Mumsnet Beta site - can you spare a few mins to have a look around?

[JustineMumsnet]

As trailed last May, we’ve been working on a new version of the Mumsnet Platform for a while now and we’re aiming to release it in a few weeks' time. We’ve been testing the site with Mumsnetters since July last year and we’ve been incorporating their feedback along the way. Now we're ready for the next stage of testing and we’d love as many of you as possible to have a play with it and tell us what you think/ uncover any glitches or concerns.

Our main objective in re-platforming is to move onto a new code base that will allow us to develop and improve features much faster. We have kept the functionality largely unchanged for now, aside from small improvements to the user experience and to a few features that don't function at all well at the moment. So, for example, there is a new version of Search. We've also been working on improving Private Messages although they’re not included in the Beta site just yet but should be released next week - we'll post here when they are.

If you’d like to help us test the new platform:

• Please go to beta.mumsnet.com

• When you access the beta website you’ll be asked for a passcode, please enter 246810

• Once you have accessed the Beta, we’d be super grateful if you’d complete this survey www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CDW3SZM and tell us what you think

You can log in with your existing Mumsnet username and password.

For this test - we’ve taken a snapshot of the live site as it was at the end of 31 January - so any new posts, or changes you’ve made since then, won’t be reflected on the Beta site.

Whilst navigating around the Beta site, if you notice any usability issues or bugs, please report them via the “feedback” tab you’ll see on each page (see screenshot above). Any time you can spare to have a play (be it minutes or hours) will be hugely useful and much appreciated.

A few final things to note

1 - For now we're just focusing on the web version of the site, so if you only use the app, then we don't need you to participate just yet - we'll be looking at that in due course.

2 - If you’re a Premium member, this won’t be reflected on the Beta site just yet.

3 - If you’ve registered on Mumsnet with a social account, you may need to reset your password to login

Big thanks!

What are the 'expert' posts?

I am an expert on experts, and those posts are not making the grade at all, I'm afraid.

From a brief look, there's way too much white (wasted!) space on, say, the list of Active conversations. There seems too much white space everywhere actually.

Removing "quote" and "pm" from being visible by each post and hiding them behind the three dots makes it less usable.

Lots of pages don't load or give an error.
Having formatting available in the "add message" box is good.

Having formatting available in the "add message" box is good. Have you tried it Soup? I've just attempted to post a message with formatting and ended up almost tearing my hair out in frustration! Then I got an 'oops' message so gave up.

@0blio

Having formatting available in the "add message" box is good. Have you tried it Soup? I've just attempted to post a message with formatting and ended up almost tearing my hair out in frustration! Then I got an 'oops' message so gave up.

It worked for me. Lots of other stuff doesn't though.

I feel like we are being overly helpful with nothing in return. After trying to be helpful, there's not even an acknowledgment. I'm not doing any more testing.

CAN PEOPLE FINALLY EDIT THEIR OWN POSTS LIKE EVERY OTHER WEBSITE & FORUM IN EXISTENCE SINCE 1999?

Sorry for all caps, but the lack of an editing function is mind boggling. Didn't want to sign up just to find out and didn't see it mentioned in the posts here. And agree with the PPs, beta testing and filling in feedback forms on a seemingly still buggy website is definitely paid work.

No edit as far as I can see.

Seriously, for the sort of workup that form is asking for, a place like UTest would be paying over £100 per tester and that's cheap.

@OhYouBadBadKitten

I feel like we are being overly helpful with nothing in return. After trying to be helpful, there's not even an acknowledgment. I'm not doing any more testing.

I agree. It was the same with Beta testing the new search function. MN seem to ask a lot of their users and give nothing in return for the feedback, testing and advice about site updates. I think it's pretty rude of them to not even acknowledge the points posters have made here.

@Lougle

Seriously, for the sort of workup that form is asking for, a place like UTest would be paying over £100 per tester and that's cheap.

I didn’t realise that. Won’t be doing it again. In any case we will have had a brief look, not systematically going through the parts of the site.

It took about 15 minutes. Hardly a "work up"

I thought it was clunky and not as smooth as the "real" site.

Thanks for all the feedback thus far - it's incredibly useful. We're working through the points raised so I may not have answers to everything yet but it is all being noted I promise.

First off on the request for free testing - we really want to get genuine feedback from regular users before we put anything out there and incentives sometimes get in the way of that. As you may know we run regular product tests with incentives so do join our panel if you're interested in doing some of that.

Speed and older browsers
The beta website is technically a lot faster than the live website but older browsers aren’t always supported by new technologies and some of the frameworks we are using on our codebase require more up to date operating systems. We will be looking into specific issues with speed but updating your browser is advisable - not just for Mumsnet but for using the internet generally.

Font sizes and spacing
We are reviewing font sizes and spacing so we will let you know once this is updated and ready for review.

Issues with old posts showing
There was a bug that changed a lot of dates on the system so threads look old when they aren’t. Apologies we’re working on a fix for this now.
Any updates since 31st Jan 2022 will not be visible on the beta site because we’re just showing you a snapshot of data up at this time.

Last updated date on active
We haven’t had a last updated date on active for a while now.

Issues with expert posts being tagged incorrectly
Expert posts refer to webchats where we invite experts to answer questions on interesting topics. There's a bug on the beta which means that a lot of posts that shouldn’t be tagged as web chats have been tagged so they are appearing incorrectly as expert posts. We're working on a fix for this now.

See all / see next by OP not appearing on some pages
This is the same issue as expert posts - we’re updating this now so it should be fixed shortly.

Trying to log in on the registration tab
We think this is a good point and we're going to set the default to log in rather than register. Thanks

Colour coding
Customised colour coding on OP and your own posts should work if you have it set it up in the live website. If you’re not seeing the correct colours we'd be very grateful if you'd send us a screen shot of your customise settings on the live site and a screen shot of a thread on beta - that will help us determine the issue. It's also easy to set this up in the new site - click the account icon / my mumsnet > go to settings > go to talk settings page - you'll find it in there.

Threads I’m on being missing / showing all threads not limited
On the live site we have a setting to only show a year of ‘threads I’m on’ - in this new site we have no limit so you may see a lot more content there. If you'd prefer a limit it would be interesting to hear what you think a reasonable limit would be?

Big thanks for all the feedback thus far - as said we're keeping a very close eye on this thread and the survey forms and we'll let you know periodically how we're responding.

Font size and text spacing needs addressing imo - font too big and too much white space. Headings, poster names and dates too prominent. It makes reading longer posts more difficult and seems "dumbed-down", somehow.

I took a screenshot of the same post in old and new versions to show the difference in what you can see. The old version is easier to read and that fecking Annabel Carmel advert is back on the beta version

What about showing the date a thread was started/posted by on active threads?

That's the only way of finding zombie threads - unless you have other plans for that?

The beta website is technically a lot faster than the live website but older browsers aren’t always supported by new technologies and some of the frameworks we are using on our codebase require more up to date operating systems

I'm using the latest version of Chrome on Android 12 and the Beta site is vastly slower than the current one. Logging in takes several seconds. Loading a thread take 1-2 seconds (which is a long time, honestly!)

but older browsers aren’t always supported by new technologies and some of the frameworks we are using on our codebase require more up to date operating systems

Can that be changed, so that none require newer operating systems?

@JustineMumsnet I don't seem to have a talk settings tab anymore? I just have account details, password settings, about you, newsletters.

I can't customise anything at all.

@Lougle just jumping in on this one

You should be able to see 'talk settings' in your account section - see screenshots.

Can you please send me a screenshot of what you're seeing if it looks different? If you'd rather not post it publicly then send to [email protected].

If you could let me know your device, browser and browser version that would be really helpful so we can track down the issue.

Thanks!

There's a 30 days only thread started on 9th September on the active threads bit

[quote KatyMumsnet]@Lougle just jumping in on this one

You should be able to see 'talk settings' in your account section - see screenshots.

Can you please send me a screenshot of what you're seeing if it looks different? If you'd rather not post it publicly then send to [email protected].

If you could let me know your device, browser and browser version that would be really helpful so we can track down the issue.

Thanks![/quote]
Hi @KatyMumsnet

It's so strange. I'm using a laptop on Chrome Version 97.0.4692.99 (Official Build) (64-bit), but it's the same when I use my android phone.

I literally have just 4 tabs.

That screenshot didn't come out very well. Here's a close up of the tabs.

@Lougle that's the live website - we've only made changes in the beta website for now

Here's how to access the beta site:

Go to beta.mumsnet.com

When you access the beta website you’ll be asked for a passcode, please enter 246810

[quote KatyMumsnet]@Lougle that's the live website - we've only made changes in the beta website for now

Here's how to access the beta site:

Go to beta.mumsnet.com

When you access the beta website you’ll be asked for a passcode, please enter 246810[/quote]
Hi @KatyMumsnet, yes, I'm aware of that. But I used to be able to choose my OP colour and my post colour, etc. I can't see any way to customise that on the live site now? I used to be able to set the thread length (I'm an old timer who is still allowed 1000 threads per page) but I can't see that either?