Le Mans 2008 Blog
A lot of problems with Lemans.org
Last year, I was pretty annoyed by the Le Mans web team. All they have to do is to update their site throughout the race. It is of course a lot of data, which you need to automate to do well. And you got a lot of visitors, so you need a pretty good server. But the Le Mans web team seems not to care about the quality of their website.
The problem, at this moment, is that the web cams are more offline than online, and that the race event screen is in French - on the English page.
Here is the thing. The English "Race Events", on the Lemans.org website is in French. But, that is only because they have put in the wrong link. The right page is here - and it works.
Note: I have updated the tracker to use the correct link.
How can they not check their site to see if they are using the right links in the menu? How hard can it be?
- It took them 25 minutes to even display the page (after the race started), and when they did, they displayed the wrong one.
- The English version Chronos suddenly went offline, although the French version was still running. Why? The difference is in the labels - not the data.
- Web cams, as I wrote, have been more offline than online.
- The entire Club24 website went offline for a period of time.
- There has been several times where the race data page was created incorrectly, so that it would only load partially.
- When you click on the cars in the race event page, the lemans.org website returns a "403 Forbidden - You don't have permission to access /ifc/077_index_gb.html". Again, why don't they check the links?
- You cannot see the race data from the test day, the two qualifying sessions or the warm-up. The links are there, but there is no data.
...and we are only about 1 and a half hour into race.
The thing is; they have made all these mistakes in the past. We had the same problems last year - and the year before that.
In my book you are always allowed to make mistakes, but you are not allowed to make the same mistake twice. And the Le Mans web team seems to make the same mistakes again and again and again. Come on ACO. I absolutely love Le Mans - it is the greatest sporting event of the year. But these web problems are getting pretty annoying.
