The new design is very clean looking and it's great to see the whole site coordinated.

Hopefully we will be able to trade again soon?

http://www.ppxchat.com/

Yes - we apologize for any outages in the transition but everyone here is working actively to resolve any outstanding issues. If you cannot login, see your portfolio or make trades at the moment sit tight—we'll have everything back running smoothly in no time.

Thanks everyone!
John

Also, all the old forum threads are still around—they're archived at http://ppx.popsci.com/forum-archives

John, I would like to know how the PPX admins are going to compensate/resolve the portfolios who are being affected by not being able to trade due to denied access to portfolios and trading. Traders who do have access to their accounts have the ability to take advantage of stock movements such as the beginning of the trading of MARSLIFE today. As of the writing of this (8:35PM CST), MARSLIFE is currently down $4.25. Astock that has not moved for weeks on end is suddenly trading quite violently, considering very many accounts appear to not be activated.

Trading should not have begun until all account portfolios were activated and working properly, as well as notifying players via the forums as to what time trading would begin.

As a systems professional of more years of experience than I care to mention for fear of giving the impression of senility ;)...

I must say that this upgrade, while gorgeous in its potential, has been handled abysmally. Worse than any I have seen, and that, my friends, is saying something!

~ No proactive notification to the user base - just one moment it was there, next it was not.

~ Done in the middle of the business week, in the daytime hours

~ Inadequate testing before being turned back on

~ Continuing to operate even though huge problems remain

The most disturbing aspect of this is the fact that traders fortunate enough not to see "Access denied" on their portfolio pages are being allowed to merrily trade away while large numbers of others are shut out.

"We're working on it" was never an adequate response: at the very least a credible ETA and high-level diagnosis are owed to the public.

I am excited about the changes. I still cannot see my portfolio but I'm sure they will have it fixed soon. I like the changes to the forums and I look forward to seeing all of it, including my portfolio, running smoothly.

I have to say that I really dislike that more than a 1/3 right hand side of the forum page vertically is taken up by ads. Yes I know that you need to make money, but it seems like using 1/3 of the space is a little excessive.

I also dislike that that all of our "old" posts got archived. I do realize that older posts need to get archived from time to time, but I do feel that you should have transfered over the active posts for January.

Get Firefox, add the NoScript addon. You should not see any ads to speak of and PPX works just fine.

While the rest of the site is nice, the forums took a step in the wrong direction for me. They are harder to browse, and harder to read than what we had. I'm trying to give them some time to see if they grow on me. I've been on other forums with a similar format and have pretty much given up on them after a time maybe this will prove an exception.

Please fix PPX so we unfortunate guys that can't access our portfolios can start trading!

I prefer the old site to the new. The big issue is I can't stay logged in and have to log in every time to see my portfolio, but once i do I am redirected to the front page and have to renavigate to my portfolio. That just seems like bad design.

its been four days now, that i haven't been able to use my portfolio. I'm losing my shirt on breach and mars life and there is nothing I can do about it. Thanks alot guys. its all very pretty now but it doesn't work.

incidently I'm on a mac running lepoard and safari 3.0.4 I even tried it on a freshly downloaded copy of firefox so I don't think the problem is in my set.

Half a bee, philosophically, must ipso-facto, half not be.

The only worse than this situation of not being able to login is the absolute silence coming from PopSci. This is so disappointing. Can't you folks take one minute and write a simple email letting us know what's going on? I know you are terribly busy and you are not being asked to engage everyone one-on-one. Just a quick email with some idea of how bad it is and when it might be fixed.

-erick
http://www.ppxchat.com/

I must also say that I prefer the old setup to the forums. It was much easier to browse, as well as to go back to the Topic page. Personally, I wish for you to bring the old forum style back. However, if given time, the new blog style for the rest of the site may be OK. We'll have to wait and see.

P.S.--Is it possible to let me post a comment without having to preview it first? Thanks!