New forum, why aren't staff on here knocking out website fixes ?

[#1]

@dvorak,

With a lot of years under my belt managing software development, I would have to say "It depends".  Sometimes it is sensible to deliver specific single point fixes to issues, even though generally it is not.

What confuses me here is that something appears to be significantly different here compared to the test environment.  What should have been a simple CSS change (darken the grey text) made last Friday appears to be coincidental with the appearance of a multitude of issues.  I'm suspecting that the change was more than the CSS change and there's no regression path for the change.

Cannot begin to imagine the service management issues that creates!

[#2]

Dvorak ,, BUT i thought that Lithium had allready developed this software  as they are Experts at supplying forums

And it was just a matter of migrating the old PN forum here ,, so no new software to develop   , maybe just style and format

[#3]

I may have just found another BUG while i was replying to Dvorak , townman posted a reply ,, on the old forum i would have been given a warining if i wanted to review before posting ,,,,   NOT on here

[#4]

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@rongtw wrote:

Dvorak ,, BUT i thought that Lithium had allready developed this software  as they are Experts at supplying forums

And it was just a matter of migrating the old PN forum here ,, so no new software to develop   , maybe just style and format

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But there was probably a move from a test environment to the Production server environment.  Many a slip possible here.

M

[#5]

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@rongtw wrote:

BUT i thought that Lithium had allready developed this software  as they are Experts at supplying forums

And it was just a matter of migrating the old PN forum here ,, so no new software to develop   , maybe just style and format

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Well that is exactly what I thought too during the testing process.  I believe it to be the case that this is a new "Responsive layout" version of the product.  Lets just say that we found more characteristics in the product than the belief stated above would have lead one to expect.

No cross post warning we found quite quickly.  It is not a function of the product, so its not a bug - its an enhancement request, which has been on Lithium's user forum as a 'nice to have' since around October last year.

[#6]

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@Townman wrote:
........Sadly I'm finding that I'm not getting replies to PMs on matters, indeed some PMs are not even getting read.

Why are you sending PMs? You are but a lone voice in the wilderness.

[#7]

Looks like I will have a long list of things to do on my return on Thursday. To be clear - I am the Frontend developer employed by plusnet so I will be able to fix things from a visual point of view. I should have some time allocated to me so I can work through any major issues. System bugs that I am unable to fix due to server configuration or backend code would be in the domain of Lithium to fix so I can't help with that but we would be able to let you guys know if a significant bug has been fixed by Lithium. As for Staff being here fixing issues - that would be me and I am currently on annual leave till Thursday (apologies).

My friend chose the wrong time to have a wedding and have me as the best man so I couldn't really miss it.

[#8]

Thanks for your reply Jack, as you'll appreciate, several of us knew that, but it's all been a bit frustrating. No doubt you'll be tearing your hair out, but only for a short while I hope. Enjoy the rest of your break.

[#9]

Cheers Chris. I will endeavour to get to the bottom of as many issues as possible but I imagine the first port of call is to get the visual bugs out of the way before moving on to feature requests.

Don't worry guys, I will be working hard to get as many issues resolved on my return. I have already spoken to my team lead this morning about some issues and a support ticket has been raised directly with Lithium (and put on high priority) for some of those issues to be looked at as we didn't get some of those bugs on the staging environment.

[#10]

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@Chris wrote:

The bugs are being looked at, but we're not just throwing fixes out individually. All that will do is cause more bugs from each fix. 

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So you're going to 'throw' out the fixes all at once and hope that it won't introduce any bugs at all?

Seriously, it really would be better to do them one by one. No offence but plusnet don't have the highest reputation for handling technical glitches. The huge number of bugs on this new and tested forum shows that.

[#11]

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@MauriceC wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

@Chris,  can you give us a time and a date when the first batch of fixes will be applied ?

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Being a tad cynical, I'd guess at "Shortly after the new Billing System goes live" 

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I can't help but wonder if that will have any bugs too... that end up working in plusnets interest by overbilling people..

[#12]

The plot is simple and obvious, PN want to outsource the forums. Job done, but not that well.....

It's great to hear from @jaread83  just a shame that PN staff can't be as honest, but maybe they don't know what he/she does....

[#13]

I am actually an employee of plusnet working in the web development team as a front end developer and not a Lithium engineer or anything like that. The various teams that work here on the forum are aware of what I can and can't do on this platform, I have attended meetings with everyone involved and provided updates and fixes to issues raised. I took note to what they wanted to see and provided that to them (easy access to key pages like the unread posts, the notification feed was updated, blog pages built, private messages, author stats on messages, the list goes on and on and it took me 5 months of solid work to put it all together).

When I started this project it was thought that it would be a simple case of deploying a forum and I would skin it up to look like the Plusnet brand but that simply wasn't the case. I was given a functioning forum from Lithium and a backend suite to customise it but I had to produce a lot of customisations to get it to where it is now. It was very plain and a far cry from what it is now. I have been working closely with some of the regulars here and provided them with tools that did not exist in the first version as well as a lot of fixes on the Frontend to make this all work a lot better after some feedback.

Before I went away I was extremely confident that it would all be working as it did on staging but it seems that the migration over to the production site has produced a few bugs which are being investigated and I apologise to those that are currently having issues. I will be reading feedback and documenting it all and will likely be working on sorting out what I am able to fix on my return.

[#14]

And you were right to be confident, whilst there are some desired enhancements to the core product and some other known bugs, what we are seeing on the Live platform that is impacting some basic usability was not present when the Forum went live on Thursday and only appeared later on Friday morning as has been mentioned in several posts around this forum. Indeed the bugs do not appear currently on the testing site which is why Plusnet and Lithium staff must be tearing their hair out investigating what is going on.

7up wrote:
............. No offence but plusnet don't have the highest reputation for handling technical glitches. The huge number of bugs on this new and tested forum shows that.

I've repeated above what you have already been made aware of!

[#15]

@jaread83,

I hope you had a good break and hope you return refreshed.  I do though need to challenge your perspectives (again).  Your mate did not choose the wrong time to have a wedding.  PlusNet chose the wrong time to migrate the service.

Given that there's just you who really understands this beast, migrating the service at the time that the key person was known to be on leave was not exactly wise.

Whilst I understand the confidence derived from the state of the staging service, until the actual switch on of the live service, who can be really sure of the out turn?  Then of all things it was a change to address the out cry of (due to the corporate style) unreadable grey text that the system appears to have acquired so many issues.  It's so frustrating all round, especially given the level of discussion on style during the testing.

Yet again your modesty (understandably) understates the significant difference your work on the skin has made to this products usability; without that we'd not be here now.

Hope you get quality time today with the one-year (and now a bit more) old!