|
Post by ablrateandy on May 20, 2015 15:40:34 GMT
Is that a good thing or does it look distorted?! I've upset the developers by using a Surface Pro with a non-standard resolution so hopefully we should be looking pretty good when we launch! james
|
|
james
Posts: 2,205
Likes: 955
|
Post by james on May 20, 2015 16:52:35 GMT
It doesn't look distorted. Instead it's cutting off the right hand side of the image just beyond the edge of the left hand at my normal browser width and I get a horizontal scroll bar in the browser. So it's not quite working as I expect a pure background image to work. If you want to send me a preferred email address (privately if you like) I'll send you two or three screen shots so you can see what I see. Big files if you want pretty, smaller if you don't mind me compressing so you can see the effect without being able to appreciate the shades of sky and clouds.
Upsetting developers with non-standard resolutions and dots per inch (DPI) is a good thing. They can't tell how wide a browser window is going to be set by a particular user so they need to somehow deal with it. Their problem isn't helped by a screen width call being the most readily available information and that being useless for those who have high screen resolutions on big monitors with normal or not much above normal dots per inch (DIP). Yet that same resolution might be used on a mobile phone or tablet at very high DPI and only say six inches. In that case, full screen size would be right. While in my case the resolution is on a 32 inch monitor and it's not close to being right. One of the relatively few clues they might have is whether it's a mobile browser being used. If it is a mobile browser a high resolution probably means a DPI display. If it's not mobile it probably means a big monitor and not much higher than usual DPI.
It's traditionally been a tough area for developers and high DPI mobile devices make it even harder.
|
|
Steerpike
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,961
Likes: 1,680
|
Post by Steerpike on May 20, 2015 17:06:16 GMT
My browser bleats that not all parts of the page are encrypted.
From what I can see this is because the favicon is not transmitted securely, probably harmless but mildly irritating.
|
|
|
Post by ablrateandy on May 20, 2015 19:23:58 GMT
Thanks james! Will drop you a DM. Steerpike Please could you tell me what software you are using to see that? It's beyond my skills but I can take a look on the new site and see if the same problem is occurring. The old site is still on the server so it may well be that migrating over eliminates the problem.
|
|
Steerpike
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,961
Likes: 1,680
|
Post by Steerpike on May 20, 2015 19:52:31 GMT
Thanks james! Will drop you a DM. Steerpike Please could you tell me what software you are using to see that? It's beyond my skills but I can take a look on the new site and see if the same problem is occurring. The old site is still on the server so it may well be that migrating over eliminates the problem. Not sure it is much of a problem more of a niggle I would say. I do shuffle my configuration, but the current setup is Pale Moon + uBlock. Pale Moon sticks an alert on the padlock and I used uBlock request log to identify the offending (inoffensive) item. Firefox flags the site as partially secure and developer browser console flags the insecure item. I don't use IE much these days but it didn't seem to notice. Superficially, Chrome seems 100% satisfied. I deleted Safari some time ago and nobody uses Opera now it isn't Opera any more.
|
|
|
Post by ablrateandy on May 20, 2015 20:26:29 GMT
Great thankyou very much!
|
|
|
Post by biggles on May 22, 2015 20:09:33 GMT
Is it just me, or does nobody else think it's a bid weird that, when a professional investment site migrates to a new platform, it closes down totally for three weeks (or maybe more, we don't know yet)?
I would have expected the norm to be that it would continue on the old platform till the new one was ready, then migrate the data across.
I had high hopes of investing here but am now getting pretty dubious.
|
|
|
Post by ablrateandy on May 22, 2015 20:30:20 GMT
Hi biggles . Your point is very fair and worthy of explanation on our side. We certainly didn't envisage a pause quite this long. The reason that we went down on a particular date was due to our repayment dates - we wanted to take the site down between two repayments so that there was minimal disruption to users. Testing has been going on pretty continuously over the last month or so and we felt that we were at a point where we were close enough to completion. At that point, we paused the current site so that we had a single data point to reconcile accounts. Unfortunately, on snagging we found a few things that we didn't like. They aren't necessarily things that would be apparent to everyone (resolution on certain screen sizes; financial statements that we felt were unclear etc) and they could have been resolved in the background.... but we really want to make sure that this platform is "right" from day one. No-one is keener than us to get things up and running as we are very excited about it. There's more development to come and I can assure you that no-one in Team Ablrate is getting a bank holiday . The integrity of accounts and data is secure and will transition smoothly. Any member is welcome to contact us for statements, balances, withdrawals etc.
|
|
james
Posts: 2,205
Likes: 955
|
Post by james on May 22, 2015 21:36:26 GMT
Andy, I think you missed the point a little so I'll expand on what I think steerpike meant. I deal with a broad range of places, from those in the global top ten to small businesses, in relation to a critical part of their infrastructure. One of the things that is commonplace is outage windows in the region of nil to minutes or hours including upgrading work. So I think that what steerpike was wondering about is why it wasn't viable to do parallel running of old and new sites then a faster switchover from old to new. I've a broad range of pragmatic reasons not to do that and I expect that your reasons were also pragmatically right but it's interesting to know what they were. For example, you might have been changing your database server software, colocation site, web server front and and middleware all at the same time as part of a complete reworking of your whole infrastructure. Then, given your startup situation, the economics of arranging a parallel running solution just may not have made sense given the work involved and the potential gain or loss of business during the expected transition time. Essentially I think it was just that the cost-benefit of trying to do it online didn't make sense at this stage of your business. Of course some of us are just geeks or uber-geeks as well as investors and are curious about your site's back end.
|
|
iren
Member of DD Central
Posts: 302
Likes: 300
|
Post by iren on May 23, 2015 0:25:38 GMT
Biggles' comments had gone through my mind too but having spent over 20 years working for three major financial services companies, I saw all of them put live new technology, and more recently new websites, that simply weren't ready and resulted in no end of headaches for customers and staff. I'm hoping this means Ablrate are a cut above that, so the proof will be in the pudding. Having just got in on my first Ablrate loan, I'm looking forward to the next opportunities.
|
|
|
Post by henders on May 23, 2015 10:25:04 GMT
Is it just me, or does nobody else think it's a bid weird that, when a professional investment site migrates to a new platform, it closes down totally for three weeks (or maybe more, we don't know yet)?
I would have expected the norm to be that it would continue on the old platform till the new one was ready, then migrate the data across.
I had high hopes of investing here but am now getting pretty dubious. I too have had similar thoughts to biggles. I have invested 4 figures in the "big" loan so have a direct vested interest in Ablrate succeeding. I do understand the complexities of software upgrades (30 years plus in IT) but this length of complete downtime is a massive blow to the credibility of the organisation. I had at one point even wondered if I/we had been scammed and our money was sailing (or flying) off into the sunset. That may well seem an extreme reaction but given; ponzi, stanford, madoff, crown currency exchange etc. investors are entitled to be paranoid. Whatever the reason this should not have happened and I would encourage Ablrate to keep us all up to date (almost daily) on how the implementation is going and the next target date for go live ("sometime next week" etc. is not acceptable as it just confirms impressions of lack of professionalism). Having said that I am looking forward to the new site but guys please keep us informed.
|
|
|
Post by ablrateandy on May 24, 2015 0:14:47 GMT
Hi henders , I can assure you that I am still in West London and haven't fled with everyone's money. I'm still up testing at the moment and pretty happy with where the site is and not planning on fleeing the country. It is probably worth just giving an overview of where we are. It is a non-technical view but if there are any more detailed questions I can get the answers if I do not know them myself. In terms of delivery date, we are trying to ensure that we don't over-promise and under-deliver. We have a large variety of interested parties who are keen that we get this right - investors, shareholders, employees, directors and regulators - so we want the first release to be very, very solid. We don't want to have a 10 page thread about what is wrong with the release. ablrate and I have put in a LOT of time and research to get this right and we really feel that it will be a game-changer for us and make us a leading platform in terms of usability. Your point on regular updates is completely fair. I will be destruction-testing until Tuesday morning and we will update on Tuesday as to where we are, once we have discussed with developers etc. The new site is completely new. Everything from the database to the front-end has been custom-designed, double-checked and triple-checked in terms of mathematical accuracy, procedural correctness and security. As an example, our new secondary market is completely different to anything else in the P2P or P2B market. Our loan functionality allows for different structures, capital repayments and re-structurings. Some of the eventualities that we have decided to plan for are not things that have ever happened BUT we want to make sure that this release is a solid starting point that covers all eventualities. We have a roadmap of probably half a dozen other features that we want to add on to the site in the next quarter. In order to make sure that these can be added seamlessly, we have to make sure that this release is right so that we have a solid base. The code that is created now should not need to be changed, merely added to, so that future development does not lead to significant down time. No-one is more keen to get up and running than us. I am personally 99% happy with where we are now in terms of structural integrity of the system and usability but we don't want to be merely 99% happy. I am more than happy to discuss any queries in person if anyone wants to drop me a PM.
|
|
|
Post by henders on May 24, 2015 5:46:22 GMT
Thank you, ablrateandy.
|
|
|
Post by ablrate on May 26, 2015 11:30:19 GMT
Hi All
Just to add to Andy's points and by way of an update, I have just got back from a meeting with the developers and we are almost there. There is one issue about how certain parts of the secondary market deal with accrued interest in a certain type of trade. This will take a couple of days of coding but the platform is now complete enough to move to the live server, this will be happening today. The move will enable us to test the live data as planned, complete all the content blocks, repoint the domain and retest on the live server.
We could have launched with this slight bug in the system and completed during maintenance (and the likelihood is that no one would have noticed it) but rather than unravel any trades that happened during that time we felt that for the sake of a few days it was worth making sure its right.
I take your points on the site being down for this period, in hindsight we could have continued with the old platform for a while longer and in an ideal world we would have but, as the system is completely new and some of it is extremely complex, we had to make sure that our data was being treated correctly by the new site. For those of you that know this kind of thing (sounds like we should of hired james!), we have moved from a php based platform to a .net framework and built it completely new from the ground up. We mulled over taking what we had and changing the platform, but it was beginning to be a bit of a patchwork of ideas that had been bolted on throughout the process and to have changed it would have been just as costly as rebuilding.
The bottom line was that we see ourselves as being a very commercial based platform with investors (and borrowers) who are pretty sophisticated and need tools that may be a little out of the norm so we felt that building something new, with an architecture that can add more tools easily along a defined plan, would be better in the long run than trying to fit a square peg in a round hold. The industry is moving very, very quickly and the technology will change rapidly so we wanted to have something that can accommodate our ideas and those of our users in the months to come.
We are also launching across two new countries in the coming month or so, again, it made sense to build something from the ground up that can also accommodate some of the peculiarities of those countries as far as operational technology is concerned.
I will put my hands up however, and say we could of done this transition better. Hopefully you will feel the results are justified when we are able to roll out the full platform.
For the new system we do have a parallel testing system where any new updates will be developed and tested there, so there will be no downtime as we roll these out.
As far as timings go, the developers are saying that we can make it live this week. We will make a value judgement on whether we do that or we take the weekend for final testing and completion of content blocks, video tutorials etc.
We do thank you for you patience thus far, and we hope to be able to announce a few other things that you will be pleased about not related to the technical aspects of the platform.
Regards Ablrate
|
|
jonno
Member of DD Central
nil satis nisi optimum
Posts: 2,744
Likes: 3,136
Member is Online
|
Post by jonno on May 26, 2015 11:38:25 GMT
ablrate; thank you for the comprehensive update. Really looking forward to the launch of the new product.
|
|