Forum changes - the first sneak peek

MSE_Laura_F

If you were a colour scheme, what would it be? Primary-colour cheer, like McDonald’s, or monochrome sleekness, like Apple? 

Following on the heels of Marcus’s announcement on Wednesday 9 June, we can reveal that a brand new Forum homepage and set of rules are going to be unveiled shortly. 

And today we can go a little further than that, and drop the news that the MSE Forum homepage will be garbed up in contrasting teal and coral. 

One of our in-house designers, MSE Noel, conjured up this colour palette swatch to give you a taste of what to expect.

This is the first of several ‘teasers’ we’ll be posting in the lead-up to the launch of the new homepage. We hope we’ve piqued your interest.

Best,

MSE Laura F

TheITBod

duncanthedog said:

Probably the last thing the forum needs is a change to the colour scheme.

Is it changing really? Looks fairly similar to me...just a slight change to the pink end of the scale, non?

MovingForwards

Perhaps read through all of the comments from when the site was changed to what it is now. We, the members and end users, spent ages posting up about the various problems and why things were not beneficial. 

People know the old forum won't return.  Trying to make the new one user friendly and functional would achieve a lot more, than slightly altering colours.

elsien

I really don't care what colour it is. I'd prefer the basics such as a half decent search function and the comps bit being a bit more user friendly again. 

pate-ci0

"a brand new Forum homepage and set of rules are going to be unveiled shortly"
Personally not fussed about the Homepage as long as it is easy to find the relevant forum (for me just Competitions Time) but what is meant by "rules"? Member behaviour or functionality? As previous comments identify, getting the problems sorted for the Competitions Time users would go a long, long way to making MSE popular again. I would really be interested in statistics re. drop off (or increase) per Forum since the format changed over a year ago and overall percentage utilisation of each Forum. If the Competitions are the most active, that should be preserved or increased by fixing the problems there.

Robin9

Do stop fiddling and sort those things like @MovingForwards has said. 

Blulu

Thank you for the update

Blu XXX

MrRichTea

Colour scheme? way to push even more loyal users aware from your site, some are hanging on by a thread, get your priorities in order.

cymruchris

Rather than be negative - I'll happily wait and see what comes - and fingers crossed it really will be better than what we have, and not just changing green to pink, but some of the core functionality can be very much better than it currently is. It's easy to whinge and complain about change - and admittedly the last change wasn't for the better - but let's see what happens with this one. We can only hope to see some real-world, user-friendly improvements.

Blulu

I agree with cymruchris, thanks for saying that. I am frustrated, like so many here, with the forum issues, but I am also grateful that MSE are communicating with us about them. As for the colour scheme, to be honest, I would like it to be a nice Chelsea royal blue, pretty please, but I won't fight you over this one. I just want to add that we get a lot further with MSE customer services than with most of the big organisations. I just won a victory with Hermes. To shut me up, they ended up compensating me with £15. If they'd sent it as a cheque, I would've framed it, rather than cashed it. It was a nightmare. Anyone sane would've just let it drop. So, no offence meant to anyone for expressing what they feel, but it would be a shame if MSE feel that they are damned if they do and damned if they don't - if that makes sense.

Blu XXX

MSE_Ben_H

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to jump in here and respond to some of the comments and give some info - especially around search which seems to be the biggest concern being flagged.

We are aware of some quirks happening with the search at the moment and are working to fix those as quickly as we can.

We will be introducing a new search towards the end of July which allows you better controls - you'll be able to choose whether to rank results by 'relevance', 'date' or how popular discussions are. You'll also have greater control to specify dates to search between.

We understand there are specific ways search is used - especially with respect to Competitions Time - and we continue to try and do the best we can to balance the needs of that against the rest of our communities here.

Thanks,

Ben