.gov.uk clicks getting you down?

What I am gradually doing

Is creating my own index to access the site. There is something clearly wrong there, is there not?

Sounds good PNL

Do you mean that you create bookmarks for any pages that you access? Or something more ingenious :)

No I dabble in HTML

And I am writing myself a little index page, so that I can go straight to the things that I access regularly.

You obviously still need to have a fumble around occasionally, to find new things to add to the index, and doubtless things will continue to move about.

Personally, I think someone should set about putting the entire internet on a single site. It would make life so much easier for everybody.

I have a spreadsheet

The first column holds descriptions, the second column holds hyperlinks

My list isn't too long at the moment, but it's easy to do a search/find in Excel.

My browser has a bookmarking facility built into it. I can change descriptions to whatever I like, order them into folders and categories and I can share the bookmarks between all my devices.

Dabble away, PNL

Working my way around HTML etc is a bit beyond me :)

I must say I quite like ShirleyM's idea of a spreadsheet with hyperlinks. I hadn't thought of that. At the moment I have a myriad of bookmarked web pages and my folder list is a tad unwieldy. One spreadsheet, utilising the search and find facility, sounds like an ideal solution.

Come on ... the Gov website has won awards!! Dont you know

New governmental hub Gov.uk has won Design of the Year

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/anyanswers/question/govuk-wins-design-award

... its awful and takes an age to try to find anything. its dangerously simplistic - whose idea was it?

But whatever we say it will be here to stay so we are going to have to find ways to navigate.

ShirleysM's idea is good - does anyone else have other methods of detection? If so please let us know and we could ask John (editor) to pull together an article detailing the different suggestions.

I went looking for a form today…

I don't often have reason to go on the site, so it's all a bit new still to me but had need to go looking for a form today. Took me a fair bit longer than I thought it would.

Why can't we have hmrc.gov.uk back? I knew where I was going back then. Seems crackers to think how everything has been bunched into one monolithic site. I sincerely hope that the old urls are going to be kept pointing into the site so we don't have to start from gov.uk's home page!

Searching

I find the search on the gov site is a little better than the old HMRC site. Seems to find more relevant items than the old hmrc site search. Most forms get found easily just by typing the name into the search box. The real trouble is not everything has moved across yet.

So I've found that the best way to find stuff is just by typing the query into google. Because google indexes both hmrc.gov.uk and gov.uk it will usually bounce to the right place. Adding site:gov.uk to the google search term searches both hmrc.gov.uk and gov.uk while ignoring non gov.uk sites.

This is the same trick used to do a proper search of accounting web (adding site:accountingweb.co.uk) as most aweb veterans will be well aware.

Sorting out my bookmarks to GOV.UK

This high on my to do list. Just as soon as I've shaken off this damn cold and my brain has clocked in for work again I'll get on to it.

I have noticed that some usefuland relevant stuff for Govt websites, talking VAO here not HMRC, has been moved to National Archive - eg the report on 1982 values of land and buildings. I have complained about that. If you find essential stuff has disappeared in the move, please, please complain by using the feedback on this page: https://www.gov.uk/contact/govuk. Always ask for a reply, and it woudl be helpful to tell us on accountingweb what you have found wrong.

WebCheck

I have tried bookmarking the Companies House WebCheck intro page http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk//wcframe?name=accessCompanyInfo, but I have found that while it works on the same day that you bookmark it, if you try it the following day, it throws up an error message about accepting cookies.  I have had to resort to bookmarking the Gov.uk "Get information about a company" page whcih gives the link to the CH WebCheck intro page.

Does anyone know how to set up a permanent bookmark to the CH WebCheck page?

Company info

Euan

Using the authorised method to access company information you go to

https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company

I believe that clicking the 'Start now' button creates a session cookie and takes you to the information search page.

If the cookie is missing the error message you saw appears.

You could try changing the expiry date of the cookie. Firefox has a Cookie Manager+ addon which will do this. I've not tried altering the cookie yet, so can't make any promises!

Euan

I too have always had this stupid message - I merely edit the search bar to delete back to the .gov.uk and hit return. Sort have gotten used to it now.

I think it's funny how often I start on a gov.uk page and after a couple of clicks I find I am on the original HMRC/CH page....

I store hyerplinks/bookmarks in a word document, I have put a table in so I can have columns for different topics, then save it as an html (in the 'file save as' dialogue), then set it to my home page, that way everything is available as soon as I open my browser