91Èȱ¬

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Something else that is not working first time - the sign-in process (5 times it failed, until it worked.)

(Recording this 'feature' here so that others who must be experiencing the same problem don't get worried that it is caused by something they did.)

Is there any information that can be given as to when these "technical difficulties" will be resolved? I note that there have been problems with localisation of the 91Èȱ¬ homepage ever since the new page was introduced. That is several weeks ago - I have to wonder whether the current problems show that someone is trying to fix the older faults.

Although its not customizable, I prefer the layout without the large banner.

Still not sorted,you would have thought users would be kept updated.What exactly is the problem?

Once it is fixed, it would be good to know what the problem was. It amazes me that the new (i presume) architecture we've heard about isn't a bit more robust.....?

Oh dear!

It needs to be fixed as people will complain about the homepage

Can you shed any light on whether this is a CouchDB issue?

At least we have had an explanation as to what the problem is.Hopefully normal service will soon be resumed.

Interesting to see the new improved version fall over so soon. Also interested to read that 3:1 bloggers prefer the new page. Maybe my maths is a little rusty but that's not how it seems from I where I am. Another point is that as a user from outside the UK, none of the issues raised regarding wanting to see UK radio listings, UK news etc have been addressed. Can we assume that we are not important. I have sent several requests for help and/ or information and so far have had no reply. Maybe too busy repairing something that shouldn't have been touched in the first place.
Please can't we have our old page back?

Re post 13, I have just had a reply from the 91Èȱ¬ complaints response department, so thank you to them and apologies for my lack of faith.

re 7. (Jo Wickremasinghe) and 12. (jamesprice)

Some of the issues are not due to customisation or load on the website. Ever since the launch of the revamped home page my postcode has not been recognised. This was not the case in the past.

This makes it difficult to even start on the process of customisation were that working.

The 91Èȱ¬ website has been a fairly good model of good behaviour to date - or at least until 10 May. I assume it will be again in the future.

Re: post 14.

You were lucky!

I too complained that I disliked the new homepage, especially when using the small screen of a netbook. I also reported this when it was in Beta. I have had no reply in either case, despite specifically requesting one.

@Chrispop
Did you expect the 91Èȱ¬ peeps to e-mail back saying "Okay you don't like it, so we'll change it just for you?" ;) It quite clearly states when you contact the 91Èȱ¬ that they can't get back to everyone individually (or words to that effect), not surprising considering the number of people they are trying to serve. I know I'd be a bit annoyed if the license fee was spent on massive support centres for people ring / e-mail to moan about things they don’t find to their liking.

@SteveoBagins

If I complete an online form that includes a tick box asking if I want a reply, and I tick that box, then yes, I think I'm entitled to expect a reply.

BTW, I don't consider spending some of my own time acting as a free beta tester, something I do for the 91Èȱ¬ and others, to constitute a moan about something not to my liking.

here we are, 5th June, still not fixed. Whats up?

Whilst it's not a particularly important error (at face value, at least), if a private firm introduced a new development with such a fundamentally basic fault, heads would be rolling. Incredibly amateurish, especially after what was effectively a public beta.

I have worked in IT for almost 40 years. If it had taken me this long to sort our company homepage, or any other customer related system, I would have been out of a job.

Would you like a hand?

A total shambles, as others have commented, a private company would be looking for new IT Tech support staff by now. Come on 91Èȱ¬ get it sorted.

The return of the customised settings improves matters but I see that I can not (yet?) change the settings.

Secondly, I still cannot get my postcode recognised at the weather module. Perhaps this issue can also be fixed?

HOWEVER, on the news page, at "YOUR LOCAL NEWS, WEATHER AND SPORT HERE" my postcode is recognised... so why are there two postcode recognition routines?

The update has not worked outside of the UK. I now have a homepage that has no relevance to me whatsoever, no customising and even the edit and +/- signs are now gone. The panels I don't want cannot be removed, the layout is immovable. I also note that the new homepage blog has been removed, too embarrassing perhaps? May we assume that users outside of the UK are of no value and will have to just live with this dreadful page.
Please do something, even if it is just to say, you're right, tough!

Don't worry Trevor,the update has not worked in the UK either, no customizing and even the edit and +/- signs are now gone.

I'd just like to echo Trevor's comment - I have a homepage that I can nothing with now. I'm in Italy btw...

Are we going to have to live with this - or is a fix on the way?

I used to have customised settings on the 91Èȱ¬page before the technical problems. When the problems occured they dissapeared. Despite the release of the new 91Èȱ¬page, they have not-reappeared, as is claimed. So even in the UK all is not as is alleged.

I can understand how much work is being put into correcting this issue and would also like to know the reasons for the technical problems. In the meantime, I think I need to look for an alternative homepage as a temporary measure when I log on.

This ongoing inability to customize the homepage has made me realize that a big part of having this page as my home page was the customization value. I was already disappointed with the immovable banner at the top which meant scrolling down to 'my' items, the page now holds nothing for me and considering the time it has not been working for, I shall find a different homepage. Very surprised, your standards are usually much better than this.

I second poohbare's comments, I can't customise my homepage and neither is there a +/- facility.

When will we be told what is actually going on?

At last I thought, it's fixed so I put in my postcode and looked at the first local news for ages but when I go back to the main page, the dreaded 'technical difficulties' message is back again. Please get the gremlins out of the system or maybe until it's really fixed move around the country with the main page. Most of us don't actually want to see what's happening in London.

Thanks for posting information on the problems and your progress in sorting them out.

I value the feedback and understand the work required to recover them while still maintaining as basic service.

Wow! The world is coming to an end as the BEEB homepage has been down for nearly a week.
Personally I think the 91Èȱ¬ website is the best on the net and cannot understand why people are getting upset about the small problems "I cant customise my page cant get a reply, your standards are falling"
They are being sorted and considering the scope of the changes think they re doing a grand job.
Then again some do like to have a moan. Long as they are happy (or happy being miserable) who really cares.

Slainte

"Technical Problems" last a few hours. The length of time taken so far to not solve the problems you are having does not reflect well on the 91Èȱ¬.

Its quite bizarre, at work today some of my customised settings had returned however at home, I can't edit anything and now can't even input my postcode.

Can we not go back to the old page until the new one is fixed? I do sympathise with those who are trying to fix the problem as I work with websites and we get issues, but we just refer to the previous version until we can get it right.

Can we please have the home page returned to how it was previously. It is most inconvenient, and I am fed up of it, along with lots of other people I am sure.

Is this still not fixed? Or is it my new version of Safari that isn't allowing me to edit my homepage settings. I can't believe this fault can still be ongoing...

I've worked in IT most of my life and I've observed that it's the large bureaucratic organisations that cannot fix simple things without a great deal of faffing around. For this I pay £140 a year - I certainly don't pay your tax to watch your increasingly poor programmes.
I'm totally fed up with your failure to fix what should be a simple issue (or would be in the world out here that most of us live in), or to go back to the previous version of your site.
I've now deleted you from favourites and all other connections.
Good Bye

I am only posting because I find most of the comments on here absurd. What are you, 5?!

I would much rather the 91Èȱ¬ took there time to ensure the issue was properly fixed and as you don't even know what the issue is I hardly think you are in any position to judge how long it should be taking them.

Why are people so concerned that they cannot customise their 91Èȱ¬ homepage? It isn't as if it is a common feature of every home page, and you must be pretty lazy if you can't be bothered to click on news and find your own region...

39. Kerry, couldn't agree more!

I found myself laughing as I read down the comments. These people must have a pretty trouble free life to get so het up about this minor (and let's face it, it is a minor issue which is easily worked around)problem.

Fred_Thrung - goodbye, farewell! Your loss! Where are you going to go? Fox News? Sky ? ITN ? MSN ? Show me one other site that covers so much content, so well.

The bbc site is a quality site, any innovations come with a risk of implementation failure. It's par for the course. Bigger organisations have bigger systems, of course they take longer to sort out!

I was pleased to see my home page settings back to normal a couple of days ago - although I couldn't change them further. However, this morning, I'm back to the uncustomised one. Very disappointing! How much longer?

I too am with 39.Kerry on this.

But I do think it is important for the 91Èȱ¬ to keep us updated. As of now we have our customisations back, without the ability to modify them, but the customised home page does not have a "homepage technical issues" link and I found my way here only by luck.

Depending on how long it will be before the 91Èȱ¬ is able to restore the full functionality, it might be good to reinstate such a link in the white space at the top of the page (as we had before the customisation came back). As long as people can easily follow progress they really should not complain.

Oh dear, that isn't good! hope its fixed soon!

I understand that not all problems can be easily and quickly rectified but I wonder how an institution like the 91Èȱ¬ can implement changes without a fall back plan in case of failure.

I find it irritating that on a day by day (or even hour by hour) basis I don't know whether I will get radio 4 on the iPlayer Console in-line or pop out. I have since worked out that if I start the player from the Radio home page all works well but why hasn't information like this been published somewhere that I can find it?

The latest update from the 91Èȱ¬ on this page was published over a week ago, surely updating the status more frequently would in itself give some sort of reassurance that it is in fact the 91Èȱ¬ that is at fault and not me or my browser.

Re 39+40. No we're not five and I think it's you missing the point. I believe most people are simply saying, we had a brilliant homepage before and now we don't. Maybe the 91Èȱ¬ should take less time being innovative and more time listening to their users.
You only have to see the number of posts here to realise how important a good homepage is. Surely the fact that you have read all the comments means it is important to you as well.

I am still seeing the same stories from a week ago on my home page; is this the same issue? For example apparently the World cup squad was announced seven hours ago and I am getting last weeks weather. If I go into each section though the stories are up to date.

Your front page tells us that we can see the status of the problem but we can't .
All it says is" we are having problems"
So then is this just another lie.
When exactly are we going to get our page back.
Why should the default page be London. Most people in this country don't live there, do they?
Adefault page for Egremont would be as much use. Now I suppose you have got to look that up to find out where it is .
When was the last time the team worked 36 hours non stop to try to get over the problem.
Sometime never i suppose .
You really are pretty useless aren't you?

I agree with 39, "I would much rather the 91Èȱ¬ took there time to ensure the issue was properly fixed"

I just wish the problem, whatever it is, had been sorted before the launch. Ho hum

I would question Jo Wickremasinghe's use of the phrase "thorough testing" if you "were unable to accurately predict the type and combination of customisations that users would perform" although it's easy to say this with hindsight I know. However, as a keen supporter of the 91Èȱ¬ this is a disappointing situation and if I sound as if I think 91Èȱ¬ should be doing better it is simply that I strongly believe that they can

Dear oh dear oh dear. It's only a web page. If you want local news go to the main news section and click on England. Scroll to the bottom of the page and there's your local news. How hard is that? I like bbc.co.uk and it's not ruined for me simply because the homepage isn't working properly

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re 50 I find it odd that the people 'moaning' set out reasonable comments in a grown up style yet those who berate them do it in a childlike manner. Just a thought.
Oh, and if you're not bothered, why are you here?
Regarding the homepage, the old page I could glance at and get an overall picture of the news, now I have to search through all the world news as my geoIP is outside the uk.

This problem has been there for a while and now is when someone give us some explanation, this is none sense.

I had been, looking what was wrong with my computer but now I realize that was your web page rather than my.

Finally I guess one of the golden rules when you make an improvement if do not fits what is alreday working, and if you got it wrong has the courage to go back and start again.

I think you are all just belly-aching. Leave these poor folk alone and let them do their job. The 91Èȱ¬ homepage is very cutting edge, it can't be just chucked up with a bit of HTML in notepad ya know!

Until the problem is resolved I have changed my 91Èȱ¬page (regrettably) from 91Èȱ¬ 91Èȱ¬ to iGoogle

Hows about everyone cuts the 91Èȱ¬ a bit of slack, after all, how much are you paying for this website??? Thought so, nowt!!
The 91Èȱ¬ don't go out of their way to cause these kinds of problems, they are pushing forward allowing new technology to give YOU functionality that makes your browsing experience more customisable.
There are cutbacks everywhere as we all know and I'm sure the 91Èȱ¬ would have liked to throw more weight behind the testing of the new websites, but unfortunately, they couldn't, however, I'm sure they are trying their upmost to rectify these problems as soon as possible.
I must admit that an update as to the state of play woulnd't go amiss, but other than that, keep up the good work!!

It would help if there was a bit more detail regarding the problem on the homepage and some estimate of time-scale for a fix. It is really annoying and I agree with a lot of the comments around the issue of whether this 'fault' would be allowed to go on like this with other businesses. The 91Èȱ¬ homepage is fantastic, particularly with the degree of customisation available. This is why people are frustrated. However I also agree with the other comments about keeping perspective! It is only a web page after all.

None of my customisations have returned as promised. No chance to change anything, no localisations on homepage only temporary on actual weather page. But there again, nothing seemed to be remembered anyway in Firefox. Can we have the old homepage back, at least as a temporary measure until things are fixed?

The 91Èȱ¬ is getting as bad as all the rest of the failures. On Sunday we had "The Big Question" breaking down every few minutes. No real apology from the nerds at the 91Èȱ¬. The License fee should be partly refunded. Otherwise a very good 91Èȱ¬ Website but not at present!!!!

As with quite a few other posters a bit more info would be helpful especially as on one PC at home it still works and functions correctly while on another it doesn't - both on the same network with the same IP address - baffled

It's instructive that the default weather forecast is set for London. That tells us a lot about the 91Èȱ¬'s priorities, and is indicative of a wider malaise in this country.

The 91Èȱ¬ website is fantastic but it seems that its complexity has got beyond its constructors' ability to correct bugs. A commercial house faced with a support problem of this kind would by now have fixed it or reverted to a previous version while working on a solution.

The problem itself is minor but irritating. As a retired systems analyst living in Cornwall rather than an unemployed young Londoner, which appears to be the 91Èȱ¬'s target for the site, I have no daytime interest in London or Radio One but still can't set my own defaults.

55. At 7:31pm on 09 Jun 2010, Bazza wrote:

Hows about everyone cuts the 91Èȱ¬ a bit of slack, after all, how much are you paying for this website??? Thought so, nowt!!
The 91Èȱ¬ don't go out of their way to cause these kinds of problems, they are pushing forward allowing new technology to give YOU functionality that makes your browsing experience more customisable.
There are cutbacks everywhere as we all know and I'm sure the 91Èȱ¬ would have liked to throw more weight behind the testing of the new websites, but unfortunately, they couldn't, however, I'm sure they are trying their upmost to rectify these problems as soon as possible.
I must admit that an update as to the state of play woulnd't go amiss, but other than that, keep up the good work!!

ERM HOW ABOUT THE LICENCE FEE PEOPLE PAY THAT COSTS A FORTUNE!!!!!!!

As it is fairly apparent that there is some fault with the current version of software why not reinstate the previous version until you get it sorted out?

As a retired IT professional I can understand the complexities of balancing the "quick, but incomplete fix" against solving "the underlying problem."
However you're missing the point of managing your customer's expectations. If you expect it will take two weeks, tell us it will take a month. Yes you'll get more initial complaints but overall you will get far far less and if you actually take three weeks you will still look like heroes.
Next time remember that if you let the customer customize anything, we will! Very differently and far more often than you could imagine. For example: The varying size of the adverts at the top of the right column "forces me (!!??!!)" to relocate the items at the bottom of all three columns to maintain a neat layout making my fussiness become your problem.
Good luck with the redesign. I have finally resigned myself to being without "the best news and information site on the web" for another four weeks, so go and make yourself look like our heroes!

Generally speaking, the 91Èȱ¬ website is brilliant and one which I visit most frequently. However, why unecessary changes have to be made just to freshen up its appearance is beyond me.

Why do organisations insist on trying to fix what isn't broke only to run into inevitable functionality problems?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

#66
If you read the message at 63 it explins why.
Do you read posts before posting or are you a blind poster posting without reading previous

or explains

Get it sorted!!

The page is back to normal for me on all browsers apart from Safari 5. I am on a mac running snow leopard. Any reason why?

71 - I am the same. :) I am not overly bothered though haha.

Maybe it's because Safari only came out yesterday?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

91Èȱ¬page technical issues - We're unable to save your changes warning this text contains sarcasm which may upset some readers in which case I am awfully sorry. Having read your house rules I am not quite sure what I am allowed to say. I do not wish to offend any one or put you under any kind of stress. I would just like to use your service and save settings, far be it for a humble user to criticise you inability to fix a technical issues for weeks not to mention the probable loss of your market share and damage to your reputation. Implementing major software changes without a fallback strategy how wonderfully quaint.

I tried to complain online about this technical difficulty using the 91Èȱ¬ on complaints facility. Unfortunately i got into a loop and apparently complain about anything technical and it boots you back to the unhelpful technical page.
The important information required is the person responsible is aware and he or she publishes an estimate of when it will be fixed and updates this information regularly in order that it is useful. The 91Èȱ¬ is not the London Broadcasting Corporation but responsible for the WHOLE of the United Kingdom, offering London weather and news is all well and good to Londoners but the majority of licence payers are not in this area. The difficulties have lasted too long for it to be just a minor inconvenience. What is going on?????

91Èȱ¬ home page:- Just how long will it take to fix ?

After years of reporting government IT failures and demanding resignations we have at the 91Èȱ¬ a major IT failure will anyone resign.

No

No one at the 91Èȱ¬ gets the sack no matter how incompetent. And the IT people involved in this are.

How much has it cost?

For interests sake, could we get a technical reason for the issues?

As suggested earlier, is it possibly a CouchDB issue? I recall hearing some time back that you were planning on upgrading from an 18 month old v0.9 (.8?) to v0.11. Does this issue have something to do with that deployment?

66. At 4:08pm on 10 Jun 2010, Mark wrote:
"...Why do organisations insist on trying to fix what isn't broke only to run into inevitable functionality problems? "

Because they probably have a large R&D Department, or whatever it's called and they have to keep all the personnel busy in order to justify its size and Budget?
As soon as they've rectified this current problem, they'll be working on the next 'improvement'

Some feedback form The Beeb techno's would be nice

I have just tried signing in to post a comment. Neither of my two previous 91Èȱ¬ids worked, so I've had to invent another!

I agree with most of the previuos posters that problems happen but as paying customers of the 91Èȱ¬ (yes, we are!) surely we can expect a more frequent (than once a week) and more detailed 9than a continuing sob story) explanation of the problems and more importantly a more REALISTIC estaimate of when the problems will be solved - weeks rather than days? How many weeks, 2 or 52?

Fianlly, for now, my 'personalised settings' keep coming and going. Why?

=Nick

I am not able to see live news channel in full screen mode....
Is some thing wrong with the website or with my laptop.. I was able to see it yesterday.....

The technical issues are very annoying and frustrating and have been going on for weeks. And what is even more annoying and frustrating is the new banner at the top of the page. It takes up the top third of my screen, leaving the modules I am interested in near the bottom. I don't want it here and do not want to read it, it should be possible to disable it or at least collapes it. And when I have the page set out as I want it, the banner changes size and ruins the layout of the page! Please go back to the old hoepage, it was much better.

Technical issues update? The last message on here is from June 1st, 10 days ago!

Comment 84 - Paul says Jo will share information when she has it and that is clearly to be appreciated but surely she can be a bit more specific that sha has to date and at least provide an outline of the technical issues involved and a best guess - if nothing better - as to when the problem will be resolved.

I believe the comments to date have been quite moderate in their tone; I assume Paul is a 91Èȱ¬ employee/contractor. If he feels they are immoderate he should try working in a truly pressurised environment where deadlines are set published and met - otherwise it is that long, lonely, escorted walk to the front door!

Any ideas when ( if ever ) this will be fixed...It's been wrong for 10 days now.... Can you not just restore the server to prior the problem and put the old homepage back on?

Re: #85

Jo responded on 3rd, 7th and 10th - see messages 12, 23 and 63 - where are you looking?

Re: #84 - well said.

I do agree with the comment about being able to collapse the banner for the lead story at the top of the screen - it is way too big and detracts from the modules I want to see at a glance when I sign in - ho-hum

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a fallacy. If people really lived life like that, nothing would ever change. You've got to innovate to stay ahead. That always means an element of risk, which sometimes come to fruition and then you've got problems like this one... But, that's life. As a result, we're getting loads more exciting features from the 91Èȱ¬ for free :-)

The latest attempt at a fix worked for 10 seconds, long enough for me to type my location and see some local headlines. However i am often accused ofbeing cynical and reloaded the website only to find it hadnt saved my location and said techical issues. I tried refreshing the page but again no fix. Well I suppose they go home for the weekend after anoother wasted week. Jo Wickremasinghe is Head of 91Èȱ¬page and Syndication Services will no doubt keep us informed but i wont be holding my breath.

I find it disappointing the actual situation. Some people do not realise that by customising our home page this enables us to have what we need and want at the right time. 91Èȱ¬ was my homepage and several times, when needing to log on to the Internet a glance was enough to get what I needed before logging on to another page.
Terrible that we have this issue not solved for so long and nor even a contingency plan.
I have now switched my homepage and will not return until this is dealt with. Maybe never again. I am sure I am not alone.
Why we pay TV Licence??? As it was pointed out more than once, anyone that could not deal with a problem like this by now would be jobless.
I now use a foreign homepage and ama amazed that it never crashes or jams like 91Èȱ¬'s. Hey!!! Actually any other webpage (foreign or not...) if with renoum, does not crashes anyway.

Thanks for the update.

Please put a status box on the home page indicating there are problems

92. At 12:10pm on 12 Jun 2010, Bill-Taylor wrote:
"Thanks for the update.
Please put a status box on the home page indicating there are problems"


????
There is one on my 91Èȱ¬Page
Righthand side under the Date and Clock

I live outside the UK but preferred a personalized 91Èȱ¬ page as my browser default start page over CNN, Yahoo! etc. until the "technical problems" (we are unable to save your changes) arose. Apparently, this has now changed so that the user cannot make any changes at all, saveable or otherwise. No technical problem in degrading user experience, then.
Other postings have indicated a disbelief that technical problems are the cause of this degradation. The 91Èȱ¬ home page has joined the herds of other portals in adopting a like-it-or lump-it approach and there is little to distinguish between them. Celebs galore. Your attempts to "re-architect" (lovely candidate for the next OED)the website have resulted in great disappointment for many people around the world. Give us the old one back. Please.

I am just glad that I customised the new style home page when I did.

Of course London should be the default setting. More people live in London than the whole of Scotland and over 10% of the population of the whole of the UK live in London.
Where else? East Cheam? Much Binding-in-the-Marsh? Warmington-on-Sea?
O, and one final thought; London IS the capital. Wake up to reality, Wurzel heads.

The 91Èȱ¬ 91Èȱ¬page project has been a disaster! It discredits the 91Èȱ¬ and looks to be a poorly executed project and a waste of money
-- the fixed banner is unpopular and should be removed
-- personalisation is weak. you can shift a few categories around but it still always better to go straight to the iplayer, sports or news pages
-> the net effect is make 91Èȱ¬ harder to use and lower quality. i have switched to google ig.
-> AND now the ongoing technical problems! it took me 30 mins of retrying just to get a login ID to make this complaint
-- please redeploy the original website. how you could mess up the best website for news is beyond me...

Still no more info !

I like the 91Èȱ¬ including the 91Èȱ¬page and iPlayer.
I do realise the 91Èȱ¬ will need to update services and will inevitably run into problems,some of which are caused by the very high ussage and popularity of what is a very successful website.

My grumble is that the 91Èȱ¬ is sometimes rather slow to respond and update users, or responds in a way that users may not easily find.

It is rather ludicrous that this blog about the homepage problems was not (as far as I am aware) ever linked from the homepage.

I have already commented about the general lack of links from the homepage to the blogs.
Presumably the topic tracker module remains incapable of tracking blogs !

#93

No Clock or date on my homepage. I guess this is a customisation problem.

I would like the box introducing the new home page included a message on the current problems.