, and AFAIK it  has been fixed. Atleast within the forums.


Perhaps there are still stuff to fix when going from forums to logbook or what ever.

Not sure if its just me, but when viewing pictures of climbs and pressing the arrow keys to go to the next picture, it goes to the next climb instead. (Desktop, IE 10)

Thanks, fixed that. The arrow keys only got the next/previous climb with the photo viewer is closed.

Good spot, I hadn't updated those to the new format. I've fixed that and it shows the top 8 photos in your gallery on the user page too now.

You're a star!
Alan, give the man a pay rise...

Not sure, but it looks like there is the same issue if you go into the 'List all my recent posts.' page. 
Alan, hold fire on the pay rise...
 

lol, sorted those too and also in the descriptions here https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/info/

I think that all of them now!

I think your password strength changer isn't working.

Just tried to change my password to the suggested one from the password manager: jhj2J6PJR3Wm6zHo~j9R

Above the password box it says "undefined Password" (rather than strong, weak etc...) and then the update fails because "Current Password is empty or not correct" - which isn't the case.

Happy bug hunting!

I tried changing to that exact password and it did process the update OK but the strength meter does indeed get confused by the ~ character. I'll have a look at that next week sometime.

The darkmode is lovely and working really well...

'cept when you try to read the notes from the logbook... black box with dark grey text makes it rather hard to real (nearly impossible). Some love and changes on that might be nice.

Chrome 73 (w/ darkmode) on Win7 if that's of any relevance.

Similar thing with My Forums & My Topics "tab" headers below the main menus, when you hover over them.

I've added some separate styles for the popovers in darkmode.

Edit: You'll probably need to force refresh to see it on the My Logbook page as it uses the last change for the cache time. Easiest way on mobile would be to edit one of the ascents and add/change a comment.

You didn't go for Climbing UK then?

You mean this idea - https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2017/04/ukclimbing_to_rebrand_climb_uk-7099...

Gracias...


Works fine now on desktop.

The *hover over* My Topics and My Forums is still unchanged, but unlike the notes on the logbook, it's a mere inconvinience.