New Forum Sneak Peek!

Former_MSE_Tine

Hi all,

We just announced the date for the new Forum opening (click to see the post) and can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on over the last few months.

We have looked at our analytics, hundreds of responses to surveys we sent to the Fab Forumites panel and have spoken to several Forumites one-on-one. We’ve read every reaction post made on the announcement threads many times over and we’ve taken it all into consideration as we discussed, debated and created the new Forum.

Here are some of the things that may tickle your fancy:

‘Jump to latest unread’ will now be the default...so if you’ve already started reading a thread, when you come back you’ll be taken to the most-recent post made after you last looked

Notifications and ‘@ replying’ so you can choose to receive on-site pop ups and email notifications (either, neither or both) for Bookmarks, people mentioning your username or replies to your posts

We’ve introduced

‘Favourite’ boards so you can choose to add a board to your favourites and then can decide if you want to filter the homepage, searches and most-recent posts to everything or just your faves

The

Forum Search function is a lot more modern with autocomplete suggestions, the ability to search for entire phrases using quotemarks and faster, more-reliable searching (and this one actually works! :laugh:)

You’ll be able to

upload images directly in your posts rather than having to link to them from other image hosting services

The original post in a thread will only be displayed on the first page rather than every page as it currently is on the Blue theme

Some things that may take a little while to get used to:

• For anyone used to using multi-quote, you’ll still be able to do this but it’s slightly different. Rather than having a separate ‘Multi Quote’ button, you can just click the ‘Quote’ button on posts as you read them and they’ll be waiting for you in the message box at the bottom of the page

• If you’re subscribed to threads on the current forum, you’ll have to re-add them to your ‘Bookmarks’ in the new Forum...the existing links to these threads will redirect to the new URL structure when we move so you can make a list of these links in a word document or notepad and find them again easily if you need to

• We’ve worked hard to make sure all our links redirect to the right places but there are some link tricks that won’t work from launch...let us know if you notice any, how you use them and we’ll try to restore them if we can

• As previously mentioned, we’re not transferring profile pictures or avatars to the new Forum so you may need to save yours now or start choosing a new one, ready to upload when the new Forum launches

• Thanks counts will be reset on posts - in the new Forum, all the ‘Thanks’ you received in the old Forum will be displayed on your profile. This will become an archived number and a new ‘Thanks’ counter will begin, which will also be displayed in your profile.

And finally, here’s a quick look at some of the new Forum (it’s still being worked on so don’t panic :eek: if some things look a little bit unfinished).

Homepage

Thread Reply Screen

Thread View Full Screen

Competitions Time

Happy Monday!

MSE Tine

[Deleted User]

I like it, the colour not hurting my eyes and I like the skipped on competitions.

The new functions sound good.

MovingForwards

I hope when the site goes live it recognises when people access via a mobile and the sneak a peek wasn't the final thing.

fun4everyone

It seems fine and I will continue to use it. Notifications is an improvement. Do wish they had at least kept the green colour we all know and love though.

Sea_Shell

MovingForwards wrote: »

I hope when the site goes live it recognises when people access via a mobile and the sneak a peek wasn't the final thing.

I agree. That's unusable on a mobile!

LadyDee

Am I supposed to see more than a long thin column in the middle of my laptop monitor? Tiny, tiny image I can't read?

Oh, I wonder, when all the excitement is over, if they'll find time to update the News section on the right-hand side of the screen. They're still talking about the last election and "up to" 2000 Thomas Cook customers waiting for refunds.

elsien

fun4everyone wrote: »

It seems fine and I will continue to use it. Notifications is an improvement. Do wish they had at least kept the green colour we all know and love though.

I'm still on the green screen but this new one seems a reasonable compromise between that and the wide expanses of blue that I just couldn't get on with.

femalemonarchfemalecanine

better than the blue one; more like the good old green format that I use!

oldernonethewiser

LadyDee wrote: »

Am I supposed to see more than a long thin column in the middle of my laptop monitor? Tiny, tiny image I can't read?

Oh, I wonder, when all the excitement is over, if they'll find time to update the News section on the right-hand side of the screen. They're still talking about the last election and "up to" 2000 Thomas Cook customers waiting for refunds.

Clicking on it should get it to fill the screen for you.

One-Eye

Initial impressions are favourable.

I assume that the full date and time of "Most Recent Post" will appear on Forum View and that full date, time and post number will appear for each post in Thread View. On the samples screen shots only Month and Year are shown.

LadyDee

oldernonethewiser wrote: »

Clicking on it should get it to fill the screen for you.

Thanks - I thought I'd tried that - obviously didn't click hard enough!

I suppose that large blank column on the right-hand side will be filled with something when it goes live?