UK Free TV site improvements

a few changes Photograph: jackiemorris

Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV 12th October 2017 at 13:42

I have made a few changes and fix a few bugs here on UK Free TV:

In the main menu:

• Added some chevrons to help better distinguish menu sections from menu items;
• Created a new section called Archive (2002-) and moved some very lightly used site features to here to reduce clutter;
• Fixed a bug that was causing a slight but perceptible delay in building the menus;

On the site generally:

• Used a new feature called “lazy loading” that better instructs your web browser when to fetch photos and other large graphics from the web server
• Remove the little-used “popular pages” features – it was using a lot of database resources and is being duplicated by Google Analytics;
• Removed the defunct “current” set-top box software links;
• Reduced the number of places that the adverts (the ones that pay for the site’s hosting and database servers) to get the web pages to load more quickly.
• Fixed several (hidden) usability bugs.

On section menu pages:

• Fix a bug that wasn’t linking the image link to a story page, only the text

On comments:

• Site no longer creates an in-page link if you do not provide a web-site or twitter handle when posting a comment;

On the mapping pages:

• Removed the AM, FM and DAB “transmitter regions” maps – the site now redirects to a map;

The “at700” system:

• Pages are now updated to show the quarter (rather than half-year) that the changes are going to happen, including recent changes to the schedules;

I also ensure the ever-ongoing task to keeping the site synchronised to the configuration of Freeview, Freesat and free-to-air Sky. 

If you have any other problems with the site that I have not – yet – noticed please let me know below in the comments.

Thanks to everyone.

Brian Butterworth