Editor's Blog: And We're Back - Thanks For Your Patience

By David Emmett | Sun, 05/02/2023 - 15:39

At long last, the MotoMatters.com website is back in the air. It took about three weeks longer than I expected, for which you have my humble apologies. However, it should now be simpler to use, and easier to find what you are looking for. 

A conceptual change

One of the reasons for updating the site is the continuing conceptual change around MotoMatters.com. When I first started the site, I tried to cover everything, every possible piece of news that emerged. 

Over the longer term, I found that untenable, and even more importantly, unsatisfying. One of the greatest joys of MotoGP for me is that there is always something new to learn, some deeper lesson to be digested and understood. 

At the heart of this is the paradox of MotoGP. It is always changing, more and more rapidly, yet engineers are still facing the same basic challenges. To get a motorcycle around a track as fast as possible, you have to understand the interaction between tires and tarmacadam, between vehicle dynamics and fluid dynamics.

So the core and increasing focus of MotoMatters.com will be to try to understand world championship motorcycle racing, especially MotoGP, and to explain that to readers in the clearest and best way possible. 

This means that the site will focus a little less on the day-to-day news - other websites do that much faster and better than I ever could - and more on the longer term. Other websites will bring you the Who, What, and Where, MotoMatters.com exists to try to explain the How, and the Why.

Race and practice reports will continue to appear, but my personal focus will be on taking time to analyze and explain what is going on.

What has changed?

See below for a slightly longer explanation, but basically the software the website runs on has been updated. That has allowed me to improve the experience for all users of the site, and especially for subscribers. 

The most important change is that I have reorganized the menu structure, making the in-depth parts of the site more easily available. In the menu, you will now find the following links 

  • Subscriber Content - all of the articles containing exclusive material for MotoMatters.com subscribers
  • Round Ups - a link to all of the round ups and subscriber notes posted on each race weekend and at each test
  • Features - all of the long-form articles, interviews, opinion pieces, etc on the website
  • Photos - all of the photo galleries on the website, with smaller versions of the photos for non-subscribers, and high-resolution versions for subscribers, allowing subscribers to zoom in to photos to see incredible detail
  • More - racing schedules, teams, riders, results, championship standings 
  • Subscribe! - take out a subscription to MotoMatters.com, and help the site keep growing and improving
  • Patreon - a link to the MotoMatters.com Patreon, which offers very similar benefits to subscribing to the website.

Privacy focus

Another change is to the underlying concept of the website. Once upon a time, MotoMatters.com ran advertising, but that paid badly, and has gotten worse. That is largely because I never sold ads directly, but only went through ad exchanges like Google. 

Ad exchanges paid poorly before, but their return has only got worse over the past couple of years. The only people getting rich off Google Ads are Google, and the same goes for most ad networks. As ad rates have dropped, so sites have resorted to including more ads - video ads, pop ups, pop overs, overlays, more and more ad blocks - to the extent that they are making many sites virtually unusable without resorting to an ad blocker.

So I abandoned ads already some time ago, but the code was still running on the website. That has now been removed.

One of the benefits of doing this is that it greatly improves both privacy and speed of loading. Without having to wait for Google's extensive back-end bidding process to complete, the page can load immediately. More importantly, not including Google ads means that Google is no longer following you around the web - or at least, around this website. 

I have also abandoned Google Analytics for the same reason. Without ads, there is no incentive for me to know the number of visitors to the website. Visitors don't pay the bills, subscribers do. The only metric that is meaningful to the continued existence of MotoMatters.com is income, and the income of the website is entirely dependent on support from readers, in the form of subscriptions and Patreon support, as well as donations via Paypal or Kofi. 

So improving the experience of subscribers is now central to the website. Making it easier for everyone to find the exclusive subscriber material is what matters. Anything slowing the website down is bad for everyone. 

Which brings me to our privacy policy: we don't care who you are, where you live, what you do. The only thing we need to set cookies for is to check whether you are logged in, and validate whether you are a subscriber or not. Some external material - the Soundcloud podcast links and Youtube video links - may still set cookies, but we try not to.

Which brings me to the bad news

The price of subscriptions has remained unchanged since I first introduced them over a decade ago. (It's so long ago that I can't even remember when it was). Inflation is a real thing, and prices have increased by over 30% since 2013.

The website upgrade is therefore the right time to introduce a subscription price update. From now on, a subscription to MotoMatters.com will cost $49.99. Looking at it from the bright side, that is a 25% rise, below the level of inflation.

What is still to be done?

Apart from a general tidying up of the website and further enhancements, the biggest change is going to be an update of the available subscriptions. 

Currently, all subscriptions expire at the end and have to be renewed manually. As someone who hates things which autorenew, that has always been my preferred choice, and is consequently the default on the site.

In the next couple of weeks, alongside the existing subscription, we will be introducing two new subscriptions which will renew automatically unless canceled:

  • Annual subscription, autorenewing - this will be the same price as the standard subscription, and will renew automatically on the end date.
  • Monthly subscription, autorenewing - this will cost $4.99 a month, and will automatically renew on the end date.

More subscriber benefits are still to come, including a discord channel. That will be done over the next few months.

Dark Mode

The other thing still open is Dark Mode. Some users prefer reading white text on a dark background. At the moment, the only layout is dark text on a white background. I hope to sort this out soon.

A few thoughts on the upgrade: 

Why was the upgrade needed?

I have been using the content management system Drupal on this website almost from the beginning. But the version the website had been running on reached its end of life, and support and maintenance was falling away. The last update had been in 2016, and so the modules built for the old CMS were starting to cause problems. 

Content management systems built 10 years ago were designed primarily for desktop devices. The internet has mostly moved to mobile devices, and to accommodate that, I needed to update the site.

To improve the overall experience of the site, I decided to move to the latest stable version of Drupal.

Why did the upgrade take so long? 

Two reasons. Firstly, because the architecture and internal design of Drupal changed radically between version 7 and version 9. Think of it like the move from 500cc two strokes to 990cc four strokes: everything needed to change. (If you want to know more about the background, see this article explaining a lot of it.)

The bigger problem, however, is that I decided to do this all myself. In part, because hubris led me to believe that I could, in part because I find it very difficult to delegate, but mostly, because I am stupidly stubborn and wanted to. 

I embarked upon it not really understanding what I was getting myself into. Which was probably a good thing. But determined not to be beaten by a stupid bit of software, I set about wrangling Drupal 9 into submission. Or something that looks like submission, at least. 

I won't go into the details at the moment - at a later date, I hope to turn the notes and documentation I wrote into a detailed blog, for anyone else wanting to go through the same process. 

Are you happy with the result?

I think it works, and that will have to do for the moment. 

The longer version of this is that I have the bare bones of the site up and running, and I have tested what I can, but I am sure there is a lot I have missed. Most of it is just refining what already exists, tidying up the aesthetics and, in some places, the organization of the site. Parts of that involve me learning more about how the new system works, but other parts will require you, dear readers, to tell me what I have missed, and what is going wrong. 

I expect to still have a significant amount of tinkering to do, but that can be done over the course of the coming few months. 

In the meantime, please report any oddities or things you think need changing. Send your emails to site-issues@motomatters.com with a description of your issue, or a suggestion for improvement.

If you are having issues logging in, can I ask you to try clearing cookies for motomatters.com by following the instructions here:  https://www.lifewire.com/clear-cookies-for-one-site-4587347 The cookies from the old site might be interfering.

The unexpected upside

The process of getting here has been long and grueling, and I have spent a lot of long days and nights behind my laptop trying to get things to work the way I want. By rights, I should be exhausted (and to be honest, I am a little sleep deprived), but strangely, I feel quite energized. 

The reason is simple. 2022 was a long, hard slog of a season (2023 looks to be even harder). By the end of it, I was frankly burned out, and had lost a lot of the intense passion I had for motorcycle racing. 

But this past month has allowed me to get completely away from racing, and focus on a new set of problems. The process of quashing bugs and figuring out how to solve problems has been inspiring and fun. It has allowed my motorcycle racing brain to take a bit of a rest. 

Now that I have reached the end of the upgrading process (or at least, cleared the largest hurdles and left myself with just cleanup to do), I am looking forward to getting to a track again and taking a long, hard look at motorcycles. I do not enjoy the traveling aspect of MotoGP much (except when I can get there on a motorcycle), but my eagerness to get to the track now once again outstrips my irritation at travel. 

In other words, I can't wait to get stuck in again. I fly to Sepang on Tuesday, and am fascinated by the thought of what I might find there.

Thank you for your patience, and I hope you will join me on my journey.

David Emmett

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Comments

Thanks DE! 

I like the clean whitespace, personal preference. Maybe also because it is ad free! I was logged out today when I checked to see if the new version was up and running, and the site did not recognize my password. But I was able to do the Forgot Password thing and all seems to be well now.

Can't wait to hear from you from Sepang.

Welcome back David, it has been a long wait but not as long a wait as for our collective favourite sport to return.

Thanks too for the interim photos and I look forwards to your forthcoming content.

Enjoy your travels 👍👍😎😎

Glad you’re back up and running David!! One suggestion though, change the style settings so the commenter’s info is above (or below) their comment. It’s breaking it into 2  columns right now which doesn’t work on mobile devices. Especially an iPhone 12 Mini!!

Horrible. Strong dislike. User experience? Bad. 

It wasn't broken. Shouldn't have "fixed it." Same w your discord decision, bad one David. 

Unhappy, shocked. Sorry to bring bad news. Super bummed out. Had two news pieces, not posting them. 

All good things come to an end. This may well be one. It was good while it lasted.

I am very sorry you feel like that, but the previous site was no longer sustainable. It was getting old, and only ran on older software which was no longer being supported. Which would have left it vulnerable to attack and exploitation, and could have exposed user details. 

The Discord channels (which are literally just a chat server) will be voluntary. I would have fired up an IRC server, but I fear no one has software for that any longer. Plus I think I've forgotten most of the shortcuts in IRC. 

Congrats David. Welcome back. I’m sure you know this but I’m looking at your site for the first time (since you came back) and I notice in the comments sometimes the words get chopped at the right margin and illogically continue on the next line. As opposed to logically continuing. Is Motoshrink joking?

Love the new site, especially how fast it is compared to the old version. Good work! Looking forward to your musings on the 2023 season.

A couple of minor points if I may:

  • You mentioned that you no longer set cookies (except login cookies) - doesn’t that mean a cookie popup is no longer necessary? The “accept” and “no thanks” buttons surely don’t do anything now.
  • In the comments here, all the words are cut off midway on each line. My guess is it’s due to one of the CSS properties like word-break (I forget which one, but there’s one that wrecks everything and another that works much better - I can dig out the right one from one of my websites if that’s useful)
  • I like the simplified top menu, but there’s a lot of wasted space on mobile - for example “login” is on a separate line to the “hamburger” icon.

Just minor things that you’re probably already working on but thought I’d mention them :)

Why is the text SO HUGE? Can we please normal size text please?
I'm getting text on the website that seems to be roughly the equivalent of 16 point sized text, where before, it was the equivalent of 10 or at most 11 point text height. The really huge text is very much "in your face". Any chance we can have the text size made more normal? Thanks in advance. :) Keep up the great work David! All the best to you!

tb009,

In most (all?) desktop browsers you can change the size of the text on a specific site by using "CTRL +" or "CTRL – (minus) " (Windows), and "CMD +" or "CMD –" (Mac), to increase or decrease the display size of the site as preferred. It changes the display size of everything including images - but it gives that more compact/space efficient look. CTRL or CMD 0 (zero) restores it to "normal". If you have permitted cookies, in most cases the site will display in the same size you last visited. The current text size on MM is considered optimal with respect to web standards for visual accessibility. And it's easier to read as-is on most phones.

Cheers!

Merlin

Congrats on the site rebuild which must have been a huge task, such shifts tend to be a necessary evil at a certain point.  The overall appearance feels cleaner and the pages do indeed seem to load a lot faster.  The general operation of the site has not really changed much or at all, with the same navigation strip up top (good) and (on a desktop pc at least) panel down the right hand side (see below).

The biggest issue is the comments section which definitely needs some pretty urgent tweaking.  I find the comments here to be as valuable, interesting and entertaining as the official content itself so it is integral to my enjoyment of the site.
The new comment layout generally takes up way too much space, requiring tons of scrolling to get anywhere even in the modest number of comments so far on this article.  Smaller specific issues I've noticed;
- Words do not wrap to the next line, they are split part way through.
- When you click on the 'comments' link it takes you to the top of the page rather than the top of the comments.

The comment bit is hopefully 'easily' fixed by changes to the comment layout and text size etc, but a more major revision might be to the right hand pane in general which is taking up 1/3 of the screen and is totally blank beyond a certain point.  On this page with only a few comments so far, the right hand side nav pane is blank for 2/3 of the entire page - it is 12 'page ups' in total and for 8 of those the right hand pane is blank.

Also, the 'all time' articles seems so stale, I thought for a long time it was broken but perhaps not.  Every page has this panel of links to long-dead topics such as the problems of the desmosedici and how wonderful the 'new' Honda production racer will be.  The Honda one refers to the RCVR1000 which went on to become one of the most uncompetitive and forgettable Hondas ever made.  Four out of five of those articles are 10+ years old and the newest is eight.  I've turned 50 and think it just seems old and neglected, so imagine what a new fan to the sport might think when they load a site with articles linked from every page which are almost as old as them?  I love that I can go back and read all of your back-catalogue of fantastic articles but don't think they should be on every page - perhaps a separate page of 'best hits' with links to your personal favourite articles and most clicked etc?

This is all very constructive criticism intended in the best way.  I am very much looking forward to a new season of racing and following it on my favorite moto-website of all time Motomatters.  Keep up the great work David!

I think I've noticed another issue, both of my comments so far have appeared as 'replies' to previous comments, even though I have specifically used the 'Add New Comment' field at the bottom of the article, not clicked reply to a previous comment.  Let's see if this one shows up as a reply to Mick-e's comment above, as it should not. 

Yep, it did.  This comment also is being typed in the main page field, not as a reply to my own comment...

Edit: OK, it stayed at the same indent level. Perhaps because I'm posting another comment directly after my previous one?

Mixed feelings at this early stage David. The right hand panel of bullet info is too intrusive on the main display (iPad). The information in that panels is a lot of social media links to short story info. I’d prefer to see it as it’s own page to navigate to, call it Snippets and add it to the top nav panel. That way I can go and view if I choose, rather than it taking up almost 1/4 of my screen real estate. On my iPhone it doesn’t display at all, which I prefer, but on the iPad it’s a dominate feature. Also agree with the other observations about the Comments section text size and staggered layout. Discord - not a fan, so rarely engage in content from other providers who use the platform.

On a massive plus, I applaud and look forward to the Motomatters philosophy of ‘How’ & ‘Why’ and wholeheartedly approve of the Ad free approach.

Looks fine to me, but still has the main failing of the old site, when you start reading a subscriber article and reach the log in to read more bit, after logging in, it doesn't bring you back to the article, you have to find your way back to it yourself.  Any chance that can be fixed in the new format?

Thanks a lot for the comments so far, positive and negative. I have already fixed the word wrapping issue.

The problem was I wasn’t viewing this on a mobile device. I can see more of the issues now I am using a phone on a tablet. And I hadn’t spent much time on the comment layout. 

Here’s my current list of priorities:

  • Fix the comment author display so the author details appear above the comment, rather than beside it. This should make it easier on a mobile device 
  • Improve the font size so it’s not so big
  • Change the color of links on the white background
  • Link back to the top of the comments Done
  • Return back where you were after logging in
  • Bring back subscriber badges
  • Dark mode
  • Sort out the right column. Or maybe remove it or find a better way to display it
  • Try to figure out why the "New comments" link only shows occasionally 
  • Add the forums and get that sorted out

There will be other stuff to. I will make a list. But it will take a few months to sort everything.

I will try to keep this list updated reflecting what is done.

Bravo, that will take care of pretty much all the stuff that's jumped out at me David.  I've not tried it on a mobile device yet, but have noted the layout issues even on a 34" desktop screen.  

Don't underestimate the importance of the comments section, it's what keeps the site percolating in between updates - at least for me.  Basically always something interesting to read.

There's been a lot of talk among the pundits about attracting new blood to the MotoGP fanbase, basically all of those new fans will be accessing both races and analysis on a mobile device.  I do too on occasion, both tablet and phone.  Commenting is too hard on those miserable contraptions though... :)

Take care with the comments section. It plays an essential part in our enjoyment of the website. It’s where the Motomatters community comes together. And, as you acknowledge, we think it needs more work and soon. Can you give the revisions you’re proposing to the comments section priority, please. 

Thank you for keeping the site ad free David. And the bump in subscriber fee is both understandable and, quite frankly, overdue. The first impression with the larger font was refreshing for these old eyes, but that was not something that was noticed without comparing to the old format. Honestly, the only areas that I thought could be improved with the older version were the loading time and that sometimes a guy had to scroll up and down to determine who was repling to whom. Other than that, I quite enjoyed the site as it was and your twitter feed provided some information and topics of interest. Sorry about the downer opinion after all that hard work. Plus the old version also showed "new comments" that could be clicked on which would take the reader straight to the first new comment.

I find the yellow on white difficult. Maybe better when Dark Mode comes? Otherwise, be fun to explore things and see how it works. Hope Motoshrink settles down, his contributions are always fun! 

David,

A major site makeover is not only a huge task, it takes a lot of discipline to preserve the things that have made MotoMatters such a unique resource for the reader community you've created. Big respect from me for not succumbing to the "loud, splashy, parallax-scrolling, ad-riddled nightmare" of so many others' site updates. Thank you for:

  • Keeping the format focused on long-form content
  • Preserving the efficient, lightweight nav-bar and header (so many sites consume most of the opening screen with graphics and a huge logo)
  • Recognizing that MM site supporters come here for the deep-analysis and background, not mainly the news that can be found on dozens of other sites. Not to disparage news, per se, but it's abundant on the web. However, David Emmet & Co. perspectives - not so much :-)
  • Keeping it ad-free. This IS one of the sites I happily support with actual currency.
  • Acknowledging user feedback so positively and being quick to respond with a list of priorities. And yes, the comments section is a major attraction. Being retired, I have the luxury of perusing a dozen or more racing/motorcycling website each day. MM is the only one where I seek out the reader comments as part of the story. Thanks too, to all fellow readers for being mature and full of good cheer : -)

So, thanks again for all this. We can see you've taken note of some areas for improvement, but I'm sure I speak for many of us - we'll be patient while you fine tune MotoMatters as you can - now on to what you and all of us care most dearly about: the RACING!

Wishing you safe travels to Sepang and all the rest of 2023.

Merlin

 

Will there be a forum section here again?  It's a nice source for breaking info and other pearls of wisdom from time to time.  

I was wondering the same.. While its participation and admittedly my own has waned there’s lots of good stuff on there spanning over a decade now.  

I never made the conversion to twitter.  I liked the forum felt more like a contribution and a way to reach David with my own analysis and observation over the years.  Looking to find a replacement for that, 

Perhaps a Dropbox to David for subscribers where members can share thoughts for future use and discuss things not tied to a particular news article comment section.

The load times were my biggest issue with motomatters.com so I’m glad to see that’s been addressed. Great work! Next issue for me at least is that I’m not that into WSBK/other racing so I’d love to see a filter for that (maybe that what you were talking about adding and I’m confused but thought I’d mention it all the same). Otherwise, I’ll continue to be a subscriber and love your work, this is the only source of news I follow for MotoGP and will happily continue.

Thank you!

One additional ‘comment’ on the link to the comments section. There used to be a second link to ‘new comments’ which would be good to have back.

Yet another item in what is likely to be a very long list for you David but we’ll done for sorting things out methodically 

Maybe I have worked with Government IT for too long - but I think that the upgrades are looking very promising already. It isn't always appreciated that sites and their applications have to be upgraded and that there is a requirement to go back to ground zero when one does. It may have been the time I sat with a comms team wrestling with DRUPAL and other Content Management systems but it was rare for an hour to go by without some sort of anguished utterance when something cropped up. 

I don't come here for a full on user experience. I come here for David's fantastic journalism and for the brilliant comments from the Mutterers. As I currently run a static web site and some social links I can assure everyone that getting this site to perform like some magical user experience site will only see our beloved correspondent chained to his desk for all eternity. I am more than happy as things stand and am sure David will work on the priorities as we go forward. 

Now if anyone can help me figure out how to get a reliable bluetooth connection between my Sony headphones and my LG television - that'd be great.

I generally use my iPhone for MM and the change to the comments section - as mentioned by others, a very important part of MM - was a bit difficult. Until I rotated my phone 90 degrees, which fixed it.

Yep, works a lot better at least on the desktop pc I'm on.  Top effort working on it whilst traveling David.

Can't wait for all the juicy details of the test, MotoGP is BACK!! :)

Now we just need the mad bugger 'shrink back...

NOTE: I mentioned earlier about indentation, and thought the same had happened here ie that my message showed up as a reply to TonyG rather than your message which I had replied to.  It is actually the 'NEW' tag which indents the message and makes it look like a reply to a different message.  Hit reload and it is indented correctly.  If the NEW tag can be moved such that it doesn't indent that will solve another little glitch that makes it harder to follow the conversation.  Not a biggie, just something for your buglist.

Hi David,

Love the new format, but just so you know the orange on white (ok orange on black by the way) does not work, maybe its just my eyes as I am new to glasses but I need to look closely to see properly, so maybe a simple colour change on the orange/white combo might be in order.

The "back to the top" button has gone.

The "Add new comment " button on the front page only takes me to the top of the article where before it took me directly to the add new comment widget, dialogue box or whatever you may call it.