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I am going to :+1: the UK census site - built on code developed by the gov.UK digital service, it has been apparently bulletproof at taking 20 million plus indi
by lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I am going to :+1: the UK census site - built on code developed by the gov.UK digital service, it has been apparently bulletproof at taking 20 million plus individual households through a moderately complex survey.
sometimes it can be done right.
And it uses a framework :-)
- devit 6y agoWhich framework?
- WickyNilliams 6y agoIf my memory serves me right, it's Python/Django. I contracted in that department a few years ago. Edit: Just remembered it's all open source too! Look here and search for repos beginning "eq-". Survey runner is the app I believe. When I was there the plan was to use that, though perhaps they eventually wrote a fresh app. Anyway the code should all be there https://github.com/ONSdigital?q=Eq&type=&language=&sort= https://github.com/ONSdigital?q=Eq&type=&language=&sort=
- uncledave 6y agoThat was notably one of the best web experiences I’ve used recently. Gov.uk is exceptionally good.
- wilsonfiifi 6y agoWagtail
- armonraphiel 6y agohttps://docs.publishing.service.gov.uk/ https://docs.publishing.service.gov.uk/ Looks like the core site is Rails but it seems they use a bit of everything. Preact, Go, Node, etc
- jonplackett 6y agoYeah I was pretty impressed with it too. One thing I liked, it does lots of error checking along the way to pick up accidental screw ups. Eg. It says ‘what is your date of birth?’ And then on the next page it says. ‘You are X years old. Is that correct?’
- jlokier 6y agoNot quite bulletproof. I found a couple of bugs while using it. At the end, just before submission it showed the completed sections, and you could look at each section to see a tidy summary of the answers provided. Except for the section 1, where doing that jumped to the last of the section's questions instead. I wanted to see one of the answers I had given in the section 1 to check before committing, and due to the missing summary page, tried stepping backwards and forwards through each question. All were shown, except the question I wanted to check (and had answered) was skipped. Inspired to try things, I added a non-existent person to the household, then removed the non-existent person. After that, when I stepped through all questions in section 1 it included the question and answer I'd been looking for, allowing me to confirm it was correct before submission.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoConsider filing a bug report: https://census.gov.uk/en/web-form/ https://census.gov.uk/en/web-form/
- jlokier 6y agoThanks. I already did so via the feedback form at the end.
- JNRowe 6y agoYeah, I was impressed enough to fill out the feedback form at the end. It is probably the first time I've used a feedback form for compliments in my life.
- hlandau 6y agoIndeed - I used this site the other day. My reaction at the time was "This is the nicest web application I've used in decades." Web design that good is so rare now, it really stands out.
- danjac 6y agogov.uk is such a glaring exception to government sites around the world I can only imagine there was some massive screw up where the developers were allowed to go off and build a fast, accessible and responsive site on their own without the requisite ten layers of committees, meetings and expensive external consultants. I hope there is a government inquiry to ensure this doesn't happen again and that taxpayers money is properly squandered on massive IT failures as per standard practice.
- docmars 6y agoThis gave me a good laugh, thanks for that ;)