It was designed to be clean and clear, but the Bureau of Meteorology\u2019s new website has come in for criticism for being confusing, clunky and \u201creally, really bad\u201d.<\/p>\n
After years of development, the government site, which has 2.6bn page views a year, was relaunched on Wednesday, its homepage<\/a> giving users a snapshot of weather in capital cities around the country and latest news updates from the bureau.<\/p>\n Rain radars, weather maps, MetEye, industry pages, specialised forecasts and historical data can be found via tabs and buttons on the main page, some of which link back to the former site while pages are still being migrated across.<\/p>\n The first redesign in 12 years, according to the bureau\u2019s senior meteorologist, Andrea Peace, has raised the ire of some users, who quickly took to social media to tell the bureau just what they thought of the change.<\/p>\n One Facebook user commented on a BoM post, saying: \u201cGive us our site back. We don\u2019t want this new one.\u201d<\/p>\n A member of the Whingers Forster Tuncurry<\/a> group said: \u201cHate it with a capital \u2018H\u2019 \u2026 what the hell were they thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n Another user said: \u201cI think I will go back to the old fashioned weather \u2026 look out the window and then wear a coat, take an umbrella and hope for the best \u2026 much better than this \u2018new\u2019 forecast page.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Thomas Hinterdorfer: Extreme Weather Chaser<\/a> wrote to the bureau via a social media post: \u201cYour new website sucks \u2026 The website is clunky, extremely difficult to navigate.\u201d<\/p>\n A Reddit user who accessed the site\u2019s beta page before the launch said the site had been \u201cdumbed down\u201d.<\/p>\n A farm owner from Glen Innes in New South Wales, who asked for her name to be withheld, told Guardian Australia the change was a \u201cstep backwards\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the new site says to me is, if you live in the city and want to find out what temperature it is, it\u2019s dead easy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we are weather nuts and we like to be able to see more in-depth information. This site is really, really bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps her biggest gripe was that it now takes three clicks to access water and land data that is crucial to farmers \u2013 with the last click redirecting her to the \u201cexcellent\u201d agriculture and natural resources management page within the old site.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they change that, too, it will really be a retrograde step,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Among the less common positive comments was praise for the site\u2019s simplicity and its consolidated location data.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cI had 2 bookmarks for the radar map and my local forecast, now it\u2019s all on the one page and I can delete one of my bookmarks,\u201d one user wrote.<\/p>\n Peace said the new interface was \u201cvery much about trying to make it clean and simple\u201d, as well as being customisable and more secure, accessible and stable than the old \u2013 and would continue to be developed with community input.<\/p>\n \u201cThe legacy site had over 72,000 pages. It had limited search functionality, there was no way to customise it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is going to take some time for people to get used to the new website \u2026 most things are there, it\u2019s just about finding the new way.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the old site\u2019s pages are yet to be mapped on to the new site, she said, while others will not be brought across. One popular feature on the app, its predicted rain radar, will be integrated to the new site \u201cin time\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that people are very passionate about the weather,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople feel real ownership of the bureau\u2019s website \u2013 and so we did expect that there would be some challenges for people to adapt to this change. We just hope that each time someone uses it, they\u2019ll find something new.\u201d<\/p>\n The overhaul has been a long time coming. The bureau\u2019s annual report of 2018-19 referred to a new website being built for the agency. In its 2022-23 annual report, the agency said it would complete public beta testing of its new website the following year.<\/p>\n