1 Topic by Syrphus (edited by Syrphus 20-09-2014 10:39:34)

  • Syrphus
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  • From: Strathpeffer, Highland
  • Registered: 16-12-2008
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Topic: Gateway down

G4 and G5 have both been unavailable this morning since at least 0800h.  Pages don't load, and there is no Gateway error displayed.

I thought we had got past this sort of problem.

On a related subject, I was told recently (unprompted) by five different people that G5 performance in evenings is dire, with pages either timing out or taking an unacceptably long time to load.  They have joined the large army of people who are questioning its usefulness.  I do not use G5 much in the evening, and had not noticed this myself, but have had exactly the same problem on a couple of occasions myself since when an evening visit was needed.

G5 (first birthday a few weeks away) was supposed to solve performance problems.

M.

Syrphus's Website

2 Reply by Syrphus (edited by Syrphus 22-09-2014 07:40:14)

  • Syrphus
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Re: Gateway down

I see from the home page this morning that there was a planned break in service over the weekend.

It would have been so helpful to have redirected to a page that actually told us this, rather than time-out, but ...

Another user contacted me yesterday about a local matter and wrote in passing 'I find NBNG something of a jungle, not the easiest way to obtain records'. This from a long-standing VC recorder who can no longer use the Gateway to do what was so easy before, so comes to me to ask for details of the records which are on full public access on the Gateway. On it goes ...

M.

Syrphus's Website

3 Reply by matt.debont (edited by matt.debont 23-09-2014 12:34:49)

  • matt.debont
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Re: Gateway down

Hi Murdo, As you have noticed this was a planned downtime (I posted messages on the forum a month ago as well as the message on the front page over the previous week). I couldn't do a redirect locally as the entire system was down and I have no control over the domain itself, however it is something that I want to get sorted out in the event of future downtime like this.

If you are receiving these complaints, please forward them on to us, we can't deal with a problem when we don't know it exists, what exactly was easier before? When we know what the problems are we can start to work towards resolving them, I am not naive and I know there are going to be problems (there always are in any project) and if we can improve the services we provide we will do so with the resources we have, but we need to know what those problems are.

I can't spot all of the issues as I know how the system is supposed to work so I tend use it in that way and thus we have to rely on the users of the system to tell us when something is wrong, unclear or could be improved and we always are willing to take feedback on-board when possible.

Matt

Matt Debont
Application Developer
Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Monkstone House, City Road, Peterborough PE1 1JY, UK

4 Reply by Syrphus

  • Syrphus
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Re: Gateway down

I think I just have let you know of the recent complaints, Matt, and been very clear over the past year of what things were easy, transparent, intuitive and useful in G4, but difficult, opaque, non-intuitive and thoroughly unhelpful in G5.

No doubt I will be repeating some of these in the near future through the users' group, and adding details about new ones.

Murdo

Syrphus's Website