New website rollout plans

[Steve Sokolowski]

You might recall that Constance and Vance have been hard at work with our new website.

I'm pleased to announce that, after a year of effort, the new site has reached feature parity with the current site. Between now and the beginning of October, we plan to introduce a gradual rollout of the new site before decommissioning the current site. These changes impact the website only, and do not affect the mining server or other parts of the system.

Our new site has been designed from the ground up to use newer web technologies, such as Angular 10 instead of AngularJS 1.5, and has reimagined the page layouts to better work with how customers use the system. Constance has simplified some of the site's controls, and 387 test cases have made it easier to add new features without bugs caused by regressions.

Starting this weekend, select customers who have entered E-Mail addresses for notifications will receive invitations to try the new site, which will run in parallel to the current one. These customers will be asked to share feedback, and we'll monitor which features they use to see whether we were right with the changes we made. Then, we'll announce the site on the forums, then on twitter, and finally in a newsletter. We expect that many features will need improvements and expect to continue making improvements over the course of this parallel period.

Our hope is to switch to the new website in October and to decomission the old system then. Keep watching for more information as the testing process gets underway in a few days!

[dumpledore]

Very excited for the new site, thanks everyone for the hard work you're putting into this and all the other magic that exists here!

If I may make one request, please ditch google / recaptcha as your human check. I don't like spending 60 seconds training google's AI for free every time I access the site. There are many other solutions out there that do not abuse our time (especially for VPN users!), and support better organizations.

[Steve Sokolowski]

Do you think we should just get rid of the captcha altogether? Since the captcha was initially implemented, we've found other ways to limit the login rate that are less disrputive to users.

Or, maybe the best way is to allow customers to choose whether the captcha appears.

[Steve Sokolowski]

I'd like to invite anyone who wants to try it to visit https://beta.prohashing.com/. The new site operates upon the same data as the old site does.

Please offer your comments!

[dumpledore]

From a user perspective, human checks don't directly enhance my experience and I don't mind if they go. I can't really speak to how useful they are from the web developer's point of view. Nothing wrong with polling on the question I suppose.

I checked out the beta site and it looks fresh! I'll try to use it by default and note any pain points here or in another place if you prefer. The first thing I have noticed is that the old "Total Earnings" chart is either missing or not intuitive for me to find, and I rather like that daily breakdown of cost/earnings.

Thanks again for all the hard work.

[ryguy]

I am also not that concerned if you want to take away the captcha, but I don't feel that strongly about it either.

As for the beta site, the only item I'd like to see is that you seem to be displaying the coin profitability under coin status in terms of USD. Is there a way for an option to toggle between USD and BTC? I would prefer to see them as BTC figures, which was previously shown, without having to either expand the coin or do a USD -> BTC calculation.

[Steve Sokolowski]

From a user perspective, human checks don't directly enhance my experience and I don't mind if they go. I can't really speak to how useful they are from the web developer's point of view. Nothing wrong with polling on the question I suppose.

I checked out the beta site and it looks fresh! I'll try to use it by default and note any pain points here or in another place if you prefer. The first thing I have noticed is that the old "Total Earnings" chart is either missing or not intuitive for me to find, and I rather like that daily breakdown of cost/earnings.

Thanks again for all the hard work.

The captchas prevent automated bots from trying lots of passwords against your account. One choice was to make it an option so that customers can choose whether to have that level of security, and those who do not choose it would release some level of liability because they chose ease of use over security.

But we came up with a better plan. We'll only display the captcha on the second login attempt. Most customers enter the correct password on the first try, and allowing criminals one unchallenged chance per account is unlikely to result in any losses.

I'm going to ask Constance to evaluate the issue with "Total Earnings" chart.

[ryguy]

Noticed a small issue for the beta site.

When a balance becomes eligible for payout the "Amount Eligible" on the Dashboard displays $1.00 no matter the amount. Looks like it may be taking whether there is any amount eligible (e.g a bit as a 0 or a 1) and translating that to USD instead of the amount eligible.

[dumpledore]

I understand what recaptcha is supposed to do, I just don't think its widely considered a top performance tool for the job. And, speaking for myself, I find that it leeches energy from the very core of my being with every encounter. If you feel strongly that there is good reason to stick with recaptcha specifically, then yes please do introduce it after a failed password attempt.

I found some trouble getting changes to my payout proportions to stick on the beta site. It took me a minute to realize that the save button would only appear if I used whole integer percentages in every box (many of the values will start as decimals if they were set with the sliders on the old site, and the form will "accept" decimal entries initially) but even with whole integers summing to 100, I cannot get the lock buttons or save buttons to make persistent changes to the payout proportion values in Firefox or Brave. I do in theory prefer the new digit entry method to the sliders on the old site. I am trying out tipping right now, and the new site would let me give identical proportions to each team member / organization more easily

Do you prefer future bug reports and suggestions in this thread or as tickets?

[Steve Sokolowski]

I understand what recaptcha is supposed to do, I just don't think its widely considered a top performance tool for the job. And, speaking for myself, I find that it leeches energy from the very core of my being with every encounter. If you feel strongly that there is good reason to stick with recaptcha specifically, then yes please do introduce it after a failed password attempt.

I found some trouble getting changes to my payout proportions to stick on the beta site. It took me a minute to realize that the save button would only appear if I used whole integer percentages in every box (many of the values will start as decimals if they were set with the sliders on the old site, and the form will "accept" decimal entries initially) but even with whole integers summing to 100, I cannot get the lock buttons or save buttons to make persistent changes to the payout proportion values in Firefox or Brave. I do in theory prefer the new digit entry method to the sliders on the old site. I am trying out tipping right now, and the new site would let me give identical proportions to each team member / organization more easily

Do you prefer future bug reports and suggestions in this thread or as tickets?

Either is fine. Whichever makes it easiest to get the most bugs is fine by me.

Vance changed the recaptcha to be needed only on the third login, eliminating your issue.

I'll direct Constance to look into the issues you reported with the payout proportions and she'll get back to you on Monday. Thanks for all the work you're doing!