Welcome to the new-look UK Free TV
Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV It has been a few years since we changed how UK Free TV looked back in October 2008, and with the continuous additions since then, it had become apparent that some changes were needed to bring the site up to date again.
There have been a few different improvements.
Firstly, the design has changed to a look based around photography. Each section now has, rather than the poorly-understood colour coding, a large background photo to illustrate the section:
The sections are now shown at the very top of the page, with a site search box to the top right, and a clickable logo to the top left.
As more people now access UK Free TV on devices such as tablets and phones, the page design has been updated to make the site work for touch. For this reason links are now shown with larger target areas. Here is how the site now looks on the iPad and a Google Nexus Prime mobile phone:
One change that I know many people will find useful, is that all text is now shown as black-on white: all the coloured background boxes have been removed.
Using the right-hand column on the site has been improved. You can still find the site settings box there, with the useful quick links to UK Free TV maps and terrain plots as well Digital UK, BBC Engineering, and Freeview HD as before.
The many other boxes have now been condensed down to two. The first, "Most popular", shows you four options: the latest news, the latest comments, the most popular pages, and most popular questions.
The second box "On other sites" shows you news pages on other sites you should read ("Zeitgeist"), the Twitter feed and the Box updates.
For both of these boxes, clicking on the header changes the information displayed immediately.
To help you find your way around, the main sections have been reordered. They are now News, TV, Freeview, Freesat, Online, Radio and Help.
Each of these sections now starts with the most poplar page.
The new "News" section contains the headlines, the "Zeitgeist", plus your comments (as lists and maps), "History" which covers old news.
The "TV" section has the all free TV channels page, the Freeview/Freesat/Freesat from Sky/Freeview Light compare pages plus the local TV and HDTV secrions.
The "Freeview" section has the "My Freeview" mapping, terrain plot and details service, plus Transmitters (including Full Service, all transmitters, faults and engineering), Freeview and switchover news, the multiplex maps, "Installing" covering Setting up, Interference, the Rigger's zone, current box updates and the "Maps" of regions and frequencies.
"Freesat" has pages for general, Freesat and Freesat from Sky information.
"Online" has on-click access to online TV and radio, in addition to news about online TV.
"Radio" covers Digital Radio: radio on TV and DAB, and analogue radio on FM, MW and LW.
Finally "Help" has not just the frequently asked questions, but the UK Free TV blog, a glossary, the old diagnostics system and a list of every last mast.
In addition, the site has been made to operate much more quickly. Most of this has been done by upgrading all the PHP3 and PHP4 code to PHP5 classes, which I know you can't see directly, but I am confident will make your visits here more useful.
9:59 PM
I'm sorry to tell you this, Brian, but there seems to be some problem with the blue underlined links since this new look.
When I click on a lot of these links, it shows the following near the top of a plain white page:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function getbloggoto() in /home/admintv/public_html/s/index.php on line 21
That Fatal error for example is what the page goes to when I click on the Freeview HD link above on this page where the address is: https://ukfree.tv/s/?1…1740
I don't know if anyone else is getting that or if it's just me and my computer. (LL115FQ)
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10:46 PM
Briantist: Any idea what has happened with the page accessed via the twitter link? as it hasn't been updated for not far off 24 hours now, me having checked this on two different PC's earlier on this evening.
Below being the link used in the browser.
Of course now that I have mentioned this I fully expect Murphy's law to jump in and it start updating again.
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12:28 AM
Much preferred the old site Brian which had a wealth of information on individal transmitters along with very useful coverage maps etc. Sadly, now gone.
As they say, if it's not broken, don't fix it.
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Peter Henderson: Not a single one has been removed. Look under "Freeview" then "Transmitters" - Full service Freeview transmitters | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice and Transmitters | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice or "Help" then "All masts" All masts | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice or "Freeview" and "Maps" TV regions overview map | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice or use the search box.
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StuartO: Sorry about that, the new version of the keyword redirect didn't upload. It is fixed now.
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jb38: The comments RSS feed, ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - comments was failing to output correctly, I have corrected this so this should drive the Twitter page again shortly.
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3:00 PM
Briantist: On the topic of that RSS feed, you shouldn't be including a DTD (!DOCTYPE directive) in it. It can no longer be obtained from my.netscape.com:
To DTD or not to DTD - The Netscape Blog
IE 9 won't read an RSS feed containing a DTD:
Why Does IE not support DTD Feeds? | TuxReports Communities
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5:39 PM
Briantist: Re: Twitter link problem. Many thanks for sorting that out and pleased to report that all seems to be OK again now.
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Mike Dimmick: I have removed the DTD from the two (of four) feeds that had it in. It's been so long since I looked that that file, I can't recall putting it in there in the first place...
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