something really horrible has happened to the website

sleepyjones

As a web developer myself I think some of the criticisms on here a bit harsh.

For the general forum the new layout would be fine, I think a lot of people in here maybe didn't think it was good for them ... but to be fair, the Money Savings Expert forum isn't about the Competitions forums, this is only a small part of the overall forums which have a very different function and functionality from the rest of the forums (countless hours of work by developers to customise the forums to allow you to green tick / red x etc).

Most of the people in here won't have ever even looked in the other forums.

So, lets not be so negative ... designers have feelings too and believe it or not, the competition forum isn't necessarily the be all and end all just because it's the only forum you use.

Stoodles

I use several of the other forums, as well as the main site regularly, and continue to do so when I'm on a break from comping. It's worth noting that Competitions Time nearly always has the highest numbers viewing. Like me, most Comps users probably come to MSE first for most other financial issues. We contribute to the sites income by our clicks to buy products.

Having been involved in launching new IT systems for work, I thought my experience might be useful, so used the new look yesterday, and sent in by email detailed comments. many applied to all the forums, not just Comps. I don't expect any new system to be perfect at launch, but I do expect users to have a say in its evolution to the final form.

The standard reply included

"If you’ve reported a bug, we’ll be taking a look and aiming to fix any genuine ones.

We’ll be looking through all general feedback but we can't promise that something you like or dislike will be changed."

I don't know if that is just incautious phrasing, but the message seemed to be that users views counted for little. I felt insulted by the "any genuine ones"

I have to disagree that that the layout would be fine for most. I found a day of dealing with glare was hard on the eyes, and the amount of scrolling to read a long thread in Marriage, Relationships, Families or OLd Style was frustrating and uncomfortable.

icicles

Kailua wrote: »

something really horrible has happened to the website

the layout and colours have changed and it's almost unreadable.:(

I have got blue writing all over the text like overprint, everything jumbled up. Totally unreadable. Is it my PC or has the weekly email been corrupted?

BobQ

I have similar issues of not finding the forums on the front page (Windows 7, laptop, IE)

However it works on same computer with Chrome.

With IE all the options above the multi-colour band are not visible. Also some pages are corrupted (text writing over other text).

I quite like the new layout but the website testing seems to have been quite superficial.