Here is a hint - try the OLD gateway.  I have been using it almost as much recently as this 'new improved' version (though some datasets will be out of date).  As a demo of how to turn an eminently useful (if sometimes frustrating) resource into something with appalling design, no better performance, less functionality, and a rash of inconsistencies, this 'upgrade' is in a class of its own.

M.

... and now the OLD gateway is back in action and I have been able to get the information denied to me by the new version for the past 24 hours and more.  It is unpredictable - sometimes nothing but a page of Apache errors, then you get in and can GET USEFUL INFORMATION!

M.

At the time of writing (10:47 am Thurs. 16th Jan.) I'm still getting this problem: pink squares, no records selectable, at least for some species. You really do need to get to the bottom of this as it makes the Gateway completely unusable.

I am right with you on this, Andrew.  I think the corporate wagons have already circled on this one, and I suspect it will be impossible to do what is really needed - namely junk Gateway 5; go back to the old version; rewrite G5 so that the multitude of errors, inconsistencies, appalling design features, and performance problems are addressed; restore all the lost functionality; give it PROPER beta testing (that was completely lacking, and is the root cause of many of the problems we are seeing); and only then launch it.

We are 3 months into G5 and none of the crucial problems has been solved apart from from a few access problems right at the start, and I doubt that in all that time the Gateway has functioned satisfactorily for more than a few days consecutively.

The Gateway site is just one aspect - as I have pointed out in other threads, the poorly planned changes have had impacts on other sites and applications which use easy-maps, straight URL links to maps, and other features.

This whole venture has been a complete mess - and this verdict comes from someone who is among the greatest supporters of the idea of the Gateway.

Murdo

Goodness, and I just thought it was me who was having problems, going so far as to think it was my laptop at fault.  I have to agree with all of what has been written here and would endorse the suggestion that we go back to the original "old" Gateway.  The old version was so useful and I made so many additional records from the information that could be gained/interrogated that there is little point in using the new version apart from looking where a species has been seen.  Last night when trying to access data via Record and drawing the square round the distribution dots just nothing appeared.  I did try the old version but as has been mentioned earlier, this was down.  This is not progress and the new version appears to have been designed by someone who isn't a recorder and spends time out in the field trying to add data to give a true picture of where species occur.  NBN gets a lot of records from me via Highland Biological Recording Group, hours in the field, hours writing up and you are not repaying every ones efforts by running the new version of Gateway.  I probably visit NBN a few times a day, please give us a system that works, as a thank you to the 100's or 1000's of folk collecting the data that makes Gateway work.  I only use Gateway to check species distribution, god knows how others are getting on when trying to do more complicated things.  I back Murdo et al in asking for a system that works.
Stewart

Thanks, Graham.  It was not just last weekend, though.  This sort of thing has been happening frequently since the launch of G5, and these are problems that should all have been identified and solved *before* the launch.  The maps fail in all sorts of ways and combinations: sometimes the grid loads and the imt does not; sometimes G5 is working and the old Gateway is not; other times it is the reverse; occasionally everything even seems to work properly; you never know until you try.

Nor is it just the mapping - there is a quite different intermittent problem of time to load pages - 2 minutes for me the other day.  There is the unpredictability of behaviour - one day Opera will load the imt perfectly; the next day - or even an hour later - I have to move to Chrome.  And we read of problems with the upload of datasets.  And I heard yesterday from someone who knows a lot more about these things than I do that the underlying database design is highly suspect - something I can very easily believe.  And you tell us that more problems are created by an update to the system.  Are updates not tested to ensure that solving one problem does not create others?  Evidently not.

None of that touches on the absurdly opaque, unhelpful and complicated user interface, or the loss of really important functionality.  Nor the loss of currency of the easymaps widget (when will that be linked to G5?).  In the past week some half dozen people, regular serious data providers and users, have offered me the unsolicited opinion that the NBNG is now a complete waste of time, and they have disengaged, or are in the process of disengaging from it.  I don't blame them, and am sorely tempted to join them.

Frankly, I don't want an explanation of why things went wrong.  I want the problems identified and cured, to provide a resource that does what the users want, allows us to do what we were able to do before, and performs reliably.

Murdo

Interactive map is still not returning record details.
We have worked hard to encourage our local recorders to use NBN, but the feedback I am getting is of total bemusement as to how to use the new site and frustration as it is frequently not working.
Please restore the old site to full working order and remove the new version to incorporate the user comments and ensure that it works consistently.

Christine Johnson