CNET UK launches faster, simpler site

Good day to you, and welcome to a brand-new version of CNET UK. Today marks the high point of an enormous project to rebuild the site from the ground up. Months ago, we asked you what you thought of the site and we based all our changes on what you told us. There are hundreds of improvements, but here is a list of the main ones:

Speed

The new CNET UK will load much faster than the old one. Every page of the site has been re-written from scratch on a new platform to deliver stories to you at lightning speed. Once we've tweaked a few settings, we're confident this will be one of the fastest tech sites around.

Reviews

Following your invaluable feedback, we've pulled apart the design of the reviews section and started afresh. The most important thing you told us was you didn't like the review being spread out over multiple tabs. So with this clean, modern, wider design, we've put much more information about the product on the first page of the review. The top of each review page contains a quick rundown of both your and our views on the product, pricing, the video review (if available, photos if not) and something we're calling a Sentiment Tracker.

You wanted ways to give us more feedback, so the Sentiment Tracker allows you to let us know what you think of a product with one easy click -- the options are 'I want it', 'I own it' and 'Not for me'. The results will be on each review for everyone to see and it's going to be interesting to discover exactly which products you find exciting, useful and plain terrible.

We've massively simplified the process for writing a user review of kit you've bought, plus we've added the ability to make comments on reviews for those who feel like telling the world what they think, even if they haven't bought the product.

Each channel homepage (such as cameras, computers, mobile phones and TVs) has an easy to use product finder. This helps you find products by type, company, price or score. As you select your options, it gives you a live preview of the results on the right-hand side.

Membership

You can now see a list of all your comments on the site in our membership tools section. If you're not already a member of CNET UK, you'll need to create an account with us if you want to receive our newsletters or enter competitions. But for simple commenting, we've added the ability to log in with your Facebook account and cross-post comments or user reviews you write to your wall, should you wish.

Photo galleries

One of the most common gripes about our old Crave photo galleries was that they were spread out over multiple pages. So we've created a new system that doesn't require the page to re-load to show a new picture. Keen-eyed Cravers will also notice that there are a few subtle design changes to this section which were made to bring it in line with the rest of the site.

Forums

Many of you have used our forums to get help and advice on a range of tech issues, but you've told us you'd rather talk to us and each other using Facebook and Twitter than on a proprietary forum. So we've been building up our Facebook fan page and Twitter presence for some time, and we're now ready to make the switch for good. So if you fancy asking us or the community anything, or just have a chat, head over to one of those channels.

Radical change like this means there will be a few gremlins hanging around in the system. If you find anything amiss, please let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook wall and we'll get right on it.

These changes are just the beginning of some exciting developments to CNET UK we have planned this year. If you want to be a part of making this site better, please become a member of the CNET UK advisory panel. Just tick the box for this when you register, or go to the 'account details' part of the member services and tick the box towards the bottom of the page.

We hope you like the new site. Please explore and let us know what you think.