I would not put the link of the BETA version on this on the homepage if your in this phase. I would recommend you activate it for a small group of loyal users.Take Reddit as a good example here. They have a BETA subreddit where users cand join and comment on the new interface so the product gets improved in that phase.
My new (beta) homepage
In my role as General Manager for News & Knowledge at BBC Future Media, I oversee eight of the 10 major areas (we call these 'products') of BBC Online working with my editorial counterparts - including the BBC homepage. Today, we relaunched the homepage in a test ('beta') version for public use and feedback. The new page is accessible from a link at the top of the current homepage, or directly at beta.bbc.co.uk. I hope that users who give the new homepage a go find it much improved. My colleague James Thornett has written about the relaunch in more detail over on the BBC Internet Blog and would like to know what audiences think. Please leave your feedback comments on his blog post.
The homepage occupies a unique position within BBC Online: though BBC Online is a distinct service, and the homepage a single product within it, editorially the page can show off the breadth of content we make available on the web. But showing this breadth has been our perennial challenge. To date we've made tweaks to a relatively static page to better fulfil this purpose; with the move to a new technical platform, we've had the opportunity to rebuild the page from first for the 9 million-plus average weekly unique browsers.
The new BBC homepage launched in beta today marks a departure from the way we've approached this challenge until now and introduces a new, more visual approach to showing off our content on the web, and eventually on mobile, tablet, and connected TV devices too. Other features include:
I'm sorry to say the new homepage is awful compared to the innovative, customisable old one.I had the old one customised to show me exactly the news, tv, weather and sport I was interested in; with a simple scroll down I could see all the headlines I wanted to. The new one shows me very little content, and what little is shown, it's not what I'm looking for. Far from making it "easier for visitors to find the content they're looking for", it actually makes it much harder to find the content I'm looking for by only showing me content chosen by the BBC.It is clear that this would be a good design for a tablet, but as a desktop homepage it is atrocious. It costs nothing to keep the original homepage as a desktop homepage and use the new one as a tablet homepage or for the (I'm sure few) users who prefer it as a desktop homepage.
It is a pity that the international viewers cannot enjoy the benefits of version 4 (?) of the BBC homepage. I do understand that the international viewers need to see advertisements to cover the costs, but why can overseas viewers not see the same page as we see.Have you ever been abroad and looked at the BBC homepage. Not exactly something you can be proud of. So, will the international version of the hompage be changed to mimick the UK version? And if yes, when?
Thanks for your feedback.Piet, I understand that there are no plans to update the international homepage at the moment.Briantist, you can't currently set your location on the beta homepage. You'll be able to in later versions. James Thornett, head of the homepage, has more in a comment on his post for the BBC Internet blog. And CBeebies is included in knowledge because that's where it lives in the BBC's organisational structure. I know that the homepage team will be looking at the organisation of content areas on the page during the testing period.Steve Bowbrick, editor, About the BBC
It's ugly. There was NOTHING wrong with what is the current home page in my opinion. It allowed me to view what I wanted, with as much detail as I wanted (eg regional news, football if I wanted it to show me 7 stories on the homepage under the regional news section, it'd show me the 7 most recent regional news stories), and if I didn't want to see a section, eg knowledge, gardening, science, etc, I could just get rid of it. The new version I can clearly see is going to be absolutely horrific compared to the current version. I seemingly won't be allowed to customise the new version, putting things where I want, getting rid of the things I don't want to see, unable to increase the number of news stories I see on the homepage, forced to see things I don't want to see, in a cluttered, messy, ugly way. I implore you to abandon this change. It looks horrific.
One thing which makes the current BBC homepage great is the ability to customise where you want each subject, such as News and Sport, and get rid of others that are of no interest to me. The new, more visual, homepage seems very impersonal, and not very useful. I think the beta would be a massive improvement on the current one - but only if this feature is retained.Also, the second and third pages on the 'BBC online today' section seem to be lacking in theme. I don't really know what content I would get if I change pages - distinct sections would be better than shuffling them around.There seems to be quite a bit of white space in between headlines - hopefully that will be fixed as the beta is fine-tuned.
Two blogs on the same subject, so I do not really know where to post my comment.What I really miss on the beta is the customise option. Yes we can choose between 4 views and change location later, but I want to customise the homepage myself like with the current version. Like putting sports and tv on one page with iplayer module.So if this can be added than this might be a good homepage.
Piet, Sorry to confuse! The homepage team are watching James Thornett's post on the BBC Internet blog for reactions and suggestions relating to the new homepage so it might be worth posting a comment there if you have a specific response you'd like to be heard.Steve Bowbrick, editor, About the BBC
I really like the new homepage! It's incredible how resistant people are to almost any change. Sure, the old design had its merits but the time has come to move on. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke" they all cry. If Henry Ford took that on board, we'd all still be riding horses! Good job BBC. I for one think you're doing a fantastic job reinventing and focusing BBC online.
johnvasko You're right. The BBC is an international organisation but it's worth pointing out that some of the various international homepages are run by BBC Worldwide, the Corporation's commercial arm. They have their own strategy and their own set of products and they may choose to offer a different homepage to non-UK users.Steve Bowbrick, editor, About the BBC
I agree the new homepage is horrible...I can't really add much to what has been said about it already! All I can say is that I can't believe they got rid of 606 to pay for this!And yes, this is "change for the sake of change". I can cope with, and welcome, change...but in my opinion there was nothing wrong with the old homepage! Indeed Henry Ford developed the Model T and revolutionised the way people and things were transported. The new homepage will not revolutionise the way I use the BBC website...it is ugly, a waste of time, effort and money!
I can understand the BBC wanting to make a homepage which can be used on multiple devices, but this is awful. News stories from different topics seem to be arranged haphazardly across the three screens.The concept of horizontal scrolling has been far better implemented in the excellent BBC News app which I have on an iPhone and an Android phone.This has a single scrollable horizontal row for each topic (UK News, World News, Sport etc.). These rows are all the same height, are arranged below each other and are customisable.Any contributor to this forum who hasn't already got this app on their IOS or Android device should download it to see what I mean. If you like what you see then please tell the beeb by posting here.
The design of the new beta homepage is truly dreadful. It's ugly, overwhelming with too much content, no choice to remove unwanted elements. Cumbersome, slow and is nothing like the sleek and easy to navigate current homepage.To answer the J.Henry Ford comparison. This new design definitely has hooves.
I am really hating the new homepage. It looks like a shotgun blast of colour and text. It is difficult to follow or find what I want. Why role out a new site that is not complete? You are going to alienate people with the lack of customisation, and I for one am already looking for an alternative site after just one day of looking at this new beta site. I don't want to be blasted with Blue Peter or Football.
I'm sorry, but I hate it. I use the existing homepage as my home page and have it customised to show me what I want, and nothing but what I want: news, sport, science, business news, weather, tv schedules - all neatly laid out so that I can see it at a glance, without scrolling. It's very nearly perfect. (I'd prefer it to be better at remembering my settings, but that's about it.)The beta is a confusing mess with less information and insists on pushing stuff at me that I don't want. Looks like I will have to look for another homepage, or maybe learn how to build my own...
What a terrible mess this all is, and it reaches far wider than the new 'BBC homepage'.We were told, in December 2007, that all homepage customisation settings would be incorporated into BBC iD. It didn't happen. We were told, in March 2010, that anything the BBC builds from then on would use BBC iD from the start. It didn't happen - the new beta BBC homepage doesn't use BBC iD. The new beta radio station homepages don't use BBC iD either. All homepage customisation features now seem to be in the process of removal because we are now told, after reading four years' worth of BBC blogs about how wonderful homepage customisation is, that few people use it. No mention however has been made by the new breed of homepage bloggers about BBC iD, probably the only means by which reliable customisation has been yet achieved.One almost gets the impression that the homepage blogs are pursuing a self-fulfilling and incontravertible misinterpretation of the facts.With the impending withdrawal of all radio content from iPlayer (which seems to have no problem in principle with using BBC iD to implement customisation), radio users will be left only with the feature-less new station homepages, with no means of saving favourites.Pending a clear stragegy statement from the BBC concerning the future role and purpose of BBC iD across all its home/station pages and content-streaming pages, the current outlook is very bleak.Russ 2ff7e9595c
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