New BPL Website: BUG REPORT FORUM

Ryan,
The picture of your lovely self covers the info text about the product. I know you are the king of BPL, but we need to be able to read the product details too… Ha!

Anyhow go here and check it out:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/g6_whisper.html

This is not the only product page where an image overlaps text about the product.

Example of Bug:

If I click on Ryan Jordan's avatar or name that appears next to one of his posts it will take me to his profile page. At the bottom of the page there is a section titled "All Forum Posts by this User." It displays his 10 most recent posts. However, if I try to click the link to go to page 2, 10, or any other page to view his previous posts the links erroneously takes me to the BPL homepage.

Hope that makes sense!

By the way, I love the look and feel of the new website! Keep up the good work!

Yea, it did the same thing on the old site as well. It also takes you back to the home page if you try to click on another page of the reviews done by the member.
As much as I'd like a new system for the forums I can live with this one for now. Just as long as BPL doesn't forget its real mission of keeping us informed about the goings on in UL backpacking. As long as the quality of the articles doesn't decrease I think I'll be able to deal with having an interface that isn't just perfect. That's not to say fixing these problems shouldn't be a high priority though!

Adam

On "Gear" page, the links "More Gear Reviews…", "More Spotlite Reviews…" and "More State of the Market Reports…" are broken. They lead to an empty search page.

Yesterday this worked although the links in each section of the gear page were a jumbled, paragraphical listing that is very hard to read.

How can it be fixed and then revert to non-functioning?

Update: Icon fixed already! Cool
Update2: I just noticed why the paging is not working. You're url encoding the = sign. So instead of profile?ot=10&u%3Dfperkins it should be profile?ot=10&=fperkins That should be an easy fix for your devs.

Just ordered a few items and noticed a few items for optimization:

Shop
– The "view cart" image is impossible to see and is not user friendly. I just ordered some gear and I didn't notice that was a shopping cart icon until I came back to the site a little later. The icon should have a white background and also be avaiable as a text link in the 2nd nav
– There should be breadcrumb nav when I click on a subcategory. The only way to get back it to start over

Forums
Pages 2, 3, 4, etc for "All Forum Posts by this User" link back to the home page

On every browser tested on Mac OS X (Camino, Safari, Netscape, Opera, Firefox)… the following URLS… accessed by clicking on the sub-nav options under the Features, Magazine, Gear, Shop and Community tabs… there is no sub-navigation. The sub-navigation disappears.

These URLs are referenced from this point:
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight

/xdpy/sc/Expeditions/index.html
/xdpy/s/Trends/index.html
/xdpy/s/Techniques/index.html
/xdpy/s/Gear/index.html
/xdpy/s/Technology/index.html
/xdpy/s/People/index.html
/xdpy/s/Places/index.html
/xdpy/sc/Expeditions/index.html
/xdpy/sc/Expeditions/index.html
/xdpy/sf/Gear/State%20of%20the%20Market%20Reports/index.html
/xdpy/sf/Gear/SpotLite%20Reviews/index.html
/xdpy/sf/Trends/Outdoor%20Retailer%20News/index.html
/xdpy/sf/Gear/Make%20Your%20Own%20Gear/index.html
/gearchecklists.html
/gear_guide_index.html
/xdpy/s/Packing%20Systems/index.html
/xdpy/s/Shelter%20Systems/index.html
/xdpy/s/Sleep%20Systems/index.html
/xdpy/s/Clothing/index.html
/xdpy/s/Cooking%20and%20Hydration/index.html
/xdpy/s/Accessories/index.html
/xdpy/s/Used%20Gear/index.html
/xdpy/s/Publications/index.html

The email says:
View all SPOTLITE REVIEWS here:

Clicking that link takes you to what seems like a dead page. Its title is "SpotLITE Product Reviews at BackpackingLight.com" and where the reviews would be it says "Total count: 0".

If I instead go to the front page and then follow the spotlites item in the header all is well.

"Please give me specific examples of member links that are not working for you – URL's." – Ryan Jordan

I still get an occasional Compass Broke error when I click on a member's link. It seems this is more like a timeout error, and it's not necessarily repeatable. I just got one on yours Ryan, but when I went back and tried again and it worked.

On every browser tested on Mac OS X (Camino, Safari, Netscape, Opera, Firefox)… the following URLS… accessed by clicking on the sub-nav options under the Features, Magazine, Gear, Shop and Community tabs… there is no sub-navigation. The sub-navigation disappears.

These URLs are referenced from this point:
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight

/xdpy/sc/Expeditions/index.html
/xdpy/s/Trends/index.html
/xdpy/s/Techniques/index.html
/xdpy/s/Gear/index.html
/xdpy/s/Technology/index.html
/xdpy/s/People/index.html
/xdpy/s/Places/index.html
/xdpy/sc/Expeditions/index.html
/xdpy/sc/Expeditions/index.html
/xdpy/sf/Gear/State%20of%20the%20Market%20Reports/index.html
/xdpy/sf/Gear/SpotLite%20Reviews/index.html
/xdpy/sf/Trends/Outdoor%20Retailer%20News/index.html
/xdpy/sf/Gear/Make%20Your%20Own%20Gear/index.html
/gearchecklists.html
/gear_guide_index.html
/xdpy/s/Packing%20Systems/index.html
/xdpy/s/Shelter%20Systems/index.html
/xdpy/s/Sleep%20Systems/index.html
/xdpy/s/Clothing/index.html
/xdpy/s/Cooking%20and%20Hydration/index.html
/xdpy/s/Accessories/index.html
/xdpy/s/Used%20Gear/index.html
/xdpy/s/Publications/index.html

+++++++++++++++++++

This is still an issue… a BIG ISSUE… and it has not been dealt with at all. Just a reminder / FYI

Hi all

Yes, we KNOW the web site is not perfect YET. Several key features are still to be installed, included the xdpy stuff and better searching for articles and fast access to gear categories and …

Your assistance in reporting the bugs and deficiencies is MUCH appreciated. Convenience features you think are missing should also be flagged. Can't do everything at once, but remember the squeaky door. Good clear examples of problems help of course, like the list David Lewis just posted.

An interesting challenge for you: how do you get to the Home page from here? ONE click. Don't post the answer just yet: let others puzzle over it for a while :-) (We'll leave aside for the present the question of whether this is sufficiently intuitive for newcomers…)

Cheers

When will the Gear Review section get fixed?!
First, when I click the sub-menu "Gear | Reviews" I already know I want the Reviews; I don't need an intermediate "menu" page that again presents a choice of:

Gear Reviews
State of the Market Reports
SpotLite Reviews
Reader Gear Reviews

When I do select Gear Reviews, I should get the index page of gear categories so I can zero in on the items of interest, not a mass of 390 listings spread over 8 pages! This used to work off and on; why does it keep reverting to an unstructured conglomeration?

This issue with gear reviews being broken down into catagories is my biggest complaint as well.

Unless I'm doing something wrong (which is possible), it appears that your posting form doesn't recognize HTML.

Specifically, when I tried to create a hyperlink, it got trashed.

PLR

Try this info :

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/xdpy/forum_thread/9339/index.html

Thanks George, but (unfortunately) that is what I was doing.

It appears that there is something in my link specification that the "Post Message" software didn't like.

Here is what would happen:

1) I typed in something like this: <a href="http://www.cnn.com">CNN </a>

2) But in the posted message, it would end-up looking like this: CNN
(try mousing-over the "CNN" text at the end of the previous line)

3) When I went back to edit the posting, the message editor would show this: <a CNN </a> (meaning, the href="http://www.cnn.com&quot; text had been deleted).

For what it's worth, you can see the "troublesome" link specification in my posting to the "RE: BPL Guyline Tensioners " thread.

PLR