New Swellnet site

Andrew Baldwin's picture
Andrew Baldwin started the topic in Wednesday, 23 Oct 2013 at 9:35pm

Why did you change the site,

The old one was great, and this one is crap!!!

I will be looking for another site to give me my surf reports

Happy surfing

Andrew

salt's picture
salt's picture
salt Tuesday, 5 Nov 2013 at 7:58pm

Awesome it's back on deck boys, and Ben the updated reports will they stay? It's great but to get someone to post three times a day.......or do you guys do it off the cameras? How about updates for Yorkes? Maybe get barley to do them? It might give him something constructive to do.

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Tuesday, 5 Nov 2013 at 8:34pm

Yeah the dawn and afternoon reports have been planned for a long time.. They're here to stay.

No written reports from Yorkes though, however I will consider submissions from Barley if he's interested.

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Tuesday, 5 Nov 2013 at 8:37pm
pointy wrote:

Anyone who knows their beach will know that a south swell will be bigger or smaller etc but I see what you are trying to do and will reserve judgement to when it is fully functional. I doubt that you have time to answer everyone's comments and yet you still have been - good luck

Pointy, which coast are you located at? Just curious.. It'll make it easier for me to explain the system in real time (don't need to know beach, just region).

grug's picture
grug's picture
grug Tuesday, 5 Nov 2013 at 8:53pm

How can a surfer possibly question the beneficial utility of a clear and accurate tide graph? Or have I missed the point? And how can people complain about too many clicks? christ, you can pretty much pinpoint the exact conditions at any of these places with a few clicks and some basic local and general surf knowledge. The retrospective wind forecasts are brilliant. To be honest, this all makes it way too easy. It would seem the more people are given these days the more entitled they become. It's a vicious cycle.

Anyway, you guys have done really well not to get pissy with some of these comments. The new forecasting tools are on a completely new level compared to the last ones and they were already good. I can't think of any other useful information you could provide. I honestly think Swellnet is far and away the best surf forecasting website in the world now. Thanks for putting so much thought into all this Ben & Craig. I hope you can eventually get a pay rise out of this new site.

Davo51's picture
Davo51's picture
Davo51 Tuesday, 5 Nov 2013 at 10:57pm

Thanks for your hard work in getting things back up and running! The new site has grown on me and I can now appreciate the improvements....

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 5:31am

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We'll provide more articles in the near future which will show you how to get the best out of each and every new tool on the website.

indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 7:26am

Great to see the new forecast working, so much info and if you use it right = more possibility of scoring good waves.

Ive read people complaining about the wind history but i actually like the wind history, its another great tool to gauge the quality of surf without actually checking the beach,

For example, there is a forecast for a nice little swell, you wake up and there is no wind but its been blowing onshore all night and the wind has only just dropped the waves will highly likely still be lumpy/choppy often disorganised no matter that there is a nice little swell mixed in there and its no wind or light offshore, while if you wake up to no wind/light offshore and its also been offshore all night, chances are you will find nice groomed lines its pretty simple.

Perhaps there is aspects of the website that i don't like as much as the old one (im only human and we don't aways like change, but ill get use to it), but in regards to forecast info the new site is 1000% better.

donweather's picture
donweather's picture
donweather Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 10:40am
thermalben wrote:

Yeah the dawn and afternoon reports have been planned for a long time.. They're here to stay.

Ben, how are the dawn reports compiled? ie, just from someone like you or Craig checking the cams, wave buoy, wind stations and then writing the dawn report? If so, how do you do it at locations where there are no cams?

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 10:45am

Don, there's a limit to the things I can discuss publicly about the way I run the Swellnet business. Internal operations and procedures ain't one of 'em. However I will point out that I've personally been doing daily surf reports for K-Rock (Geelong) from Sydney for the last five years, and have rarely got it wrong. And that's with most of the reports being filed up to an hour and a half before the sun comes up.

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 10:50am

Just another point - the (long overdue) inclusion of our dawn reports is also to bolster our general surf reporting services. Swellnet is the only website with a national surf report team who take photos each morning, and this obviously presents some time and logistical problems, when trying to provide the service 365 days of the year.

As such, the addition of the dawn report means that there will always be *some* verification of the surf conditions at dawn, which will then be complemented by a photo report a short time later.

Having managed our surf report team from day one - and also provided a daily surf report myself (Northern Beaches) - it is just impossible to expect all of our surf reporters to be up at dawn every single day of the year. But as a surf reporting business we have to provide that service. I believe this is the best solution moving forward.

donweather's picture
donweather's picture
donweather Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 11:26am
thermalben wrote:

As such, the addition of the dawn report means that there will always be *some* verification of the surf conditions at dawn, which will then be complemented by a photo report a short time later.

Just then wondering how much the dawn report will then "influence" the actual photo report a short time later with respect to wave heights.

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 11:54am

It won't influence it at all. Our reporters write their report as per what they see with their own eyes. Plus, the photos help to confirm the written words.

What would be the point about falsifying surf reports anyway? If our surf reports (and forecasts) are unreliable, people will go elsewhere. From a business sense, there's absolutely no incentive to lie about the surf conditions.

sandspit's picture
sandspit's picture
sandspit Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 1:28pm

stoked its back. was like having an arm cut off for a few days!

Greg74's picture
Greg74's picture
Greg74 Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 8:36pm

Finally the site is working well again! If you guys put back the score (which is a small thing but i liked it) and the Best Days section, I will never go to another site. I know its easy to check the forecast and if I can't see which are the best days means I'm completely stupid, but sometimes I'm just too tired or its too early and my brain doesn't work by that time, so its good to double check things. This is why I liked the best days section. Maybe you guys can write an automated script which analyses the forecast, pick the best days automatically and chuck them on the screen.
The score was made by your reporters anyway (i reckon) so why did you take it off?
The updated site and especially the forecast system (since it works) is great by the way.

chappo66's picture
chappo66's picture
chappo66 Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 9:02pm

Hey Ben,
Just getting used to the new look. Your site is one of those I have book marked and a visit to your site is part of my daily routine. Given that I'm restricted to when I can go surfing, I'm probably one of those lazy people mentioned above that pretty much looked at the winds and swell graph to give me an IDEA of what conditions were LIKELY to be at the various breaks, and hoping the "Go Surfing NOW" button would be flashing when I could go. The change in display has been a good thing, as I'm now having to stop and think about the info displayed. Keep up the great work, and just don't stop.

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 10:28pm
Greg74 wrote:

If you guys put back the score (which is a small thing but i liked it) and the Best Days section, I will never go to another site.

The score (or 'rating') will return soon. It was an oversight to leave it out.

However 'Best Days' are included in our forecast discussion notes (see under Forums, then Swellnet Forecast Notes). It's a little harder to find but it's definitely there.

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 10:30pm

Thanks Chappo, I'm sure you'll get the hang of the new site shortly, as we tweak the service more and more over the coming weeks and months. You'll really start to get a lot more value out of all of the information that's available, by the way we present it. That's our goal anyway.

lightdog's picture
lightdog's picture
lightdog Thursday, 7 Nov 2013 at 2:54pm

what have you done! old site way more functional, a little rough around the edges but what made it unique. please change back.

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Thursday, 7 Nov 2013 at 3:08pm
lightdog wrote:

what have you done! old site way more functional, a little rough around the edges but what made it unique. please change back.

Have a read here, lightdog: http://www.swellnet.com/news/swellnet-dispatch/2013/11/06/why-bloody-hel...

yorkessurfer's picture
yorkessurfer's picture
yorkessurfer Thursday, 7 Nov 2013 at 4:53pm

Just a few questions about SW Pro. When making a payment with Visa Debit and coming up to the yearly renewal time does an email go out to remind you of the date of renewal? I want to know so I can make sure there are funds in my account as I usually only transfer $$ over to my visa debit when I need to? I assume it's an automatic renewal or do you manually need to sign up again each year?

caratgold's picture
caratgold's picture
caratgold Thursday, 7 Nov 2013 at 5:08pm

Surf Cam's never load now :( super slow and freezes my computer everytime i try and load surf cam.

Quite distressing, used to love and rely on this site everyday to check the surf.

trappedincabinets's picture
trappedincabinets's picture
trappedincabinets Thursday, 7 Nov 2013 at 5:45pm

New site looks awesome. Home page layout is coming up all over the place tho for me? Can't see the main pic for example and other pictures are squished together. Photo's aren't showing up when I go into a gallary either. Any tips? Cheers

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Friday, 8 Nov 2013 at 6:26am
yorkessurfer wrote:

Just a few questions about SW Pro. When making a payment with Visa Debit and coming up to the yearly renewal time does an email go out to remind you of the date of renewal? I want to know so I can make sure there are funds in my account as I usually only transfer $$ over to my visa debit when I need to? I assume it's an automatic renewal or do you manually need to sign up again each year?

I'll find out for you YS. I know it's an automatic renewal but I'm not sure on the specifics re: reminder emails (however, the renewal date is listed in your profile). If a reminder email is not a part of our service for annual subscribers I'll get it implemented.

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Friday, 8 Nov 2013 at 6:54am
[email protected] wrote:

Surf Cam's never load now :( super slow and freezes my computer everytime i try and load surf cam.

What OS and browser are you using, CG? They're working perfectly on Chrome however we have had some reports of Flash issues with Safari and Firefox.

if you're unable to download Chrome, can you try this with Safari or Firefox. Right click on the player:

Then click on 'settings' and then untick 'Enable Hardware Acceleration':

Please let me know if that works.

Romerio's picture
Romerio's picture
Romerio Friday, 8 Nov 2013 at 3:59pm

Any chance of moving away from Flash for the Cams?

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Friday, 8 Nov 2013 at 4:48pm

We're using the latest licensed version of JW Player which (to the best of my knowledge) defaults as an HTML5 player, but then rolls back to Flash if HTML5 is not compatible.

salt's picture
salt's picture
salt Friday, 13 Dec 2013 at 9:46am

I realise this question has probably already been asked, and answered numerous times..... but, is there anyway it could be made so we didn't have to scroll through the comments (ie on articles etc) and just jump to the last comment posted? Just seems a bit clunky to have to click on the article then scoll to the bottom of the page, then click 'last' to get to the latest comment. Also what about putting the page numbers./ first /last icons etc on forum topics at the top of the page rather than the bottom. thanks

maddogmorley's picture
maddogmorley's picture
maddogmorley Wednesday, 12 Feb 2014 at 7:37pm

Be good if when you click on a topic in 'Latest Comments' it takes you to the latest comment for that topic - just like it does in the 'In The Forums' section.