YHA website relaunched

The website has been refurbished and relaunched. Same address
www.yha.org.uk

Nigel
replace SPAMHATER with n and t*sc*li with totalise

Great. First it started saying "Server is too busy" for every other
page, now it seems to have died altogether.

First impressions are pretty underwhelming. When did orange become the
YHA colour?

Chris Hunt said...
> Great. First it started saying "Server is too busy" for every other
> page, now it seems to have died altogether.
>
> First impressions are pretty underwhelming. When did orange become the
> YHA colour?
>
Not just me then. It doesn't look a great deal different apart from
that, but I confess I haven't been through the whole site. 'Ere, what
happened to camping at Manorbier? I mean, I know the ground's as rocky
as a very rocky thing and tent pegs have a tendency to get as bent as
very bent things an' all that, but even so I was surprised not to see
Manorbier listed as one of the YHs with tenting facilites.

--
To reply see 'from' in headers; lose the domain, and insert dots and @
where common sense dictates.

SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk wrote:
> The website has been refurbished and relaunched. Same address
> www.yha.org.uk

First appearances are encouraging; it's more user-friendly than the
previous edition, but not sure about the orange. Is YHA going to
transform into easyHostel?

Getting the thing to work at the moment is problematic - I'm also
getting intermittent "server busy" messages, but that may be down to
teething troubles.

While the new site changes won't affect the average user, the one thing
that annoys me, and will no doubt annoy the myriad of other webmasters
out there who have sites that link to individual pages on YHA's site is
that they've changed ALL the URLs. This means a lot of work to update,
and also there will be a lot of sites out there suddenly returning
those annoying "page not found" results as the links to YHA pages no
longer work.

Google will also be well pissed off with YHA :-)

On 8 Jan 2007 17:47:29 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:

> The
>booking engine has become much worse - You can no longer view a
>calendar of availability reds/ambers/greens for hostels - Thats poor -
>really poor. You have to try every single date until you hit an
>'available' night.

You can see the availability if you use www.yhabooking.org.uk direct
rather than the version on www.yha.org.uk

Nigel
replace SPAMHATER with n and t*sc*li with totalise

SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk wrote:
> On 8 Jan 2007 17:47:29 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
>
> > The
> >booking engine has become much worse - You can no longer view a
> >calendar of availability reds/ambers/greens for hostels - Thats poor -
> >really poor. You have to try every single date until you hit an
> >'available' night.
>
> You can see the availability if you use www.yhabooking.org.uk direct
> rather than the version on www.yha.org.uk
>
> Nigel
> replace SPAMHATER with n and t*sc*li with totalise

No, I've obviously not made myself clear enough here. If you want to
see the week, month, year ahead of available nights for a particular
hostel you use to get a bar divided up into each day and it was
coloured red,amber or green - indicating general availability. So it
was easy to see opening patterns and routine closed nights for example.
If you get a 'not available' for a specific date you don't know when
its next available unless you go through each day manually. Removing
this calendar view for an individual hostel is a step backwards. Also,
you use to get a list at the bottom of an availability search of all
hostels not available for the date selected and you could click to see
their calendar views very easily - these have been removed too. A long
term calendar view for each hostel was really useful for planning.

undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
> SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk wrote:
> > On 8 Jan 2007 17:47:29 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
> >
> > > The
> > >booking engine has become much worse - You can no longer view a
> > >calendar of availability reds/ambers/greens for hostels - Thats poor -
> > >really poor. You have to try every single date until you hit an
> > >'available' night.
> >
> > You can see the availability if you use www.yhabooking.org.uk direct
> > rather than the version on www.yha.org.uk
> >
> > Nigel
> > replace SPAMHATER with n and t*sc*li with totalise
>
> No, I've obviously not made myself clear enough here. If you want to
> see the week, month, year ahead of available nights for a particular
> hostel you use to get a bar divided up into each day and it was
> coloured red,amber or green - indicating general availability. So it
> was easy to see opening patterns and routine closed nights for example.
> If you get a 'not available' for a specific date you don't know when
> its next available unless you go through each day manually. Removing
> this calendar view for an individual hostel is a step backwards. Also,
> you use to get a list at the bottom of an availability search of all
> hostels not available for the date selected and you could click to see
> their calendar views very easily - these have been removed too. A long
> term calendar view for each hostel was really useful for planning.

Actually I take back most of what I've just said. There is a 'book now'
button under the stars logo (which is under the hostel picture) on each
individual hostel page. That link takes you to a calendar view of
availability at that hostel. So I was wrong - I'm very sorry.

undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
> undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
>> SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk wrote:
>>> On 8 Jan 2007 17:47:29 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
>>>
>>>> The
>>>> booking engine has become much worse - You can no longer view a
>>>> calendar of availability reds/ambers/greens for hostels - Thats poor -
>>>> really poor. You have to try every single date until you hit an
>>>> 'available' night.
>>> You can see the availability if you use www.yhabooking.org.uk direct
>>> rather than the version on www.yha.org.uk
>>>
>>> Nigel
>>> replace SPAMHATER with n and t*sc*li with totalise
>> No, I've obviously not made myself clear enough here. If you want to
>> see the week, month, year ahead of available nights for a particular
>> hostel you use to get a bar divided up into each day and it was
>> coloured red,amber or green - indicating general availability. So it
>> was easy to see opening patterns and routine closed nights for example.
>> If you get a 'not available' for a specific date you don't know when
>> its next available unless you go through each day manually. Removing
>> this calendar view for an individual hostel is a step backwards. Also,
>> you use to get a list at the bottom of an availability search of all
>> hostels not available for the date selected and you could click to see
>> their calendar views very easily - these have been removed too. A long
>> term calendar view for each hostel was really useful for planning.
>
>
> Actually I take back most of what I've just said. There is a 'book now'
> button under the stars logo (which is under the hostel picture) on each
> individual hostel page. That link takes you to a calendar view of
> availability at that hostel. So I was wrong - I'm very sorry.
>

Also I got 404 for Lawrenny from the map

I note that YHA-branded accommodation is re-available in Monmouth!
(from £27.50); bit more than last time I stayed in that town.

Chris Hunt wrote:
> Great. First it started saying "Server is too busy" for every other
> page, now it seems to have died altogether.
>
> First impressions are pretty underwhelming. When did orange become the
> YHA colour?

Orange is the default. You can also select two disgusting, lurid colour
schemes, yellow on black and black on yellow - as well as black on blue.
You can also select the desired text size, although most browsers let
you do that anyway, so there's no point.

Designed by the same people who did the Prince of Wales' web site I see.
High on effect, low on substance. :-(

--
Brian

The black/yellow combinations are for accessibility purposes. People
with certain visual disabilities find black-on-yellow (or vice versa)
an easier combination to read than black-on-white. It may be helpful
for dyslexics too. (I've been looking around for a link that explains
further, but without much success as yet)

Of course, on the YHA site they still have to contend with text that's
pretty small, even at the largest setting offered to them.

On 8 Jan 2007 23:21:06 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:

>
>
>Actually I take back most of what I've just said. There is a 'book now'
>button under the stars logo (which is under the hostel picture) on each
>individual hostel page. That link takes you to a calendar view of
>availability at that hostel. So I was wrong - I'm very sorry.

Actually the book now isn't on all the pages yet. I suspect that's
awaiting the rollout of Orion to all hostels.

Nigel
replace SPAMHATER with n and t*sc*li with totalise

<SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message
news:i8t4q2d0frvnf67jvu1jkmln884qmtp3rd@4ax.com...
> The website has been refurbished and relaunched. Same address
> www.yha.org.uk
>
> Nigel
> replace SPAMHATER with n and t*sc*li with totalise

Not wonderfully impressed within 2 clicks. I asked the site to 'Inspire Me'
with Beautiful Countryside which took me to a list of hostels. Doing well so
far.
'Wildehope Manor' is spelt wrongly in the list but I chose it because I have
tried unsuccessfully to stay there on numerous occasions.
The text and photo was OK but then I looked at the page header. Whoops.
'Youth Hostel, Bradwell Village' is not what I am reading about.

The actual hostel site pages have about 5 different fonts and sizes in use
which doesn't make for easy reading.
The regional maps are rubbish, they should bring back the old versions with
the large towns made clearer.

The YHA have screwed up by not allowing the site to be fully proofread
before launch. I would have been very happy to be part of such a process
even if it meant logging in securely to prevent too much being given away
before launch.

And those are just the start of my thoughts.

Nick

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 20:49:56 -0000, "Nick Pedley"
<nicholaspedley@npedley.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

>

>Not wonderfully impressed within 2 clicks.

see the contacts page http://www.yha.org.uk/contact-us/ for loads of
email addys to write to. Whether they are work or not is a different
question

Nigel
replace SPAMHATER with n and t*sc*li with totalise

<SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ri18q25m4dpp2e58f7q04ghvqjg96hr9a9@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 20:49:56 -0000, "Nick Pedley"
> <nicholaspedley@npedley.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>
>
>>Not wonderfully impressed within 2 clicks.
>
> see the contacts page http://www.yha.org.uk/contact-us/ for loads of
> email addys to write to. Whether they are work or not is a different
> question

>
Thanks, I've already been there and done that. I sent in an improved version
of my above posting with suggestions as to what I think needs changing.
Mainly it's those useless maps of the regions where it's near impossible to
name the towns or click on the correct overlapping hostel icon.

Nick

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Nick Pedley wrote:

> Not wonderfully impressed within 2 clicks. I asked the site to 'Inspire Me'
> with Beautiful Countryside which took me to a list of hostels. Doing well so
> far.
> 'Wildehope Manor' is spelt wrongly in the list but I chose it because I have
> tried unsuccessfully to stay there on numerous occasions.
> The text and photo was OK but then I looked at the page header. Whoops.
> 'Youth Hostel, Bradwell Village' is not what I am reading about.

That's not the only silly mistake. I just loaded the 'Find
Accommodation' page (without clicking on the drop-down menu). The
'Yorkshire Wold, Moors and Coast' link goes to 'Yorkshire Dales & South
Pennines'. Ooops!

>Found this on the new YHA website - release date of 1st September 2007!

MrX
---
Starts:
YHA is ringing in the New Year in style by launching this brand new
website to tempt travellers of all ages with budget breaks in top
countryside, coastal and city locations.

The aim was to create a site that helped the user navigate through the
choices offered at more than 200 Youth Hostels that provide value
accommodation in England and Wales.

The new site went live this week and was created by Reading Room.

Duncan Simpson, Head of Communications at YHA said: "We decided to
overhaul our website to help promote a more accurate representation of
what YHA represents - flexible, quality accommodation, representing
great value at excellent locations all over England and Wales. "What
we needed to communicate such an attractive offer was an attractive
site with greater functionality and that's what Reading Room has
delivered."

Margaret Manning, Reading Room's CEO, said: "YHA requires a highly
complex transactional site that delivers targeted and personalised
content and is fully integrated with back-end systems.

Reading Room is working with YHA on the online communications strategy
and advising on the way that technology can support this strategy.
"This is an incredibly interesting project that will significantly
enhance YHA's online business,"

The award-winning digital agency fought off stiff competition to win
the project, and has worked closely with YHA to ensure the new site
meets all its requirements.

The site will take into account visitor feedback and develop the online
offering while maintaining the existing loyal visitor base.

A greater emphasis has also been placed on customers being able to
tailor their YHA experience according to their needs.

The agency is also currently working on an intensive online marketing
programme that will encourage discovery of all that YHA has to offer.
:Ends

I've posted a lengthy piece on the new design at
http://www.yhagroup.org.uk/archives/yha-website-review . Please take a
look and leave any comments you may have.

undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
> >Found this on the new YHA website - release date of 1st September 2007!
>
> MrX

> Duncan Simpson, Head of Communications at YHA said: "We decided to
> overhaul our website to help promote a more accurate representation of
> what YHA represents

A more accurate representation? What's accurate about copying/pasting
all the errors from the old site to the new one?

> "This is an incredibly interesting project that will significantly
> enhance YHA's online business,"

Right! People are really going to think highly of YHA when they click
on a link from a tourist board website, only to get a "404, page can't
be found" error. Joe Public will give up at that point and search for
somewhere else to stay. That's really going to enhance YHA's online
business.
>
> The award-winning digital agency fought off stiff competition to win
> the project, and has worked closely with YHA to ensure the new site
> meets all its requirements.

If the new site truly met "all its requirements" they'd have
implemented redirects from the old pages to the new ones, so visitors
are seamlessly transferred to the new page. Come on guys, it's not
rocket science for heaven's sake.

	#1
SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk	YHA website relaunched The website has been refurbished and relaunched. Same address www.yha.org.uk Nigel replace SPAMHATER with n and tscli with totalise

	#2
Chris Hunt	Re: YHA website relaunched Great. First it started saying "Server is too busy" for every other page, now it seems to have died altogether. First impressions are pretty underwhelming. When did orange become the YHA colour?

	#3
Fran	Re: YHA website relaunched Chris Hunt said... > Great. First it started saying "Server is too busy" for every other > page, now it seems to have died altogether. > > First impressions are pretty underwhelming. When did orange become the > YHA colour? > Not just me then. It doesn't look a great deal different apart from that, but I confess I haven't been through the whole site. 'Ere, what happened to camping at Manorbier? I mean, I know the ground's as rocky as a very rocky thing and tent pegs have a tendency to get as bent as very bent things an' all that, but even so I was surprised not to see Manorbier listed as one of the YHs with tenting facilites. -- To reply see 'from' in headers; lose the domain, and insert dots and @ where common sense dictates.

	#4
Jacki	Re: YHA website relaunched SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk wrote: > The website has been refurbished and relaunched. Same address > www.yha.org.uk First appearances are encouraging; it's more user-friendly than the previous edition, but not sure about the orange. Is YHA going to transform into easyHostel? Getting the thing to work at the moment is problematic - I'm also getting intermittent "server busy" messages, but that may be down to teething troubles. While the new site changes won't affect the average user, the one thing that annoys me, and will no doubt annoy the myriad of other webmasters out there who have sites that link to individual pages on YHA's site is that they've changed ALL the URLs. This means a lot of work to update, and also there will be a lot of sites out there suddenly returning those annoying "page not found" results as the links to YHA pages no longer work. Google will also be well pissed off with YHA :-)

	#5
SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk	Re: YHA website relaunched On 8 Jan 2007 17:47:29 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote: > The >booking engine has become much worse - You can no longer view a >calendar of availability reds/ambers/greens for hostels - Thats poor - >really poor. You have to try every single date until you hit an >'available' night. You can see the availability if you use www.yhabooking.org.uk direct rather than the version on www.yha.org.uk Nigel replace SPAMHATER with n and tscli with totalise

	#6
undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk	Re: YHA website relaunched SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk wrote: > On 8 Jan 2007 17:47:29 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote: > > > The > >booking engine has become much worse - You can no longer view a > >calendar of availability reds/ambers/greens for hostels - Thats poor - > >really poor. You have to try every single date until you hit an > >'available' night. > > You can see the availability if you use www.yhabooking.org.uk direct > rather than the version on www.yha.org.uk > > Nigel > replace SPAMHATER with n and tscli with totalise No, I've obviously not made myself clear enough here. If you want to see the week, month, year ahead of available nights for a particular hostel you use to get a bar divided up into each day and it was coloured red,amber or green - indicating general availability. So it was easy to see opening patterns and routine closed nights for example. If you get a 'not available' for a specific date you don't know when its next available unless you go through each day manually. Removing this calendar view for an individual hostel is a step backwards. Also, you use to get a list at the bottom of an availability search of all hostels not available for the date selected and you could click to see their calendar views very easily - these have been removed too. A long term calendar view for each hostel was really useful for planning.

	#7
undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk	Re: YHA website relaunched undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote: > SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk wrote: > > On 8 Jan 2007 17:47:29 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote: > > > > > The > > >booking engine has become much worse - You can no longer view a > > >calendar of availability reds/ambers/greens for hostels - Thats poor - > > >really poor. You have to try every single date until you hit an > > >'available' night. > > > > You can see the availability if you use www.yhabooking.org.uk direct > > rather than the version on www.yha.org.uk > > > > Nigel > > replace SPAMHATER with n and tscli with totalise > > No, I've obviously not made myself clear enough here. If you want to > see the week, month, year ahead of available nights for a particular > hostel you use to get a bar divided up into each day and it was > coloured red,amber or green - indicating general availability. So it > was easy to see opening patterns and routine closed nights for example. > If you get a 'not available' for a specific date you don't know when > its next available unless you go through each day manually. Removing > this calendar view for an individual hostel is a step backwards. Also, > you use to get a list at the bottom of an availability search of all > hostels not available for the date selected and you could click to see > their calendar views very easily - these have been removed too. A long > term calendar view for each hostel was really useful for planning. Actually I take back most of what I've just said. There is a 'book now' button under the stars logo (which is under the hostel picture) on each individual hostel page. That link takes you to a calendar view of availability at that hostel. So I was wrong - I'm very sorry.

	#8
Mike Jones	Re: YHA website relaunched undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote: > undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote: >> SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk wrote: >>> On 8 Jan 2007 17:47:29 -0800, undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk wrote: >>> >>>> The >>>> booking engine has become much worse - You can no longer view a >>>> calendar of availability reds/ambers/greens for hostels - Thats poor - >>>> really poor. You have to try every single date until you hit an >>>> 'available' night. >>> You can see the availability if you use www.yhabooking.org.uk direct >>> rather than the version on www.yha.org.uk >>> >>> Nigel >>> replace SPAMHATER with n and tscli with totalise >> No, I've obviously not made myself clear enough here. If you want to >> see the week, month, year ahead of available nights for a particular >> hostel you use to get a bar divided up into each day and it was >> coloured red,amber or green - indicating general availability. So it >> was easy to see opening patterns and routine closed nights for example. >> If you get a 'not available' for a specific date you don't know when >> its next available unless you go through each day manually. Removing >> this calendar view for an individual hostel is a step backwards. Also, >> you use to get a list at the bottom of an availability search of all >> hostels not available for the date selected and you could click to see >> their calendar views very easily - these have been removed too. A long >> term calendar view for each hostel was really useful for planning. > > > Actually I take back most of what I've just said. There is a 'book now' > button under the stars logo (which is under the hostel picture) on each > individual hostel page. That link takes you to a calendar view of > availability at that hostel. So I was wrong - I'm very sorry. > Also I got 404 for Lawrenny from the map I note that YHA-branded accommodation is re-available in Monmouth! (from £27.50); bit more than last time I stayed in that town.

	#9
BrianW	Re: YHA website relaunched Chris Hunt wrote: > Great. First it started saying "Server is too busy" for every other > page, now it seems to have died altogether. > > First impressions are pretty underwhelming. When did orange become the > YHA colour? Orange is the default. You can also select two disgusting, lurid colour schemes, yellow on black and black on yellow - as well as black on blue. You can also select the desired text size, although most browsers let you do that anyway, so there's no point. Designed by the same people who did the Prince of Wales' web site I see. High on effect, low on substance. :-( -- Brian

	#10
Chris Hunt	Re: YHA website relaunched The black/yellow combinations are for accessibility purposes. People with certain visual disabilities find black-on-yellow (or vice versa) an easier combination to read than black-on-white. It may be helpful for dyslexics too. (I've been looking around for a link that explains further, but without much success as yet) Of course, on the YHA site they still have to contend with text that's pretty small, even at the largest setting offered to them.

	#12
Nick Pedley	Re: YHA website relaunched <SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message news:i8t4q2d0frvnf67jvu1jkmln884qmtp3rd@4ax.com... > The website has been refurbished and relaunched. Same address > www.yha.org.uk > > Nigel > replace SPAMHATER with n and tscli with totalise Not wonderfully impressed within 2 clicks. I asked the site to 'Inspire Me' with Beautiful Countryside which took me to a list of hostels. Doing well so far. 'Wildehope Manor' is spelt wrongly in the list but I chose it because I have tried unsuccessfully to stay there on numerous occasions. The text and photo was OK but then I looked at the page header. Whoops. 'Youth Hostel, Bradwell Village' is not what I am reading about. The actual hostel site pages have about 5 different fonts and sizes in use which doesn't make for easy reading. The regional maps are rubbish, they should bring back the old versions with the large towns made clearer. The YHA have screwed up by not allowing the site to be fully proofread before launch. I would have been very happy to be part of such a process even if it meant logging in securely to prevent too much being given away before launch. And those are just the start of my thoughts. Nick -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

	#13
SPAMHATERepper@tiscali.co.uk	Re: YHA website relaunched On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 20:49:56 -0000, "Nick Pedley" <nicholaspedley@npedley.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: > >Not wonderfully impressed within 2 clicks. see the contacts page http://www.yha.org.uk/contact-us/ for loads of email addys to write to. Whether they are work or not is a different question Nigel replace SPAMHATER with n and tscli with totalise

	#15
Jacki	Re: YHA website relaunched Nick Pedley wrote: > Not wonderfully impressed within 2 clicks. I asked the site to 'Inspire Me' > with Beautiful Countryside which took me to a list of hostels. Doing well so > far. > 'Wildehope Manor' is spelt wrongly in the list but I chose it because I have > tried unsuccessfully to stay there on numerous occasions. > The text and photo was OK but then I looked at the page header. Whoops. > 'Youth Hostel, Bradwell Village' is not what I am reading about. That's not the only silly mistake. I just loaded the 'Find Accommodation' page (without clicking on the drop-down menu). The 'Yorkshire Wold, Moors and Coast' link goes to 'Yorkshire Dales & South Pennines'. Ooops!

	#16
undercover_mrx@hotmail.co.uk	Re: YHA website relaunched >Found this on the new YHA website - release date of 1st September 2007! MrX --- Starts: YHA is ringing in the New Year in style by launching this brand new website to tempt travellers of all ages with budget breaks in top countryside, coastal and city locations. The aim was to create a site that helped the user navigate through the choices offered at more than 200 Youth Hostels that provide value accommodation in England and Wales. The new site went live this week and was created by Reading Room. Duncan Simpson, Head of Communications at YHA said: "We decided to overhaul our website to help promote a more accurate representation of what YHA represents - flexible, quality accommodation, representing great value at excellent locations all over England and Wales. "What we needed to communicate such an attractive offer was an attractive site with greater functionality and that's what Reading Room has delivered." Margaret Manning, Reading Room's CEO, said: "YHA requires a highly complex transactional site that delivers targeted and personalised content and is fully integrated with back-end systems. Reading Room is working with YHA on the online communications strategy and advising on the way that technology can support this strategy. "This is an incredibly interesting project that will significantly enhance YHA's online business," The award-winning digital agency fought off stiff competition to win the project, and has worked closely with YHA to ensure the new site meets all its requirements. The site will take into account visitor feedback and develop the online offering while maintaining the existing loyal visitor base. A greater emphasis has also been placed on customers being able to tailor their YHA experience according to their needs. The agency is also currently working on an intensive online marketing programme that will encourage discovery of all that YHA has to offer. :Ends

	#17
Chris Hunt	Re: YHA website relaunched I've posted a lengthy piece on the new design at http://www.yhagroup.org.uk/archives/yha-website-review . Please take a look and leave any comments you may have.