New Chat Beta

in the new beta chat why can I not see any local rooms, only global. I am using Chrome on a Mac

Quote by sam69xxx

in the new beta chat why can I not see any local rooms, only global. I am using Chrome on a Mac

I think you may have to click on the ^ next to Local and the list will drop down If that doesnt work send in a ticket and report the glitch with as much detail as possible

https://www.swingingheaven.co.uk/support/new-ticket

Is the beta chat down, as i keep getting error messages when using the link on the first page. It was working fine this morning

It's not working for me either.

Quote by gustavv

It's not working for me either.

likewise @

OMG, what have you done, its in your face and feels so messy. Why change a good thing (yes, the old one kept crashing, does that mean this one would too?)

I can't find if it's still there but the ability for an individual member to clear chat (to them) seems to have cleared off...which is a shame as sometimes it's nice to remove all the debris from earlier chats etc. Is its removal a permanent thing?

It is truly dreadful to use on mobile phone. Needs sorting or you going to loose subscribers. I come her for fun and to relax and it’s just such hard work

with the international rooms it would be much easier on the eye if the country flags were used rather the country abbreviations and quicker to check if someone was close enough to be of interest

On mobile phone, each time I go from room to room, in the top left drop down, it defaults to the lost of people in the room, instead of the actual chat. This means an extra button click to switch to the chat view....

CAMS ARE SO HARD TO SORT KEEP CRASHING 😪

Renewed subs yesterday everything was fine today complete shit doesn’t work on my mobile why bother making things worse ...

You've been running beta on **** for months now and its fairly smooth - so no excuses for it not to work properly here now we are all having to use it. Yet its slow, emoji's not loading up correctly slow to display messages once typed, seems like the system can't cope with the volume of chatters using it

Quote by keiths46

You've been running beta on Lush for months now and its fairly smooth - so no excuses for it not to work properly here now we are all having to use it. Yet its slow, emoji's not loading up correctly slow to display messages once typed, seems like the system can't cope with the volume of chatters using it

Agree, in Lagoon for example, I can type twice as fast as the text box can keep up with, and clicking on anything feels like a trip back to the 90's.

You guys really should have stress tested this system before going live, it's not able to cope with volume at all.

Any android users managed to get it working yet? It just hangs 🙃

I can get in, but there is no way for me to enter any text - What the Hell?

Wednesday night and mini profiles and emoji's not working, pic rooms yes they have pics but the non pic rooms are either quiet or full of discontent. Admins admitting during the day there are problems which they are trying to fix, surely the sensible thing is to return to the old chat while they investigate everything that has gone wrong. People are saying they will vote with their feet and wallets / purses

Just wont use chat now..nor upgrade to gold..time to leave as some folk i know have done already..

Completely unusable, locks up every 5 minutes, heaven forbid you ever put a camera on, let alone broadcast!

What an utter mess, wish I hadn't slapped down lifetime membership for this shit show.

Horrible clunky interface, not user friendly, so why change from something that works.

A beta version is where you iron out some of the bugs, listen to feedback and performance test. You've done none of these things.

Lush stories chat works perfectly, why not reuse that code in the swinging heaven chat. It's still crap but at least it's accessible. Can't get into any chat rooms. And I've paid for Lifetime membership... Useless developers.

Quote by Wetrock

A beta version is where you iron out some of the bugs, listen to feedback and performance test. You've done none of these things.

Lush stories chat works perfectly, why not reuse that code in the swinging heaven chat. It's still crap but at least it's accessible. Can't get into any chat rooms. And I've paid for Lifetime membership... Useless developers.

I brought up the fact that Lush chat works perfectly (didn't realise you were there too) apparently part of the issue with comparing the two is SH has 10 times as many chatters (terms used loosely) so there is a user volume issue. Speaking with various people on various platforms phone / ipad / laptop all are having different issues. I've found it better on chrome than Edge, someone I know has safari on her phone and no issues. Some have labelled it as teething issues but then they were having issues last night in pool so maybe more understanding than they were. Those having issues have been dubbed a 'vocal minority' but visit other non pic rooms and the chat is the same. It did take Lush about 2 weeks to get everything ironed out so hopefully SH will too but its def not a good look and does question how reliable the beta testing was. The site owners must be in despair with all the complaints if they are monitoring it.

Quote by keiths46

I brought up the fact that Lush chat works perfectly (didn't realise you were there too) apparently part of the issue with comparing the two is SH has 10 times as many chatters (terms used loosely) so there is a user volume issue. Speaking with various people on various platforms phone / ipad / laptop all are having different issues. I've found it better on chrome than Edge, someone I know has safari on her phone and no issues. Some have labelled it as teething issues but then they were having issues last night in pool so maybe more understanding than they were. Those having issues have been dubbed a 'vocal minority' but visit other non pic rooms and the chat is the same. It did take Lush about 2 weeks to get everything ironed out so hopefully SH will too but its def not a good look and does question how reliable the beta testing was. The site owners must be in despair with all the complaints if they are monitoring it.

A few thoughts- you say Lush is stable now after a couple of weeks of teething issues? We're not half way through that couple of weeks with it up and running on SH, so we're still in that period you described as teething issues elsewhere, but you seem less tolerant of the issues here and I don't really understand why. As you've pointed out, there are different issues for different combinations of platforms, which I've mentioned to you and others in the room is a function of the number of users (more users quite obviously is likely to lead to a higher number of combinations) and will each need to be individually addressed, which I know the dev team are doing.

A number of the issues you've reported have been corrected, so you can see progress is being made. Reverting to the "old" chatroom is a real retrograde step that any software deployment would only consider if there is a very serious impact on a lot of users, which would actually set back the development of the new room and just mean we'd need to start this phase again in future, with people being confused by the flip flopping from old/new and back again as an added aggravation for everyone.

Most of the issues people have had are issues of where everything is a bit different to how it was and it takes a while to get used to, that's the same whether you're talking major updates to microsoft/adobe/appple etc software or this and to an extent we've all been learning together, however where possible the mods and admin have been pointing people in the right direction where we can.

I stand by my characterisation that the majority of the negativity is coming from a relatively small proportion of users and to be quite honest, if you look through the forum posts above, you can see that. Lots of people have commented with issues, which is exactly what's hoped for and is really useful, thank you to those people who have taken the time to log issues.

However, there are a handful of people who seem determined to be negative rather than constructive- rather than report issues and try to be part of the solution to fixing it, they seem to prefer to bemoan the change. I'm starting to feel that even if it was absolutely perfect, some of those people would STILL complain about it. Change is inevitable, if we never changed anything in the swinging community we'd all still be trying to use magazine ads to contact each other, not nice shiny internet fora. It's the same with people in the room- the relatively few comments like "I hate this" and "Chatroom is Sh** now" aren't constructive at all- they don't even articulate WHY they think that, even when mods have asked them follow up questions, so I'm not sure how the site team could reasonably be expected to react and immediately "fix" it for them.

Finally- I make it a rule not to comment on behalf of the site owners, but I will express a personal view, any change is likely to cause complaints from a few people who don't like the change, for whatever reason, and when you decide to put a significant change in, you've already accepted that risk.

As always, if you have issues with using the rooms, if you can report them (in as much details as possible, it really helps) then that's welcome and appreciated. Just please lets try and keep some perspective, the rooms as perfectly usable for nearly everyone and that in itself is quite an achievement.

I'll admit, I'm one of the complainers, but I've also attempted to be constructive, providing Chrome developer tools information to help identify what is wrong. I don't disagree that software can have "teething" problems, my issue is that during the "beta" a lot of these issues were raised, by me and others, and seem to be no different when going live, so the impression is that nothing was materially changed during beta. That may well be wrong, because obviously I don't have access to the data, but as a good friend of mine once said, "in marketing, impression is everything".

I have three main issues with the way this has been handled, and as a paying customer, I feel it's my right to raise these issues, please do explain if you disagree.

1. You should never use your paying customers as beta testers for something that is so fragile and unstable. I would hesitate to call what is currently live beta, perhaps alpha. I get that some things won't show up until production, but this appears to be a bit too much for that, as if automated stress testing were never done.

2. You should communicate effectively to your paying customers, not just dump a huge update on them with no explanation or warning. In a provider/customer relationship, communication is everything, especially if you want to retain those customer's subscriptions.

3. I've asked this question multiple times and it has gone unanswered, maybe you feel the paying customers don't deserve an answer to this, which is your prerogative, but even a "mind your own business" would be better than nothing.

"Why did the chat system need changing? It feels like the new system is worse in many respects than the old one, and I have yet to see a single feature that is better presented or implemented in the new one vs the old one, so I find myself utterly confused as to why the change was necessary".

I get that you're going to be in possession of lots of information that I'm clearly not, so I fully understand there may well be a technical or business reason for the switch, but again, as paying customers, it's not unreasonable to ask the question, IMHO.

One more small observation. You say "the rooms as perfectly usable for nearly everyone", however, since the switch, I've noticed the member count (in brackets at the top after the "Chat" link) has dropped consistently from 1200+ every time I login, to around 700-800 at the same times of day.

Just saying, some people might be just silently abandoning it rather than complain.

Quote by newbieanalyst

I'll admit, I'm one of the complainers, but I've also attempted to be constructive, providing Chrome developer tools information to help identify what is wrong. I don't disagree that software can have "teething" problems, my issue is that during the "beta" a lot of these issues were raised, by me and others, and seem to be no different when going live, so the impression is that nothing was materially changed during beta. That may well be wrong, because obviously I don't have access to the data, but as a good friend of mine once said, "in marketing, impression is everything".

I have three main issues with the way this has been handled, and as a paying customer, I feel it's my right to raise these issues, please do explain if you disagree.

1. You should never use your paying customers as beta testers for something that is so fragile and unstable. I would hesitate to call what is currently live beta, perhaps alpha. I get that some things won't show up until production, but this appears to be a bit too much for that, as if automated stress testing were never done.

2. You should communicate effectively to your paying customers, not just dump a huge update on them with no explanation or warning. In a provider/customer relationship, communication is everything, especially if you want to retain those customer's subscriptions.

3. I've asked this question multiple times and it has gone unanswered, maybe you feel the paying customers don't deserve an answer to this, which is your prerogative, but even a "mind your own business" would be better than nothing.

"Why did the chat system need changing? It feels like the new system is worse in many respects than the old one, and I have yet to see a single feature that is better presented or implemented in the new one vs the old one, so I find myself utterly confused as to why the change was necessary".

I get that you're going to be in possession of lots of information that I'm clearly not, so I fully understand there may well be a technical or business reason for the switch, but again, as paying customers, it's not unreasonable to ask the question, IMHO.

Well reasoned questions always deserve at least an attempted answer in my view, so here goes:

1. I think generally speaking its common for customers to be involved in beta testing, that's exactly the point, which is why the dev team ran a beta test from May this year all the way through to October, before deploying the production version last week. To comment that the current version is a beta test isn't true, that's already happened and to characterise it as borderline alpha certainly stretches credulity.

2. Communicating effectively- I completely agree this should be the case, the issue here is HOW to do that? I have seen so many people comment and ask questions about something that the team have pushed message out about to know that most people just flat out don't read them, even when its on the main site landing page or forum and and everyone's feed- how do I know- it's because the mods get to answer the questions about it! If you have suggestions about how to engage members with this, I'm sure the team would be glad to hear them.

3. Why did chat need changing? several reasons that I know about and I'm sure some that I don't, so I'll give you my view:

The existing system was starting to struggle to keep up with the available technology that we all use day to day, a great example of this is the picture and sound quality on the cams- anyone who has used them recently will note how much better the picture and sound quality is, compared to the old version. With the new room able to take advantage of all those HD webcams that are out there, don't believe me? Try taking a cam and opening it up to full frame- I did and it held up very well, even on a 27" QHD monitor, that just wasn't even possible before, let alone with the kind of resolution we're now getting. The old chatroom was also starting to show its age in a number of other ways behind the scenes, its fundamentally been the same on the surface for a long time now, so like everything software related, needed a refresh to keep up with the times and remain current and updatable. It had also started to develop a number of issues which the tech team have successfully managed to patch up and work around over time. After a while a new one, instead of an old one with lots of bolt-ons and plasters stuck on things becomes the right choice. There was also an issue of consistency, you may not have noticed it (which speaks well for the implementation) but the various areas of the site have been updated one at a time, to ensure they all have consistency of use and feel, the chatroom was the last area needing the update. It was also left until last as we all knew it would be the most complicated and time consuming to deliver. I think you'll also agree that more people are familiar with the current chatroom/site structure of functionality, such as the three dots menu system, now common to google and MS based platforms as well as Apple devices, such that new users would have had to learn an outdated menu driven system to make best use of the site, which is clearly a bit backwards.

Now the controversial bit from me- some other sites don't do this kind of thing, they don't invest in improvements to the site and functionality- and lets be honest, it really shows after a while, there is at least one that I can think of still active that reminds me of an old MSN chat group from the early 2000's, which would spoil my enjoyment of it immensely. There is only so long you can maintain systems like that on legacy architecture without it keeling over and dying, let alone the security risk of running something that old. And as you rightly point out elsewhere, paying customers have expectations and a number of those are (rightly or wrongly in anyone's opinion) about look and feel as well as functionality.

4. Interestingly I'd noted the opposite trend in the number of people in the UK landing rooms, such as the pool over the weekend, with over a hundred people in there most of the busy times over the weekend which is significantly more than were in prior to the change. I'd suggest both of our observations on numbers are therefore anecdotal at best and only time will tell in the long term what the effect will be, but I'm willing to bet in a couple of months time, the overall impact will have been significantly positive.

Hi, may have been raised, if so, apols. Experienced by me and a few I know of, not an issue in old system. creating PW protected room, creates ok but when guests are prompted for PW, the dialogue box disappears so can’t enter room. Someone has cryptically suggested reading the rules but have no idea what that means. Am lifetime member and issue same in regional and global areas, thnx

Quote by jdb123

Hi, may have been raised, if so, apols. Experienced by me and a few I know of, not an issue in old system. creating PW protected room, creates ok but when guests are prompted for PW, the dialogue box disappears so can’t enter room. Someone has cryptically suggested reading the rules but have no idea what that means. Am lifetime member and issue same in regional and global areas, thnx

I believe a fix has just been rolled out for this, you'll need to restart the chatroom for it to take effect, but please try it and let us know.

Still not working on chrome for android - using inprivate session to avoid cookie/cache issues. Chat loads, takes you to a room and then nothing... No chats visible, unable to switch rooms, just hangs at a blank screen except to the navigation at the top of the screen. Bit disappointing as we've paid for the features linked to a gold account and haven't been able to use them since the rollout but hopefully a fix is on the way.

Quote by Lapua

Well reasoned questions always deserve at least an attempted answer in my view, so here goes:

1. I think generally speaking its common for customers to be involved in beta testing, that's exactly the point, which is why the dev team ran a beta test from May this year all the way through to October, before deploying the production version last week. To comment that the current version is a beta test isn't true, that's already happened and to characterise it as borderline alpha certainly stretches credulity.

2. Communicating effectively- I completely agree this should be the case, the issue here is HOW to do that? I have seen so many people comment and ask questions about something that the team have pushed message out about to know that most people just flat out don't read them, even when its on the main site landing page or forum and and everyone's feed- how do I know- it's because the mods get to answer the questions about it! If you have suggestions about how to engage members with this, I'm sure the team would be glad to hear them.

3. Why did chat need changing? several reasons that I know about and I'm sure some that I don't, so I'll give you my view:

The existing system was starting to struggle to keep up with the available technology that we all use day to day, a great example of this is the picture and sound quality on the cams- anyone who has used them recently will note how much better the picture and sound quality is, compared to the old version. With the new room able to take advantage of all those HD webcams that are out there, don't believe me? Try taking a cam and opening it up to full frame- I did and it held up very well, even on a 27" QHD monitor, that just wasn't even possible before, let alone with the kind of resolution we're now getting. The old chatroom was also starting to show its age in a number of other ways behind the scenes, its fundamentally been the same on the surface for a long time now, so like everything software related, needed a refresh to keep up with the times and remain current and updatable. It had also started to develop a number of issues which the tech team have successfully managed to patch up and work around over time. After a while a new one, instead of an old one with lots of bolt-ons and plasters stuck on things becomes the right choice. There was also an issue of consistency, you may not have noticed it (which speaks well for the implementation) but the various areas of the site have been updated one at a time, to ensure they all have consistency of use and feel, the chatroom was the last area needing the update. It was also left until last as we all knew it would be the most complicated and time consuming to deliver. I think you'll also agree that more people are familiar with the current chatroom/site structure of functionality, such as the three dots menu system, now common to google and MS based platforms as well as Apple devices, such that new users would have had to learn an outdated menu driven system to make best use of the site, which is clearly a bit backwards.

Now the controversial bit from me- some other sites don't do this kind of thing, they don't invest in improvements to the site and functionality- and lets be honest, it really shows after a while, there is at least one that I can think of still active that reminds me of an old MSN chat group from the early 2000's, which would spoil my enjoyment of it immensely. There is only so long you can maintain systems like that on legacy architecture without it keeling over and dying, let alone the security risk of running something that old. And as you rightly point out elsewhere, paying customers have expectations and a number of those are (rightly or wrongly in anyone's opinion) about look and feel as well as functionality.

4. Interestingly I'd noted the opposite trend in the number of people in the UK landing rooms, such as the pool over the weekend, with over a hundred people in there most of the busy times over the weekend which is significantly more than were in prior to the change. I'd suggest both of our observations on numbers are therefore anecdotal at best and only time will tell in the long term what the effect will be, but I'm willing to bet in a couple of months time, the overall impact will have been significantly positive.

Thanks for taking some time to respond, it is appreciated.

1. I know there was a beta, I took part in it, my point wasn't that you didn't do one, but rather that I didn't see any changes through the beta that addressed the issues that were raised. My impression is that the version launched in the last week or so to production is not materially different to the one in beta, at least in terms of the major failings that make it all but unusable for me, and others. In terms of alpha, vs beta, vs production, I noticed yesterday that if I click on a photo posted in any of the rooms it shows as from an "anonymous user", this is the sort of failing I'm referring to that puts in question it's production readiness.

2. One thing you could have done that would seem pretty obvious to me would be to put an announcement page between clicking the "Chat" link and getting to the chats, something that required the user click another button, therefore increasing the likelihood that they'd see it. Some will, of course, just click through, but at least you'd have done the right thing in communicating to the users that a change is coming.

3. Again, this is all impression, but again, "impression is everything", I don't really notice that the cameras are higher quality, because I can't use them. If I dare to open a camera, the whole system grinds to a virtual halt, clicking on any of the popups takes between 4-10 seconds to popup, if it pops up at all. Switching rooms takes seconds. If I dare to move away from the Chrome tab and return, I return to a black screen for at least 8 seconds while it thinks about redrawing. So, no, I'm not seeing the advantage of the "higher quality cams". As for actually broadcasting, I've tried that once, I won't be doing it again, it was ridiculous, even worse than watching a camera in all the same ways, the tab became so unresponsive that Chrome itself suggested I force kill it.

4. The numbers don't lie, the "Chat (nnn)" link in the toolbar has rarely gotten over 800 since switching. Perhaps one reason you're seeing "more" in Pool is because it dumps you in Pool and Lagoon by default, where the old system used to drop you into other rooms first. The number of rooms has dropped, and the total number of people has dropped dramatically.

I'm happy to provide any additional information that could possibly help in solving these issues, I'm reasonably adept with the Chrome developer tools, and can run any tests you require that might point at the cause of the problems. But from my perspective, this is not fit for purpose as it stands.