Broken forum

It's been like that for me for months, constantly reloads threads and often just shuts down completely with a black screen saying something along the lines of "this isn't possible"
IPhone 11 or 12 using safari

Consider yourself fortunate. Many pay for this privilege 😉

Thought it was just me. Very frustrating!!!!!

Not a problem for paying subscribers.

Not experienced anything of the above
Chrome/android

It got better for a while.

Mark said it’s something to do with ads and they turned some off.

The irony is that it’s a loose loose for STW as not only is the site unusable but because the site is unusable you don’t get to see ads that make them money

I got bored of reporting it

Also recently I got a full page ad on iPhone, something to do with yachts which once it loaded it filled the screen and no way to close it down

I got a full page ad on iPhone, something to do with yachts which once it loaded it filled the screen and no way to close it down

If you buy the yacht, the ad goes away. Its less than the price of a coffee every 30 seconds. Some people are so tight 🙄

In the members forum there are regular discussions about how to make the experience worse for all those non-members. This month’s target is iPhone users that insist on sticking with Safari.

As a paid member this site is not perfect, but happy to say I don’t have same issues, also using iPhone (11) with Safari.
It’s a shame you stopped using the site. Lots to learn in here, the common thread being loose vs lose 😇

Damn just noted it’s showing me as a free member. I do pay, honest 😕

The irony is that it’s a loose loose for STW

Wizard's Sleeve slack or slacker?

Edir, beaten to it

Shocking.

Demand a refund.

Not a problem for paying subscribers.

It’s the reason I cancelled my subscription tbf, so paying customers are not immune

I wonder what the professional web devs among us think of this forum and it's persistent fragility when it comes to hosting adverts / working properly?

I struggle to believe that business model is really "make it shit so that people subscribe".

This month’s target is iPhone users that insist on sticking with Safari.

To be fair, Apple's browser model is such that whatever browser you use on iOS it's still really Safari under the hood. If a site isn't working then you're pretty stuffed. (Macs don't suffer from this, just iDevices.)

It’s the reason I cancelled my subscription tbf

If the issue is advertising-related then that makes little sense as (so long as you're logged in) you shouldn't be seeing adverts.

I struggle to believe that business model is really “make it shit so that people subscribe”.

Of course it isn't. The problem is more likely simply one of resource. When I was a moderator I had access to STW's bug / feature request / to do planner, the versioning was approaching two years long.

If the issue is advertising-related then that makes little sense as

I have no idea what the cause was but all I remember is it constantly freezing and refreshing half way through a reply

Tbf it’s been a bit broken for years for various reasons. Since I no longer pay for it I no longer care however.

Worst user experience out of all the forums I frequent. I have found that switching to an alternative browser made a huge difference. On Chrome the site is practically unusable.

Works fine on firefox and android. No advert problems. Pity posting pics is so awkward.

We've never had these issues on RetroBike..

Which is completely free incidentally, despite many people over the years offering to make a contribution.

RetroBike gets 200k visitors per month compared with STW's 1.5 million. I suggest you bugger off there if it's so much better, they could use the custom.

I suggest you bugger off there if it’s so much better, they could use the custom.

😆  😆  😆

On Chrome the site is practically unusable.

Works fine on Chrome for me - on all the platforms I use. I wonder if there is some other factor that might make a difference?

Safari on an iPhone 7 here and no issues at all

Works fine on chrome on windows 10, 11 and Android 7 (I think).

I've never had issues with this sites operation generally, but bemoan the layout and symbology used that is really indecipherable. Like having 2 handshake icons for different things in the side/6dot menu. I try to avoid that menu as it's so useless....

Before the Xmas 2008 hack it was still shonky and counter intuitive, but at least it wasn't trying to be income generating then, and really was an adjunct to the magazine, rather than its own monster...

It's so bad now, with freezing, ads rendering in odd places and the screen jumping about.

I know criticism isn't very welcome, but if the forum is now the main revenue generator for the business why not make it a bit smoother?

What can the devs be doing that's more important?

but if the forum is now the main revenue generator for the business

Is it?

Works fine for me on Chrome, perfect for reading @frankconway moaning about free members on as many Topics as possible 😀

Also recently I got a full page ad on iPhone, something to do with yachts which once it loaded it filled the screen and no way to close it down

Moving up in the world, then - when I used to get those, oh, ten, fifteen years ago, it was TAG Heuer watches and Maserati cars.

I refuse to use Chrome, I’ve read a lot of different articles that don’t describe it in glowing terms, and it belongs to Google, which explains it.

Wait what there's a forum?

I wonder what the professional web devs among us think of this forum and it’s persistent fragility when it comes to hosting adverts / working properly

Without ruffling feathers here, I wonder what the majority of 'professional web devs' would suggest in terms of scaling a site to 1.5m active users.

Wordpress it isn't. Nor is it likely to be hosted on a shared provider.

I could check but can't be arsed. Likely we're looking at a cloud provider eg. AWS, GCP. Then there's the choice of solution within that cloud. Options for both vertical and potentially horizontal scaling. A true disaster recovery plan. Probably a data sink which helps to monetise the forum. A true CI/CD pipeline, or CI at least.

I could be far off the mark but I doubt it very much.

A forum is a piece of piss to implement. But to run any online venture at scale requires a multi-disciplined team of engineers, QA and DevOps. What you may think of as simple changes may involve more complexity than you might imagine.

I'll leave it there but I could go on...

RetroBike gets 200k visitors per month compared with STW’s 1.5 million.

If you believe the analytics for hit rate, you should also believe the revenue estimate.

So what are STW towers doing with their

$2 to $5 million PA ?

Note, also that the hit rate and ranking are steadily decreasing.

What can the devs be doing that’s more important?

Why not go ask Mark? STW Towers has an open door policy.

A forum is a piece of piss to implement. But to run any online venture at scale requires a multi-disciplined team of engineers, QA and DevOps. What you may think of as simple changes may involve more complexity than you might imagine.

Nail:head interface. And STW has (I think now) three devs who also have a daily churn job on top of actual developing development.

I appreciate that I might get a bit janky about this and that it's no longer my concern. But in a past life I've also presented had all the same arguments as here, then I spent an afternoon having a guided tour being shown why I was naive.

STW looks basic. It is not.
STW supports "why isn't it like Other Site I Use?" volumes of visitors tenfold over.
STW is a commercial publishing venture requiring the paying of actual salaries in order to stay in existence.

Is it perfect? Hell no, and likely never will be. But yet we're all still here. Why?

If you believe the analytics for hit rate, you should also believe the revenue estimate.

Retrobike shows the exact same revenue estimate on that site. Lest we forget, a site which apparently "is completely free incidentally, despite many people over the years offering to make a contribution."

I've no idea whether their analytics for hit rate on Retrobike are accurate. But I know conclusively that they are for STW because I've seen the Google Analytics stats first-hand.

gurnster - too true; you freeloader...
The best things in life aren't free - but you won't know that until you start paying.
My full subscription helps, in a small way, to maintain Singletrack as a viable business with a forum which allows you - who makes no known financial contribution - to comment FoC.
Not, of course, that you will now subscribe - you know, pay some money; optimism has its limits.

you – who makes no known financial contribution

If they aren't blocking adverts then they are doing all that is asked of a forum member, that's a contribution.

That said, (I wish I had the numbers to hand but) Mark is on record as saying there is nothing he'd like more than to switch off the adverts entirely because they're a constant pain in the arse but a necessary evil to keep the lights on, and I thought the amount of subscribers required to be able to do that was surprisingly few.

@frankconway do you pay to help support STW as a viable business, or do you pay so you can make snide comments to free members?

Why do you feel the need to post negatively about free members.

Without free members there wouldn't be many posts on here.

Stick to the members only forum or at the very least, save your delightful posts for full members topics if you're repulsed by the thought of free members sharing the forum.

We’ve never had these issues on RetroBike..

...

It can be a bit temperamental at times,

Which is it, then?

We’ve never had these issues on RetroBike..

Who is ‘we’?

Cuz someone connected to retrobike as more than just a user, promoting the site, it’s features and claimed lack of issues, whilst putting down the site you are posting on is particularly bad form IMO.

Why do you feel the need to post negatively about free members.

Personally I think that "snide" / negative comments about Free Members are unwarranted. There is no requirement for any reader or poster to subscribe. I disagree with Frank here, every member whether free or paid is equally valid.

However, I think that negative comments about Free Members who do nothing but piss and moan about how shit everything is at every possible opportunity is fair game. If you get something for free that you use daily then you waive the right to constantly whine about it.

Other options are available. If you care sufficiently, you could help support the site financially. If you don't care sufficiently, you could go elsewhere. Or you could deal with the fact that it's going to be idiosyncratic until they have sufficient resources to change it.

Without free members there wouldn’t be many posts on here.

The loss of a few of them would probably be a net gain. 😁

Without free members there wouldn’t be many posts on here.

Well, we'd lose all their posts whinging about the forum, so that would be a positive.

Don't forget its the comments provided by all the users (paying and non paying) that actually make the forum.

The end user experience should be good for both types of user.

Absolutely.

We’ve never had these issues on RetroBike..

…

It can be a bit temperamental at times,

---

Which is it, then?

-----

It was just one glitch, which was on the single "rody's old skool picks'" listed code numbers instead of words.

This was on the old forum platform.which was updated recently . Took a look now prompted by yourself and i see its went away, so must have been related to that.

All fixed, nothing to worry about.

Certainly it didnt cause any problems anywhere else.