Author Topic: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement  (Read 119371 times)

whosatthewheel

Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #550 on: 20 November, 2018, 09:36:39 am »
I noticed that if you open the Arrivee page in your profile, there is quite a lot of advert at the bottom. I would expect this to be the case when using a free platform, like Wordpress, but when paying a quarter of a million pound for a site to be developed, one would expect it to be advert free...  ::-)

Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #551 on: 20 November, 2018, 09:40:04 am »
I noticed that if you open the Arrivee page in your profile, there is quite a lot of advert at the bottom. I would expect this to be the case when using a free platform, like Wordpress, but when paying a quarter of a million pound for a site to be developed, one would expect it to be advert free...  ::-)

Your now on a different website "Issu" that's why.
Frequent Audax and bike ride videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/djrikki2008/videos

whosatthewheel

Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #552 on: 20 November, 2018, 09:41:01 am »
I noticed that if you open the Arrivee page in your profile, there is quite a lot of advert at the bottom. I would expect this to be the case when using a free platform, like Wordpress, but when paying a quarter of a million pound for a site to be developed, one would expect it to be advert free...  ::-)

Your now on a different website "Issu" that's why.

I see... so smooth a transition, I didn't even notice... :P

stefan

  • aka martin
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #553 on: 20 November, 2018, 09:55:39 am »
Immediate impression is that it looks very slick, despite the evident initial niggles.

But here's one for the grammar experts. The lovely picture on the landing page invites us to challenge ourselves "to go that bit farther".

In the UK, don't we generally go "further"?

<lights blue touch-paper and retires to a safe distance>
Member no. 152 of La Société Adrian Hands

telstarbox

  • Loving the lanes
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #554 on: 20 November, 2018, 11:27:14 am »
They'll be visited on the sun :P
2019 🏅 R1000 and B1000

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #555 on: 20 November, 2018, 01:36:59 pm »
I never look at perms, but having read that and looked, I see 22 pages. I don't know it's 22 for me and 36 for someone else. Screen size?

I see 1 page with a filterable and pageable list of rides.
This is normal practice for displaying data on a web page.
What isn't normal practice is preventing people from selecting how many they want to see on each data page.

The only problem I see is that the Postcode and distance from doesn't work just now, and erm... if i was travelling down to say Tewksbury for some reason and decided I'd like to do a 200 while I was down there, I'd struggle to guess the post code...
But then I'd use Phil W's map for that sort of searching anyway.

edit: also thinking I don't know how far JoG is, but it's further away from me than a fair chunk of England, but the region based searching was rather handy (I'd always use "North" to get the events in the areas I'm willing to travel without a good USP, which is anywhere from the north coast down into Lancs and Yorks.)


Only had a quick skim but the site design looks decent and in fitting with current design practices.
It's the sort of thing I'd expect my front end developer colleagues to knock up while I deliberately stretch out the back end developments to avoid having to cry over CSS  :sick:

frankly frankie

  • I kid you not
    • Fuchsiaphile
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #556 on: 20 November, 2018, 02:11:54 pm »
Distance, AAA and PayPal are all visible on the old site.
Not immediately. For instance the first event I see is:
Quote
Fri 23 Nov 2018
300kmMoonrakers & Sunseekers from Easton, Bristol
on the old site, but:
Quote
Fri 23 Nov 2018   Easton, Bristol   300km (306km)   Moonrakers & Sunseekers   2300m   0   22:00   £13.50   Will Pomeroy   
on the new site.

You're confusing the front page on the old site with the Calendar page.  The Calendar page is one click away on both sites and contains comparable amounts of information on both sites.
when you're dead you're done, so let the good times roll

Chris S

Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #557 on: 20 November, 2018, 02:17:42 pm »
My first reaction when I saw it was "Looks like something someone with the right knowledge could bash out with Wordpress in about a month", but that's easy for me to say - I don't know what other infrastructure is in place, ready to make backend connections.

The more interesting thing to come from the presentation at the Reunion was the following exchange:

Question from the floor:  "So - after two years and £150k, we have a new UI that addresses none of the current urgent issues with AUKWEB?"
Answer from the board: "Yes."

 ::-)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #558 on: 20 November, 2018, 02:29:12 pm »
Distance, AAA and PayPal are all visible on the old site.
Not immediately. For instance the first event I see is:
Quote
Fri 23 Nov 2018
300kmMoonrakers & Sunseekers from Easton, Bristol
on the old site, but:
Quote
Fri 23 Nov 2018   Easton, Bristol   300km (306km)   Moonrakers & Sunseekers   2300m   0   22:00   £13.50   Will Pomeroy   
on the new site.

You're confusing the front page on the old site with the Calendar page.  The Calendar page is one click away on both sites and contains comparable amounts of information on both sites.
Ah, I was and it does. Why there are events listed in two places on one site I don't know. I also note that "Choose a ride" on the new site is somewhat newby-unintuitive in that it requires yet another, not particularly obvious, click to discover the difference between all these types of rides.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #559 on: 20 November, 2018, 02:32:32 pm »
Having now looked at the site on my desktop browser, I think it looks mostly OK. The image+slogan on the front page looks like one of those fatuous inspirational quote things posted by divs on facebook, but I don't really have a problem with that.

As others have noted, the limited number of results listed on the calendar page is a minor gripe - the optimum would be letting the user choose how many results are displayed (as per most shopping sites these days).

When I first looked at it on my phone yesterday evening, my first thought was that the calendar listing format is not optimised for small screen viewing - it needs to be more condensed. As it is, browsing through the list requires an awful lot of scrolling. Otherwise, it seems to function well.

The current lack of the 'My calendar' page is mildly irksome, but I guess that will be addressed in time.

Only other gripe is that clicking on an event on the calendar opens the detail page in a new tab. I know how to use my browser's back button, thank you very much.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

frankly frankie

  • I kid you not
    • Fuchsiaphile
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #560 on: 20 November, 2018, 02:37:54 pm »
The addition of up-coming calendar headline info straight onto the front page of Aukweb was as a result of much pressure campaigning helpful suggestions on this very forum, and when it was done it was well received here as a clear improvement over a static logo-and-statement-and-sidebar type front page.
when you're dead you're done, so let the good times roll

arkle

  • Mr Full Value...
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #561 on: 20 November, 2018, 02:49:05 pm »
My first reaction when I saw it was "Looks like something someone with the right knowledge could bash out with Wordpress in about a month", but that's easy for me to say - I don't know what other infrastructure is in place, ready to make backend connections.


More or less what I thought. Compare and contrast with the (admittedly simpler) website of Audax Ireland.

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #562 on: 20 November, 2018, 02:59:26 pm »
The current lack of the 'My calendar' page is mildly irksome, but I guess that will be addressed in time.

I found the equivalent, the only thing I'm not sure about on it is whether it makes sense for the Maybe and Entered events to be in the same listing.
I suspect it does, as it'll make it easier to see when you've entered one and not removed it from the maybes at the cost of having to check the entered/maybe column rather than bounce between two lists of events (or it could remove clashes between entered and maybes automatically???)


150k for a front end to and existing system's no a bad price, that's roughly the cost of 3 "man years".

As for the order of doing things,
Writing a front end that hooks into a legacy back end first makes sense to me.
Provided good practices are followed and the new back end will expose the same data or similar enough data, then the effort to change the front end is considerably less than making an old back end expose legacy interfaces to an old front end or hacking the old front end to pieces in order to make it work with the new back end.



Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #563 on: 20 November, 2018, 03:09:40 pm »
150k for a front end to and existing system's no a bad price, that's roughly the cost of 3 "man years".

It's an off-the-shelf CMS with a few bits that pull in data from the old system. It's the kind of thing I used to knock up in a couple of weeks start-to-finish when I did this for a day job. Granted I think there's some designer time and management time on top of that but the idea anyone would think this is three man-years of work is mind boggling.

quixoticgeek

  • Mostly Harmless
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #564 on: 20 November, 2018, 03:33:17 pm »
150k for a front end to and existing system's no a bad price, that's roughly the cost of 3 "man years".

It's an off-the-shelf CMS with a few bits that pull in data from the old system. It's the kind of thing I used to knock up in a couple of weeks start-to-finish when I did this for a day job. Granted I think there's some designer time and management time on top of that but the idea anyone would think this is three man-years of work is mind boggling.

Agreed.

J
--
Beer, bikes, and backpacking
http://b.42q.eu/

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #565 on: 20 November, 2018, 03:48:16 pm »
150k for a front end to and existing system's no a bad price, that's roughly the cost of 3 "man years".

It's an off-the-shelf CMS with a few bits that pull in data from the old system. It's the kind of thing I used to knock up in a couple of weeks start-to-finish when I did this for a day job. Granted I think there's some designer time and management time on top of that but the idea anyone would think this is three man-years of work is mind boggling.

Never said it was actually 3 man years of development work, only compared it cost wise.

Also are you viewing it from the position of someone that's only had a view of the small section of development or having taken things from the initial contact through to deliver?

One of my colleagues is particularly bad for the former and thinks that a year long project with 1 developer being paid £25k gross only costs £25k to do...
Completely ignoring the fact there's 3 tiers of managers, a Business Analyst, accommodation costs (services, rates etc.), pension costs, Employer NICS, insurance costs... also to factor in on top of that "£25k" of developer

j_a_m_e_s_

  • Prisoner 17091
    • AUK results
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #566 on: 20 November, 2018, 04:03:33 pm »
Given that the new site is wholly dependent upon the "legacy site", when will I be forced to use the new site the "legacy site" be getting switched off?
Rule 77

Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #567 on: 20 November, 2018, 04:18:34 pm »
150k for a front end to and existing system's no a bad price, that's roughly the cost of 3 "man years".

It's an off-the-shelf CMS with a few bits that pull in data from the old system. It's the kind of thing I used to knock up in a couple of weeks start-to-finish when I did this for a day job. Granted I think there's some designer time and management time on top of that but the idea anyone would think this is three man-years of work is mind boggling.

Never said it was actually 3 man years of development work, only compared it cost wise.

Also are you viewing it from the position of someone that's only had a view of the small section of development or having taken things from the initial contact through to deliver?

One of my colleagues is particularly bad for the former and thinks that a year long project with 1 developer being paid £25k gross only costs £25k to do...
Completely ignoring the fact there's 3 tiers of managers, a Business Analyst, accommodation costs (services, rates etc.), pension costs, Employer NICS, insurance costs... also to factor in on top of that "£25k" of developer

So to be clear, how long do you think this has taken? Do you really think it is value for money?

£150K seems like an exorbitant amount to me.

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #568 on: 20 November, 2018, 04:37:04 pm »
So to be clear, how long do you think this has taken? Do you really think it is value for money?

£150K seems like an exorbitant amount to me.

I have no idea how long it's taken to get to this point but from what I've read it seems it's taken a surprisingly long time which suggests there are other factors driving up the costs (such as requirements changes).

What I can say is that £150k is a piss in the ocean compared to the cost of the stuff I work on, but then that includes complex health care systems costing multi-millions of pounds, complex interfacing and nightmarish supplier relations.

It does seem a lot for "just a website" but it's quite clear that the AUK site is not "just a website" as it's doing a fair bit more than just showing content thrown up by someone typing into a WYSIWYG editor.
It also doesn't fit into the standard "eCommerce" template as you aren't just putting products from a list into a cart and then hitting buy either.

It's very definitely a bespoke solution with very specific requirements that are likely only found in the AUK requirements (although I suppose you could skin it and sell it to other Audax bodies...).
Without seeing the scope or requirements I could never say it's definitely £150k worth of work (or how long it would take me to do, or how much I'd charge if I had done it), but it does not particularly surprise me that it's cost this much based on what I've read and can see it doing.


Bianchi Boy

  • Cycling is my doctor
  • Is it possible for a ride to be too long?
    • Reading Cycling Club
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #569 on: 20 November, 2018, 04:42:15 pm »
The finished website is like a work of art and we are not paying for the amount of work, but for the lifetime of experience!

By the way my company pays £1,000 a day for many consultants, so this may just be six months work.

Also how were the design workshops and conceptual models funded?

After spending some time looking around and comparing to what we generate at work it looks like poor value for money.

BB
Set a fire for a man and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he is warm for the rest of his life.

Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #570 on: 20 November, 2018, 04:50:35 pm »
One of my colleagues is particularly bad for the former and thinks that a year long project with 1 developer being paid £25k gross only costs £25k to do...
Completely ignoring the fact there's 3 tiers of managers, a Business Analyst, accommodation costs (services, rates etc.), pension costs, Employer NICS, insurance costs... also to factor in on top of that "£25k" of developer

In my job it was just me and a mate (who did sales and management) and the occasional contract designer. It's possible to do these things in a more AUK way without "three tiers of management" as if that's an essential part of putting up a simple website!

Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #571 on: 20 November, 2018, 04:55:19 pm »
I don't think it meets basic accessibility guidelines. See https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/

Tried to use the site in Firefox using a keyboard. Couldn't see where the focus was. It needs a proper accessibility audit.
Hear all, see all, say nowt

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #572 on: 20 November, 2018, 05:01:28 pm »
In my job it was just me and a mate (who did sales and management) and the occasional contract designer. It's possible to do these things in a more AUK way without "three tiers of management" as if that's an essential part of putting up a simple website!

True, but for whatever reason contracting a reasonable sized company has been done and is being paid for.

But it's not just a simple website or CMS system as it's got bespoke data feeds which automatically means more complexity

This is something we've had some headbanging about at work, apparently an EPR system for a healthboard is just a simple system too...
That's why when they bought one it cost a few million quid for the off the shelf part, took months to implement and a few hundred thousand more to integrate with our other systems.
And all it does is books patients into hospital, flows them through hospital and downloads demographics from the national store system.





Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #573 on: 20 November, 2018, 05:16:24 pm »
True, but for whatever reason contracting a reasonable sized company has been done and is being paid for.

I have no problem seeing how asking a big company to do something a bit fiddly and dragging out the project for years lands you with such a big bill. The problem is that no other approach seems to have been considered and the same approach is being taken with phases 2, 3 and 4 without even the briefest moment of taking stock first.

Quote
And all it does is books patients into hospital, flows them through hospital and downloads demographics from the national store system.

The website (in Phase 1) doesn't really do anything transactional though. It just pulls in some small bits of data from the old database.

Chris S

Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #574 on: 20 November, 2018, 05:22:05 pm »
Tried to use the site in Firefox using a keyboard. Couldn't see where the focus was. It needs a proper accessibility audit.

This was mentioned during the Reunion Demo. It's on the List of ToDos, apparently.