I'm delighted - and relieved - to announce that British Comedy Guide will be relaunching this weekend.

The forums will close to new posts early afternoon tomorrow (Saturday) and should be back online by mid-week. The site will switch over to new systems on Sunday - for most people this will be fairly immediate, but some may experience down-time with comedy.co.uk being entirely inaccessible.

As we're moving to entirely new systems we'll be bringing some functionality online gradually over the space of a couple of days. Over the coming weeks we'll be rolling out more new and rebuilt features, and further upgrading other elements from their relaunch state. There will be one or two lesser-used site features that remain offline a little while longer.

With the relaunch you can expect immediate, much-improved performance of the site; an overhauled, leaner design; significantly better mobile experience; and - launching early 2022 - comprehensive coverage and listings of live comedy across the UK.

This has been a long time in development (Supporters will recall it's now a full year since they saw first drafts of the new design), which is essentially a full-time job itself alongside keeping the existing site running and as full of new content as possible, so we're very excited to finally pull the covers off.

If you believe in what we do, please consider donating and becoming a Supporter - it's only with help from other devoted comedy fans that British Comedy Guide can continue to exist and deliver all it does, from exclusive news stories to Comedy Chronicles and the weekly quiz. The weekend's relaunch is just the start of our ambitions, not the end! Every last penny and pound goes to great new content like that.

Once we're back online, feel free to feed back below with any comments you may have. Your real use of the site will reveal invaluable insights we just cannot create in lab testing procedures, and as certain elements continue to be relaunched and further upgraded, there's real chance for your opinions to influence how they develop.

In the meantime, have a fun and safe Bonfire Night.

Good luck with the relaunch - looking forward to it!

*waits 20 mins for post to upload*

Quote: Lazzard @ 5th November 2021, 12:49 PM

Good luck with the relaunch - looking forward to it!

*waits 20 mins for post to upload*

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Yes. I'm worried about that too.

Quote: Chappers @ 5th November 2021, 6:31 PM

Yes. I'm worried about that too.

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Actually, I was talking about the current slowness.
But I know what you mean - too much clever-dickery on websites can be a bit counter-productive sometimes.
We shall have to wait and see...

Ooft. Well. Safe to say this is taking longer than we'd imagined.

We've experienced a much larger number of technical issues than we'd anticipated in moving over to our new systems, but we're working 12-15 hour days at the moment in order to catch up and bridge the gaps.

Some of you may have noticed there were problems until mid last week around even logging in, so clearly it's not right to reopen the forums with such errors remaining.

Don't worry and please do stick with us though - the forums are definitely returning, hopefully by the end of November. We're very sorry for the continued inconvenience and disappointment in the meantime. It's frustrating to us far more than it is anyone else!

The British Comedy Guide message board is back online! Woo! Apologies to those of you who have been waiting a long time, refreshing in hope, but taunted by the "coming soon" message. It proved a greater technical challenge to get the platform back online than we had envisaged, taking much, much longer than we'd ever imagined. (As you can imagine, there are millions and millions of words on our forum, so it's been a lot of data to have to work with... you've chatted a lot!)

Anyway, the good news is everything should now be working again: the website (as a whole) should be faster, more stable, and in what we hope you'll agree is a greatly improved design (we've especially thought about those of you who browse via mobile phones).

If you have any questions, feedback, or spot something that's not working please do post in this thread here, or email us on contact@comedy.co.uk

Right, let's get back to chatting about the best thing in the world: British comedy!

Christ on a bike

I've grown and shaved off about 34 beards since the site went off

Testing...Testing, 1 2 4...

Quote: Tiggy @ 18th January 2022, 10:49 PM

Testing...Testing, 1 2 4...

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YAY!

Quote: Aaron Brown @ 18th January 2022, 5:37 PM

The British Comedy Guide message board is back online! Woo! Apologies to those of you who have been waiting a long time, refreshing in hope, but taunted by the "coming soon" message. It proved a greater technical challenge to get the platform back online than we had envisaged, taking much, much longer than we'd ever imagined. (As you can imagine, there are millions and millions of words on our forum, so it's been a lot of data to have to work with... you've chatted a lot!)

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Thanks for the hard work.

I hope everyone's doing well.

Quote: Aaron Brown @ 18th January 2022, 5:37 PM

Anyway, the good news is everything should now be working again:

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"everything"? No, I don't think so :- (

Quote: Aaron Brown @ 18th January 2022, 5:37 PM

If you have any questions, feedback, or spot something that's not working please do post in this thread here, or email us on contact@comedy.co.uk

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Yes, and sorry to repeat myself; BUT.................("that's not working")

No graphics or photos, and uploading those, no search, no formatting and to a lesser extent - no emojis. With no graphics, some of the threads are now **pointless, useless and must be a mystery to any newbie.**

Sorry, I really am - personally, I'm MOST disappointed.

JUST NOTICED, IRONICALLY - the first post you see on the "Message Board" is my thread ...................
**Last post in Saucy Seaside Postcards on 6th November**

Quote: Hercules Grytpype-Thynne @ 19th January 2022, 9:16 AM

No graphics or photos, and uploading those, no search, no formatting and to a lesser extent - no emojis.

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We've introduced emojis for the first time (?) but our old-style graphic emoticons are currently removed, yes. They may return if there is demand.

Some graphics were not working, and have now been fixed - thanks for pointing it out.

Uploading of images was never a feature, but we do hope it may be possible to roll out later in the year, along with some other easy-editing tools for formatting posts with.

All other post formatting tags like bold, italic and underline should still be working as always.

Oh, and search can be accessed via the dropdown 'jump' menu at the bottom of each page. We'll look to introduce a clearer menu at the top of pages if this is widely felt to not be obvious enough.

Quote: Aaron Brown @ 19th January 2022, 1:27 PM

Some graphics were not working, and have now been fixed - thanks for pointing it out.

Uploading of images was never a feature, but we do hope it may be possible to roll out later in the year, along with some other easy-editing tools for formatting posts with.

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Tha's good, 'cos I've had this one champing at the bit for the last couple of months.................................

Quote: lofthouse @ 18th January 2022, 6:17 PM

Christ on a bike

I've grown and shaved off about 34 beards since the site went off

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Oh! No emojis?

Good to see the place back at last!

Just one thing - when you log in, it takes you to another page, away from the forum. You then have to find the link to the forums, hidden away as 'Message Board' in the 'More' tab.