Post your tech glitches, errors, issues, etc. here.

AliceBastable

So the site was down for what, FIVE DAYS, and nothing has changed? Hate to tell you, but that web group you hired are playing you for fools. And laughing all the way to the bank.

ceanna

Happy to see the "community" portion back up and kind of running after several days of being totally down. Why was the "Learn" portion of BCO working those days when the "community" was not? I happened to be online Saturday when these threads went down without warning or explanation. Load times are slightly better, but format with white background is hard on the eyes. I hope all who could not get helped or were waiting for responses did well during the downtime. Please know we were thinking about you!

zogo

Now my avatar is ok on the Community page and distorted on the Learn and About You pages?

fifthyear

in any others companies the CEO would be fired for allowing / green lighting this. Why isn't the board take action? The organization is playing with people's lives

Moderators

We're so glad to be back with you! Please know our goal in the past few days was to get the community back up and running after having to go down with the significant issues that we saw last Friday. The issues with Active Topics and My Favorites were priority, as well as improving load time and reduction of error pages, in order to get the community back online and function as it was prior to Friday, if not a little bit better.

The technical difficulties that resulted from reskinning the site pages caused a series of issues with the older site code that's in place. We are aware those difficulties are still occurring, and we are still working on them.

We are moving forward with plans for the community's new tech platform and will have more to share in the coming weeks. Your patience while we improve your experience is greatly appreciated.

Grateful to be back with you.

--The Mods

goldie0827

Well even tho it doesn't seem any better, I'm at least glad we can post. To me, it's better than not having anything! I was in withdrawl! Good to see that the rest of the site is working well, it's just everything in the "community".

wrenn

I wonder if you could warn us if/when you shut down the site again so members can make arrangements with those they depend on here to stay in touch? I was lucky to have email addresses for a couple of members but worried about those who were lost and alone after having built up a community of support.

This isn't a forum for weight loss or puppies or any other reason that people join communities. It is a cancer forum for all stages. It is very serious to build up and then lose what you thought would see you through. I know it is not your responsibility to help us through our cancer experiences but you should be aware from the many ongoing (years long) threads and some sensitivity would really be appreciated.

Thanks.

Beesie

While the discussion board was down, I took some time to look around the rest of the site. It's absolutely awful. The set up is completely illogical, making it damn near impossible to find information that you are looking for. There are articles and graphics that I used to regularly include in posts; I couldn't find any of them. I used the Search function, I used the "About You" and the "Learn" sections, I just couldn't find anything I was looking for.

What I did find in the BCO Media center is this press release from March 15th:

Breastcancer.org Announces Website Launch With New Design, Technology, and Features to Empower People With Breast Cancer

Two weeks after the launch of this disaster, the powers that be at BCO had the nerve to issue a glowing press release, saying that "The redesign reflects the varied experiences and needs of people with breast cancer and encompasses all aspects of the user experience — from a fresh and inclusive look, to improved technology and search functionality and additional personalization options."

Is this the redesign that any of us have seen or experienced? The fact that BCO would issue this press release after two weeks of IT problems with the discussion board and after receiving complaint after complaint about the appearance and navigation features of the site, is beyond me. It's hard to imagine anything more disrespectful.

But then came the email that all of us received yesterday. Not only does it include the disturbing "2 breasts" graphic that so many of us have complained about, but after apologizing for the site being down, the email goes on to say "Because we want to bring you more of the features you need from us, our plan has always been to completely redesign and re-platform the discussion boards after launching the redesigned content side of our site. We are moving forward with plans for the community's new tech platform and will have more to share in the coming weeks.".

In other words, rather than acknowledge and address the concerns of the community, BCO is doubling down on their plans. Despite all of the problems to-date and all of the input received from their members, BCO believe that they have it right, and they are moving forward with a redesign and re-platforming of the discussion board. It's as tone deaf and disrespectful as anything I've ever seen from a business or service organization.

There is a business concept called "goodwill". "Goodwill refers to the value a company gets from its brand, customer base and reputation associated with its intellectual property." What BCO is doing is destroying all of the goodwill that they had with their current and past membership. And one last thought, something BCO should keep in mind. Even Coca-Cola admitted their mistake and brought back old Coke after their disastrous launch of new Coke. (For all the conspiracy theorists who believe that the whole thing was planned, I can assure you that it was not - I worked there in the period immediately following the new Coke fiasco). No one involved in a major launch wants to admit that the concept or product is wrong or doesn't work, but sometimes it's necessary to take a step back to regroup and change direction, rather than charging full speed ahead.

Over and out.

zogo

bessie, and speaking of the "two breasts" graphic, have you noticed to odd shaped circles with all the pics in them. Several different shapes but all crooked circles. Is this supposed to represent breasts as well?

voraciousreader

a

h

O

T

m

E

S

S

really?

you are down for 5 days and this is the best you can do?

have you no shame

Sadiesservant

Hi Wrenn, I don't think the mods had any idea that the site was going to go down. I too am glad it's back and I have found that some of the functionality/speed has improved. Still lots of things to "fix" but little by little as my neighbour likes to say.

Moderators

We know. No, the site going down was not anticipated. We sincerely apologize. We are actively addressing issues, however we wanted you to be able to use the discussion forums while we work to make it better for you. The long-term plan is to completely redesign and re-platform the discussion boards with an upgrade that will provide you with the best experience and prevent technical disruptions like what has occurred in the past few weeks.

voraciousreader

You know……. Back in the day, i was diagnosed with mucinous breast cancer. It was EXTREMELY rare. Finding information, ANY information about it was next to impossible. And then…out of the blue….i found A thread, HERE on THIS Website…and….I found what little support and information I could find about my diagnosis. So…,I decided…way back then to place whatever info there was about mucinous breast cancer HERE….hoping that those patients diagnosed with mucinous breast cancer would find the most up to date info there was on this rare breast cancer. I also hoped it would be a haven for support.

welll…you all made such a mess of this community forum. Does not a single person associated with this webside think a heartfelt apology is in order? Does not a single person WORKING at BCO not see what a mess this is? Does ANYONE UNDERSTAND what a lifeline this discussion board is and its IMPORTANCE?

Does ANYONE, including Dr. Weiss who created this website, understand that there are people like myself who have DEVOTED ourselves for MANY, MANY, MANY years to keep this PLACE a PLACE to TRULY SUPPORT NEWBIES?

shame on all of you

wrenn

Dear Mods (and Sadieservant). I am asking that we be given notice if possible.

I received an email a couple of days ago asking if I wanted to join Zoom sessions. I assume it was a group email. That makes me think that you had a way to communicate with us about what was going on with the site much earlier.

My point was that some stress could have been averted and was not. I appreciate the efforts you are making and opening up the forum even when it isn't really ready is a kind gesture. I think, as has been mentioned many times, respecting the members goes a long way.

Anonymous

🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 IT WAS NOT A SUGGESTION!

Last night I wrote on Twitter - “Hope they don’t lose any posts.”

Today I seem to be down over 1500 posts! Real loss or bad count? Either way => 🤬

But hey, the site is up, but not good for me to be here at this moment.

The site being down unexpectedly happens, but you don’t wait 4 days to send an email.

When I’ve had to stop service, I asked when and gave an estimate for how long it would be down. I never went more than a day for a migration. Why? Because I tested the migration in DEV!

Later!

moth

Regarding the graphics, fwiw I thought they were stylized cancer ribbons. And the one for the community was two ribbons with one sort of putting an arm around the other...

Glad we're back online and so far working pretty well for me 😊

jhl

Like Beesie I also spent some time during the down time looking at the general breastcancer.org site and agree with her the information is poorly presented and difficult to find. The announcement on the new site makes a huge point that information can easily be accessed using the search function, so I did. Since medications are my thing, I typed in medications in the search bar. The ONLY thing that comes up is 'hot flash medications for women with breast cancer'. Seriously? There is no list you can click on for any available medication for breast cancer - which means you have to know the name of the medication. I deal every day with thousands of line items of medications but only a few are related to breast cancer. It would only take a few minutes of your advisory staff to develop an alphabetical list which if clicked on would link to the more detailed explanations.

Then, I typed in NCCN which is the guideline by which most, if not all, practitioners use to base treatment decisions. Nothing comes up when NCCN is put in the search function. This is a glaring omission.

Finally, I typed in Research in the search and two of the 3 listed were references to breast cancer research in .... wait for it .....2014! That is eight years ago which is forever is breast cancer research.

This 'upgrade' appears to be done by someone who has no background in breast cancer, collation of medical information or development of websites. Again, I agree that all breast cancer information is easier to find on other websites but at least in the previous iterations of this site, it was easier to find links. I could go on and on about other poorly written areas in the 'Learn' section.

Lastly, I agree the graphics are offensive and demeaning. Whatever you paid for these was too much.

DivineMrsM

The forum is back up but still in the process of fixing stuff. Here’s an email I received a couple hours ago:

We're so glad to be back with you! Please know our goal in the past few days was to get the community back up and running after having to go down with the significant issues that we saw last Friday. The issues with Active Topics and My Favorites were priority, as well as improving load time and reduction of error pages, in order to get the community back online and function as it was prior to Friday, if not a little bit better.

The technical difficulties that resulted from reskinning the site pages caused a series of issues with the older site code that's in place. We are aware those difficulties are still occurring, and we are still working on them.

We are moving forward with plans for the community's new tech platform and will have more to share in the coming weeks. Your patience while we improve your experience is greatly appreciated.

Grateful to be back with you.

--The Mods

DivineMrsM

At this point, I’m going to give the powers that be at bco.org some space to work on whatever the new “technical platform” is. I think they are aware of the problems and working on solutions but it is not going to be a quick fix. I am okay with that for now. I’m very happy to be able to at least be able to post a few things instead of a complete blackout.

DivineMrsM

This notice also pops up now from time to time:

Elderberry

I am just glad I can get in. No more "Under Construction" . It'll be okay once they work the bugs out but Jeez - what there no beta testing?

ceanna

Open letter to Hope Wohl, BCO CEO, and Jane Hollingsworth, BCO Board Chair.

We need accountability and an apology from you. Someone needs to be accountable for this mess and admit the "buck stops here" with them. Please don't have the moderators give us another story about "moving forward" with a new platform and placing the blame on "old code." Yes, conceivably, the programming running the discussion board could use a rewrite, but why would you have made a decision to launch a rewrite before you knew it was working, and why would it still not be working 24 DAYS after it launched, and after it was totally inaccessible for 5 days?!! Showing respect to all BCO members, an apology is the least you could do when you take responsibility.

I feel for those who were in the middle of a serious health issue and were waiting for our responses, or newbies who had just posted for the first time. We had no way to help them when the boards suddenly went down Saturday. I was online then and didn't have any warning it was going down! Since the Moderators admitted they were experiencing such a crisis mode on Friday and couldn't keep it running, why did you not notify all of us, newbies included, that the boards were going down, or not even send us an email for 4 days? It truly boggles the mind how little you think of us as capable, intelligent people and just keep pushing your nonworking agenda forward.

Time to stop worrying more about tracking us for the usage stats to give to potential donors and remember BCO's mission. I've personally never spent much time on the "Learning" side of BCO, but BCO seems to only want to support its use and not the discussion boards, yet, people are telling you here how little information they can find on the learning side. You want the traffic there, you want us to fill out our profiles to point us to your "recommendations," but I will never fill out my profile. I don't need or want your recommendations. The current format of the discussion boards is using an outdated diagnosis line for me, which I had eliminated a long, long time ago and can't seem to update now. I certainly would never upload my charts to such an unstable, nonworking website. I would never give you access to my medical records. I could not trust BCO to keep that information secure.

The premature announcements bragging about your "fresh, new look" are misleading, the graphics totally inappropriate and gross, and I sure don't want to see them every time I log in or out.

BCO leadership is making some poor choices, as this website disaster displays. What are you, Ms Wohl, and Ms. Hollingsworth, doing to engender our trust? Please respect us, make choices based on member input, be accountable and responsible, and provide us an explanation and apology. Let us help you to make this website someplace we can recommend and support. Waiting for you both to post your response to us.

thecargirl

GO BACK TO THE SITE WE ARE COMFORTABLE WITH, THIS IS A MISERABLE FAILURE!!!! MANY OF US TAKE GREAT COMFORT IN THE SITE THAT WAS, HOW DARE YOU, YOU HAVE THE ARROGANCE TO THINK YOU KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR US!!!! JUST LIKE POLITICIANS THINKING YOU KNOW MORE THAN THE PEOPLE AND WHAT IS BEST FOR THEM……..YOU DON'T! I AM NO LONGER DONATING UNTIL YOU FIX THIS MESS AND BRING THE OLD SITE BACK…..MONEY TALKS!

thecargirl

I ENCOURAGE ALL TO STOP DONATING!

cyathea

I’m glad the community is back, but sad the tech team at Work.co and Shift Lab were not able to fix things yet.

I share the outrage, but I plan (and encourage others) to hold off on any decision to stop support. Let’s see whether there is transparency in their communication and in their 2021 Tax Form 990. I’m curious how much money went to Deloitte, Work.co and Shift Lab.

I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation. I use the website on both an iPhone and iPad which use the Safari browser. I have my "brightness" Setting turned down for the display. This saves battery life and makes this site easier on the eyes. Although it is not ideal to have to make frequent settings changes for different websites, this might be an option for those who are struggling with the harsh white background. You can also make this kind of settings changes on a laptop or PC monitor.

The "My Account" page was completely blank for me. I’m hoping that this data will become accessible again since the info is still in my signature.

The My Favorites item doesn't show up all the time, so if I want to review a thread that I read before, Ihave to try to find it in the Active Thread list. Terrible usability.

DivineMrsM

While there's plenty of room for improvement, I have a few less problems on the forum now that it's back online. Here's what I can do now that I wasn't able to do just prior to the blackout:

*access Active Topics

*open most threads in their own separate tab

*click on previous pages in a thread and they open

*use the search engine to help me locate a particular thread I'm looking for

*pages load slow but not quite the snail's pace they had been

I've been able to post pictures, memes and videos, and I'm not sure if I could before or if I'd temporarily stopped due to all the other frustrations.

Not sure if the font’s been tweeked but I am able to see and read it okay.

I use a new iPad Air which I keep updated and Safari is my web browser.

>> I still get the site down page trying to open My Favorites but am able to work around that.

>>Signing in is still weird but am navigating around that, too.

Having been a member since 2011, I've gotten too much from the forum to cut ties or withdraw my Amazon Smile donations. I can give the Mods the benefit of the doubt for the time being, believing that they are operating in good faith to get things in top working order.

ms__anthrope

I am on Google chrome version 99, Lenovo desktop.

I could not log in using my credentials - kept getting login error. I sent in request to reset password and never received it.

Sent a message via your Contact Us page regarding my issues, and never received a reply.

I gave up and had to create a whole new account....

Moderators

super appreciate your documenting, cyathea and divinemrsm! Very helpful. ms__anthrope, we're so sorry if you didn't hear back from us. Did you check your spam folder for the confirmation? We're happy to try and help you get to your other account. We know this is not where we want or need to be!

Anonymous

Mods, Any thoughts on lost posts or should I get used to it? This redesign hasn’t changed much since you first implemented it over 3 weeks ago. Though it does look more active because you reduced posts per page from 30 to 15. It’s still slow, hard to read, and hard to navigate. But the complaints are down because you took down the site for 5 days. Quite a callous move.

Moderators

Taking down the site was absolutely not our intention or goal - and it was sudden. We are so very sorry that this happened. The community is not technologically where we need or want it to be. We are committed to improving the community experience we provide for you!