There’s still a problem processing a small proportion of donations made with Maestro cards – we’re looking into it now and we’ll keep you updated.

If you’re fundraising, please do reassure your potential sponsors that the site is running much more smoothly now, and encourage anyone who hasn’t yet been successful to try donating again.

If you’ve made a donation and received an email from JustGiving with the subject line: “Thank you for your donation – here’s your receipt” you can be sure that your donation has been processed successfully. If not, there may be a problem processing your donation so please email our helpdesk at help@justgiving.com.

We’ve been logging all of your feedback ready to start making improvements to the website once we’ve restored our normal level of service. We can assure you that, although there’s a backlog of calls and emails, we’re responding to every single one so you will definitely hear from us.

Just to reassure you that the majority of donations are now going through without a hitch - and we expect remaining problems to be fixed by the end of this week.

Password reminders

If you’ve requested a password reminder from us and you haven’t yet received it, we’re very sorry - we’re working on fixing this. The best solution for now is to call our helpdesk on 0845 021 2110 (local rate) and we’ll reset it for you immediately.

Account email tool

We know that some of you have had problems sending emails from the JustGiving email tool this week. So we’re advising you to use your own email system for now, while we get it sorted out.

We’ll let you know as soon as our email tool is back up and running. In the meantime, here are the default messages from our email tool, which you can personalise:

Ask people to donate

Hello

I’m raising money for <add the name of your charity here> and I’d really appreciate your support.

It’s easy to donate online with a credit or debit card - just go to my JustGiving page:

http://www.justgiving.com/<add your short URL here>

JustGiving sends your donation straight to The Demo Charity and automatically reclaims Gift Aid on all eligible donations, so what you give is worth even more.  I hope you’ll join me in supporting The Demo Charity.

Thank you.

<add your name here>

P.S. I used JustGiving to send this email, so please don’t reply to it. Replies go to JustGiving, not to me!

Update people on your fundraising

Hello

I thought you might like to know how my fundraising is going.

Thanks to your help, I’ve managed to raise £0.00 online for <add the name of your charity here> so far.

Please send my JustGiving page on to anyone else who might like to donate:

http://www.justgiving.com/<add your short URL here>

JustGiving sends your donation straight to The Demo Charity and automatically reclaims Gift Aid on all eligible donations, so what you give is worth even more. I hope you’ll join me in supporting The Demo Charity.

Thank you.

<add your name here>

P.S. I used JustGiving to send this email, so please don’t reply to it. Replies go to JustGiving, not to me!

Thank people for their support

Hello

Thank you very much for your kind donation. With your help, I’ve raised £0.00 online for <add the name of your charity here> so far.

Please send my JustGiving page on to anyone else who might like to donate:

http://www.justgiving.com/<add your short URL here>

JustGiving sends your donation straight to <add the name of your charity here> and automatically reclaims Gift Aid if you’re a UK taxpayer, so your donation is worth even more.

You can make your own JustGiving page to support your favourite UK charity at www.justgiving.com/process/raisemoney.

Thank you.

<add your name here>

P.S. I used JustGiving to send this email, so please don’t reply to it. Replies go to JustGiving, not to me!

1)    Making donations – Please rest assured that the vast majority of donations are now going through, although unfortunately a few people are unable to complete the process. From today, if you have made a donation successfully you will receive a confirmation email from JustGiving with the subject line “Thank you for your donation - here’s your receipt”. If you made a donation before today and are unsure whether it has gone through or not please call our helpdesk on 0845 021 2110 and we can check for you.

2)    You can now donate with PayPal – If you would like to make a donation with PayPal this option is now available.

3)    Donating with a credit card which has an expiry date of 2014 or above – We know this has been a problem and it has now been rectified.

4)    Having trouble uploading images or editing your JustGiving page – The majority of these issues have now been resolved. Please be aware that if you are still having trouble uploading images it may be because the file size is too large. If the image is bigger than 4MB it will not upload, so please reduce the file size by saving as a lower resolution JPEG or as a GIF file and try to upload again. You can check the size of the image by right clicking on the image icon and clicking on properties, this will give you a list of the dimensions and the file size.

5)    Problems sending emails from the JustGiving email tool – Although only a few people are affected by this, some people do seem to have trouble sending emails from the tool within the JustGiving account. We suggest sending emails from your own email system for the time being.

Thank you for your feedback about the current site design. One thing that is coming across loud and clear is that people want to be able to see more of their donors’ comments on the first page. The previous design had up to 50 messages on each page before you had to click to read more, the current one has only ten. The idea was to make the experience better for people sponsoring someone, so they could personalise their message more and make it stand out. But it seems we need to strike more of a balance here. We are also aware that many people don’t like the ‘Read more’ buttons and again this is something that we will soon be looking to adjust to allow greater control for each individual fundraiser. The ability to change ‘My story’ to ‘Our story’ is another thing we will be looking into as a priority.  We’re taking that on board and compiling all the feedback we’ve got so far. This new design is only the first step in a series of changes that will improve the site and we want it to reflect what you want.

•    Creating a new fundraising page – At the weekend there were some problems with new fundraising pages created, this has now been resolved and you should be able to create a new fundraising page without any problems. If you created a page over the weekend and are having problems finding or viewing it please get in contact. We can help to rebuild it if you have not done so already.

There is no update on the following issues since Saturday, but what we can tell you is that the team has continued to work on them. The underlying problems have been identified and we are working on these through the night.

•    Not receiving an email from JustGiving to confirm your donation – Most people are now receiving these emails and we are closely monitoring this. However, we’re finding that there are problems in a limited number of cases and we are investigating why this is happening. If you make a donation and are unsure as to whether it has gone through or not please contact the helpdesk.

•    Having trouble uploading images or editing my JustGiving page –  We are aware that people are having problems editing their fundraising page. If you are experiencing problems please let us know your name, the web address of your JustGiving page and the email address associated with your JustGiving account.

•    Cannot view a fundraising page – If you are one of the people for whom this is still a problem we are very sorry and understand that this is very frustrating. Again, we are keen to investigate each case so if you could send your name and JustGiving page web address to us we will look into the issue. Please either send this to the helpdesk.

To get in touch with the helpdesk either email help@justgiving.com or call 0845 021 2110 (local rate).

If you are having problems with the site please check this list for our current advice:

1)    Making donations – As of today we have fixed this issue and everyone should be able to make a donation successfully. If you are still having a problem please contact the help desk at help@justgiving.com or call 0845 021 2110 (local rate).

2)    Not receiving a donation confirmation email – Most people are now receiving these emails. However, we’re finding that there are problems in a limited number of cases and we are investigating why this is happening. If you make a donation and are unsure as to whether it has gone through or not please contact the helpdesk at help@justgiving.com or call 0845 021 2110 (local rate).

3)    Having trouble uploading images or editing my JustGiving page – It appears that there are still some people who are having these issues and we are really keen to investigate them. If you are experiencing problems please let us know your name, the web address of your JustGiving page and the email address associated with your JustGiving account. Please either send this to the helpdesk at help@justgiving.com or  give us a call 0845 021 2110 (local rate) so that we can get this fixed for you.

4)    Cannot view a fundraising page – If you are one of the people for whom this is still a problem we are very sorry and understand that this is very frustrating. Again, we are keen to investigate each case so if you could send your name and JustGiving page web address to us we will look into the issue. Please either send this to the helpdesk at help@justgiving.com or give us a call 0845 021 2110 (local rate). This is our top priority and we hope to have it fixed early next week.

5)    Creating a new fundraising page - As from today there are some problems with new fundraising pages created. We advise that if possible you should hold off from creating a new JustGiving page until Monday.

Thank you so much for bearing with us, we are really sorry for the frustration that the problems are causing.

Zarine (CEO) on how we’re compensating charities from JustGiving on Vimeo.

We are really sorry for the problems you have been experiencing with the new website.

We did carry out extensive testing before we launched it last weekend.  However, what we now know is that we didn’t test it extensively enough, or try hard enough to break it.

We take full responsibility for our mistakes and our tech team is working 24 hours a day to fix everything, and the rest of the team are staffing the phones and email enquiries to try and help out as quickly as possible.

How we’re compensating charities

The bottom line is this: we know that the performance of the new site over the past week has been totally unacceptable. We take full responsibility for that and are committed not only to fixing it, but also to showing that we’re sorry. We want our actions to back up our words, and so we feel it’s only right for us to refund the JustGiving  5% transaction fee for any donations made from the day of launch (Saturday 20th June 2009) for seven days.

Moving forward

It’s extremely difficult to completely replicate the live environment, as we’ve already experienced. So we do need to continue fixing and testing things live and, where necessary, taking down the site in the middle of the night, as we have been doing.

It probably doesn’t feel like it right now, but we’re confident that this new site will, once it’s running smoothly, deliver a better much faster service to people donating, to fundraisers and to charities. What’s more, the technology we built it on allows us to act far more swiftly on user suggestions for improvements – so please do keep your suggestions coming.

We know we’re not there yet but we hope you have already noticed a significant improvement in site performance. Lots of issues have been fixed; but there are outstanding bugs that we’re working hard on, and will continue to do so over the weekend, until they are resolved.

We’re grateful to you all for putting up with the frustration and disappointment caused by these problems over the past week and for bearing with us while we restore our usual, reliable service.  We’d also like to thank everyone who has taken the time to give feedback, suggestions, views and even words of encouragement.

Zarine Kharas

**Update Saturday 27th June**

We know lots of you have found it hard to donate but wanted to let you know that donations *are* being made, with over £2 million given to charities this week, with many more being made today.

Our developers have been working day and night to resolve the problems you’ve been having, and in the vast majority of cases these are now fixed. There may still be the odd glitch for some people, so please get in touch and let us know.

Fixes are in place for these things:

- You can now log in to your account

- JustGiving pages are now accessible

- Images are now appearing on JustGiving pages

- Emails are now being sent (and donation receipts are on the way if you donated earlier this week)

The site is still working slightly slower than normal because of the work being done on it at the moment. It should be working faster again by the end of the week, so please bear with us while we keep working on it.

We know that a minority of people are still having problems donating, so our advice, to lessen frustration, is to hold off on sending any donate reminder emails until later in the week when the site is running more smoothly.

We would like to make it clear that the problems you are experiencing on the site are nothing to do with Quantiv, as reported on www.theregister.co.uk yesterday. This is a software solution that powers our transactional systems and has proven to be a major success for JustGiving since 2001. The systems that support our website are designed and developed in-house. We take full responsibility for addressing and resolving the problems that you are experiencing, something we are currently working very hard to do.

We’re still working to fix these things:

- PayPal - we’ll keep you updated on when this will be back on JustGiving

- Some people are still having problems with old-style widgets - please send the page address to help@justgiving.com

We’ll carry on updating the blog to let you know what’s happening.

Lots of you have been asking why we’ve changed the design of JustGiving pages in the way that we have. So we asked Liz Kessick, who looks after our usability and was involved in the redesign, to talk a bit about it:

“The new JustGiving pages are the result of over a year’s worth of research on our side – we spent a lot of time (approx 40 hours of user testing and about 20 user groups) speaking to our users, from page builders and sponsors, to the charities which use the site. A few themes kept emerging in all of our discussions – the first was that the current pages were looking a bit tired and generic. Which was fine – we could soldier on with that. But, more importantly, our users told us that our current site didn’t allow them to express their personality as much as they’d like – and that we weren’t emphasising the things that they thought were really important, like the fundraising thermometer.

Rest assured that the new fundraising pages are not going to stay the same forever – our vision over the next few months is to offer people more themes to personalise their pages, and some options for how the pages display too. We’d love to hear your ideas on how you’d like to customise your page – we’ll be reviewing everyone’s suggestions over the next few weeks, and we’ll be making changes based on feedback.”

Thanks for all of your feedback on the blog and over email, so far. Please keep it coming - there are already trends emerging in the things you would like to see and it’s going to inform the work we do to develop the site for you.

We’d like to give you an update on:
- what’s been fixed
- what’s outstanding
- how we tested the site before going live
- why we decided to launch on Saturday (20th)

1) These things are now fixed

- Email receipts, alerts and reminders are now being sent out. If you made a donation over the weekend, you will receive an email receipt from us by the end of the week. To make sure everyone receives a donation receipt, you might receive it twice, but don’t worry - it’s just for the one donation.
- Photos are now showing up on JustGiving pages
- Charity logos are now showing up on JustGiving pages
- Widgets are now working

2) These things are outstanding and being worked on right now

We are really sorry that some of you are having problems logging in. We’re working on it now and expect to have it fixed by the end of the day. For now, please follow our advice here.

There are still some problems with people seeing pages and making donations. These are being looked at urgently and will be fixed by the end of the day.

3) Testing

Some of you have asked us about our testing of the new site. We just wanted to let you know how we tested, because it’s one of the most important parts of any new release.

We’ve been through some really rigorous testing, but in any new website launch, the transition to live environment throws up issues that it’s just impossible to 100% guarantee against. Here’s Sunny Bhowan, who leads the testing:

“Here at JustGiving, we have conducted both function and load testing on the site in our testing environment, and finally we tested through a replica of the production environment. During our extensive load testing we replicated millions of requests on our system - we performed saturation tests as well as sustained load tests. We take a test-driven approach to our development, building unit tests and functional integration tests to ensure that all changes to our application are fully regressed.

Over the past year, our core technical teams have, at every point of the new build, gone through both usability and functionality testing processes. We are grateful everyone who has brought to our attention the issues and shortfalls you’ve found. We can assure you that each and every piece of feedback and comment is being looked at by a team member from our in-house pool of experts to provide a solution.

Our website is your website and together we will work to meet your expectations and help you to achieve your goal, which is to raise much-needed funds for your chosen charities.”

4) Timing of the new site

We’ve been asked why we chose Saturday 20th June to deploy the new site. Unfortunately, there is a never a perfect time to launch an ambitious project like a new site with new technology – it will always coincide with some events. We looked really hard at when the least impact for you would be, and while there are plenty of events in June, we find it’s a relatively less busy month than the rest of the year.

Here’s Zarine Kharas, our CEO:

“I know that many of you have suffered a high degree of extreme frustration and I really am sorry for that. Thank you for bearing with us through these first few days of teething problems. We’re confident they will be resolved - this might just take longer than we originally thought. But the end result will be a much-improved site that helps you raise even more money for the cause you’re passionate about. Please believe me when I say that we really have got people working all night and all day to get these things fixed.”

As soon as we’ve fixed everything that’s not working at the moment, we’ll be working on more adjustments to the site, so we would really appreciate your feedback. Please send your ideas to suggestions@justgiving.com

Finally, Liz Kessick, who has been involved in the redesign of JustGiving, will be posting tomorrow to explain more about the choices involved in the redesign.

The initial deployment of the new website on Saturday morning went well, but inevitably for such a huge project, there are some issues that are impacting the experience of some users. We are really sorry to all of you who are affected by this, we want to assure you that the JustGiving team – from the developers to the helpdesk – are working hard to fix and respond to them.

Site issues currently being worked on:

• Problems seeing fundraising pages – some users are getting error screens when trying to access their page – we’re working on a fix for this and expect all pages to be visible by tomorrow.
• Problems logging in – please try refreshing your browser cache and cookie settings and then logging in again: http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cookies (or see instructions below). We expect to have this problem fixed by tomorrow.
• PayPal is not available at the moment – although it cleared all pre-deployment testing, it encountered some problems in the live website environment. We’re working on it this week and aim to have Paypal up running again by the end of the week.
• The site is running slowly - We’re currently deploying some fixes to our servers which will slow things down temporarily. If your page is taking a while to load, it’s worth waiting a few minutes to see if it appears.
• Flickr photos are no longer appearing - if you had uploaded photos to your JustGiving page from Flickr, they won’t be showing any more. We removed the Flickr functionality because such a minority of people were using it – people wanted to be able to upload their photos without using Flickr. So we’ve given you the ability to add up to ten photos to your page, and they appear bigger so they’re easier for people to see.
• Donation confirmation emails not sent out - if you’ve made a donation and you haven’t yet received a confirmation email, we’re very sorry. There’s a delay with some of these emails being sent out and we’re working on fixing it now. We’ll have it solved as soon as possible, and you can expect to receive a donation receipt by the end of this week.

To refresh your browser cache and cookie settings:

In Internet Explorer:

1. Click on the ‘Tools’ menu
2. Click on ‘Internet Options’
3. On the ‘General’ tab, find ‘Browsing history’ and click on the ‘Delete’ button
4. From the ‘Delete Browsing History’ menu make sure that ‘temporary Internet files’, ‘cookies’, ‘history’ and ‘form data’ are ticked.
5. Click on ‘Delete’
6. Click ‘OK’

In Firefox:

1. Click on the ‘Tools’ menu
2. Click on ‘Clear Private Data’
3. Make sure that ‘Browsing History’, ‘Saved Form and Search History’, ‘Cache’ and ‘Cookies’ are ticked
4. Click ‘Clear Private Data now’
If you need more instructions on how to clear your browser cache or cookies please visit: http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cookies

To add photos to your page:

Just make sure they’re saved on your computer and follow these steps:

1. Click on Your account and log in
2. Click on Your pages
3. Click on the title of the page you want to change
4. Click on Edit your page
5. Click on Manage photos
6. Click on Browse and find the image you want to use
7. Click on Upload
8. Wait while your image is uploaded (it can take up to two minutes)

Thanks for bearing with us while we solve these teething problems. And thank you for all the feedback you’ve given us so far. More is always welcome at suggestions@justgiving.com

Look around the brand new site and you’ll find:

- you can now donate faster, and more easily, than ever

- when you donate, you can choose to add an icon or hide your donation amount

- JustGiving pages have a new look, new colours and more photos (if you had Flickr photos on your page, just add them to your new page)

- you can use the handy ‘ShareThis’ tool to broadcast pages to your online networks

- JustGiving pages have an easy-to-use control panel to help you personalise and update them

- a new Runners’ Blog with tips, stories, videos and competitions

- a new-look JustGiving widget – if you’ve got a widget already, it’ll update automatically…

Our new site is built on a whole new platform, to allow us to make improvements faster than ever. We’ve put a lot of hard work into it, and we’re already working on the next changes, so please let us know your feedback by adding a comment below. Let’s get some discussions going about what else we can do to improve the site.

Guess the fastest donation to win £100

Whilst testing the new site, we had a little office competition to set the record for the fastest donation…

We’re giving away a £100 donation to your favourite charity if you can guess our fastest donation time. All you need to do is give us your opinion on the new site, then let us know your best guess.

We’ll publish the winner next week.