new swellnet site

Thanks Len.. glad you like the new site - the Curly report is now located over at Manly.

awesome new look to the site, Ben, nice 1.

Long overdue..... like the look and feel so far. The forum should be a winner with increase traffic and a chance for Swellnet users to interact and share information.

Only complaint is the default cam/location thingy. I chose Cooly and it supplies the nearest cam as Main Beach. This issue was there before the site change this of course too.

billvis, that was a minor mapping error that I've now fixed. The old site was a completely different configuration (a random surfcam selection from the same state as the report), whereas with the new site we've geo-targeted the closest physical surfcam to the surf report location.

One other error that we've also just noticed is that there are some very strange weather station mappings to surf report locations (which were unintended).. for example Coolangatta is mapped to Nowra. We're looking into what's causing it and will have it sorted shortly.

No dramas Ben, you've got the best cam for cooly down pat.

Yeww Frothin on the new website it is sick how it says what the wind direction is and tides and water temperature are. Heaps Sick

Looks good guys, dig the new layout. a few more surf reports in Qld too, good to see. Can we expect any more cams for Qld?

New Site looks Fantastic Ben and Wally. I really like the larger surfcam window. I would like to know if you are going to include Trigg Point cam in the near future? Also a suggestion--- include a window on home page and post updated on new site developments for a week or so, so we can go and check them out as they are posted.
regards

Thanks Fossil. Good suggestion re: homepage window - I'll see what we can do. Trigg Point cam? Coming soon.

Congrats on the new site - looks f'ing great! Cheers, Gray.

...although I should mention I'm seeing a few odd chars here and there - not sure if this is 'cos I'm running Vista with IE 8.0.6 but, for example:
"2ft…onshore moderate SSW winds…weather fine…south swell direction…Vic masters at Jan Juc…Low tide 11.50am High 6.15pm…hunt around local beaches for a small onshore quick surf"

and also all Centergrade (sp?) symbols are showing as the capital "A" with the 'little hat'...sorry, should have copy/pasted it...

Thanks gray.. turns out that the ellipsis is a 'special char'. Matt's quickly written some code that converts the "..." into a proper HTML entity, so browsers that don't support correct UTF-8 will display it properly (I use Chrome and it had no problem with it.. were you using Internet Explorer?).

Site looks good but I cannot search for surf report by area on my blackberry as the blackberry does not allow drop downs for example nsw/manly

Good suggestion mondosurf.. you can go to our search page but Manly only shows up in the category listing under "surfcam". We should have a "surf report" category here as well (for some reason it's not showing up in the "forecast" category.. will investigate).

Top work on the site Ben!
Any access to the Juc camera?

Cheers....

Nice look to the site now Ben. I've only had a quick look around but is seems heaps user friendly. Cheers

Top work on the site Ben!
Any access to the Juc camera?

By: "shifty"

Thanks shifty :) No Juc camera for us, but we've got some other new Vicco surfcams queued up to roll out once the new site is sailing smoothly.

Still exploring - but it looks good, thanks!

hey benny,
Site looks great.Nice and fresh.So are you saying that the curly photo that i used to love every morning( except for the summer of no waves until this week) is now on the manly site?

Great to see that you have incorporated the weather-zone team. its a nice addition to a great site.. props mate!

benny

Yep, that's right Benny - the Curly pic is now available through the Manly report. Thanks for the nice words.. glad you like the upgrade :)

well done, there's more functionality ....when viewing a surf report the other surf report locations to choose from are not re displayed on screen, you have to click the Show Locations button to see the listing again and then select a region and another location....

Wheres Narrabeen report gone, i hate coastalwatch's efforts and use swellnet, this is not good...

aussie2101, the Narrabeen report has been moved to Mona Vale (again, same reporter, just a name change).

well done, there's more functionality ....when viewing a surf report the other surf report locations to choose from are not re displayed on screen, you have to click the Show Locations button to see the listing again and then select a region and another location....

By: "cacol2"

I agree that the "show locations" button doesn't work especially well, so we're planning to overhaul this with a more intuitive system as soon as we can. We've also got some cool geo-targeted code to upload to the site shortly, that'll list the nearest 5 reports to the surf report you're currently viewing.

This will allow you to effectively make your way around the entire Australian coast, with the next set of 'nearest 5 surf reports' rotating as you choose a new location.

good stuff Ben, Stuart and the rest.
thanks again for your invaluable surf predictions, good luck with the site.
a few bugs but its early days

site is too difficult to to access forecasts on my phone now. wont let me choose my location and when i type my location in search (victor harbor) i get 0 results found.

Hey what about making an iPod app !!!

the new site is really confusing

New site looks cool, definately an improvement on the old site
heaps cleaner and easy to use! top work!

Sweet upgrade to the site, looks great. I Look forward to more of the upcoming features.

Nice job on the new format Ben.

awesome.
top notch site, VAST improvement, i like multiple photos, and all the stats.
keep curly as manly. !!
if anyone can't identify the difference, we don't want them there anyhow. !!

hope to see you in the water,

Would prefer if Curly stayed up. This spot is always a good indicator for swell. Manly is flat most of the year and it's hard to tell from that if there's no swell or the swell's not getting into Manly.
Swell magnets generally give the best indication of swell ie, north narra and curly. It's a shame they've been replaced.

New site looks great, love the additional photos.

Would prefer if Curly stayed up... It's a shame they've been replaced.

By: "cube"

Cube, the Narrabeen and Curly reports haven't been replaced, they've just been re-named. I'm sure you'll fine that both Manly and Mona Vale reports read very similar to the old Northern Beaches reports, I'll let you figure out which is which ;)

We've gone for a more region orientated report, but the reports are still being filed from the same locations as before.

I don't understand why you would rename the surf sites to Manly and Mona Vale and retain the report of the originals(Curly and Narra). It's a bit misleading and I think the days of not revealing a spots conditions for fear of reprisal is growing old.
If you were reporting on an area why not just say 'Northern Beaches Report'. Using Manly and Mona Vale as reference points for an area just doesn't make sense to me but hey, it's not my site. Good luck, I hope the bugs get worked out and for the most part I'm enjoying the added features.
Cheers

Cube, I write the Manly report (which used to be called Curl Curl).. I actually addressed this issue in another thread but I'll repost it here as it targets all of your points.

"Actually, none of our surf reports are meant to be beach specific - they're all meant as a regional focus. In some locations, this is unavoidable (ie Bondi), however for the most part we've tried to choose the best location name to describe the area.

Surf report locations are also selected based on population density and coastline, hence the need for two reports on the Northern Beaches (in fact, we were considering three at one stage). We'll continue to assess the need for additional reports based on the feedback we receive from everyone.

However, in the case of Manly and Mona Vale, we chose these two beaches because "Upper Northern Beaches" and "Lower Northern Beaches" sounded a little silly (as did "Northern Northern Beaches", and "Southern Northern Beaches"!).

We then thought of naming the reports based on council region (Manly, Warringah and Pittwater), but then realised that surfers outside of Sydney wouldn't have a clue where Warringah and Pittwater were. Therefore, we chose Manly and Mona Vale as they're the two biggest surfing hubs (industry wise, at least) along the Northern Beaches. They also probably the two of the least-sensitive surf spots on the Northern Beaches too.

As for the locations they cover - Manly covers all beaches between the Bower and Collaroy. Mona Vale covers all beaches between Narrabeen and Palm Beach (we'll soon put in these geographical boundaries for all surf report locations)."

Great improvements so far still looking and exploring. I expect to make even more use of Swellnet now. :) Great work guy's

lovin the new site. very convinient especially with the wind direction :) fav surf forecast site by farrrrrrrr

Do any of you actually surf?
Go to facebook if you wanna catch up with your friends. The new site just means it takes longer to check a surf report, bravo Ben

Hey, just a heads up, I think you guys need to further test your navigation in IE, it breaks a little. Although IE isn't my usual browser, I use it at work and as I scroll through elements in the nav they space out. This causes the dropdown menu to close annoyingly. Personally, I'm against javascript navs

brianp, what version of IE are you using? We've tested every browser and almost every OS across Windows and Mac platforms, but drew the line at some of the older browsers like IE6 (which is almost nine years old).

Re: navigation - we only whipped it up yesterday in response to some feedback over the last few days, so there hasn't been much time to test it - that being said, we haven't experienced any problems here so far.

The new site just means it takes longer to check a surf report

By: "noshoes"

Obviously, I'm biased as I've had a lot of time to get used to the new site, but I reckon I can access our surf reports much more quickly than the old site. And, there's a lot more info on the surf report page, which means that you don't have to go anywhere else to get your additional weather data.

It's just like anything new - it takes some time to get used to.. the previous Swellnet site was five years old, and five-year-old habits are hard to break. Additionally, the old site was built a long time ago in a way that couldn't allow us to keep up with the changing needs of the business.

The only way to go forward was to build a new website - we're really stoked with the result, and the majority of the feedback we've had says the same. We were always very aware that these new changes wouldn't resonate well with everyone, but that's one of the risks we had to take.

I'm using IE 7 and am on XP Pro at work. Being a designer myself I understand the frustrations posed by IE, especially IE6. In saying that though, I think you have to still respect its large marketshare.

Also, I've been having a hard time navigating through the forums, I can't seem to navigate through articles with multiple pages. Maybe just me?

Brian

Cube, I write the Manly report (which used to be called Curl Curl).. I actually addressed this issue in another thread but I'll repost it here as it targets all of your points.

"Actually, none of our surf reports are meant to be beach specific - they're all meant as a regional focus. In some locations, this is unavoidable (ie Bondi), however for the most part we've tried to choose the best location name to describe the area.

Surf report locations are also selected based on population density and coastline, hence the need for two reports on the Northern Beaches (in fact, we were considering three at one stage). We'll continue to assess the need for additional reports based on the feedback we receive from everyone.........................................................."

By: "thermalben"

Love the new site. Looks great.

And I'm all for the new name changes to the reports. I live in Curly and people are going to look at the Manly report and if it's a south swell they're gonna think there is actually some waves at Manly.

Seeing as most small south swells march straight past Manly to Curl Curl hopefully I'll get an extra hour of small crowds before the hordes work it out. :D

Ben
My swell tracker on my desktop has stopped working, how do I fix it?

What platform and what browser Sandfly?

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling?

still finding a few buried treasures around the site. those weather charts are gold.

gold you hear!

Hi
I am having trouble with Swell Tracker on my desktop, it is not updating anymore. Is this a problem with the new site?

Windows with Internet explorer 7.

It was working up to a few days ago, now it has nothing appearing after today, have tried changing beaches (it is cuurently set to Narrabeen)