The Forum is getting a new look

MSE_JC

Hello Forumites, 

Big news: the Forum is getting a new look. 

The platform that hosts the Forum is making an upgrade. We’ve been devising how best to use that upgrade to the community’s advantage. 

👉 In order to roll out the changes, the Forum will be temporarily unavailable from around 2pm on Tuesday 11th July.👈 

All sorts of improvements 

This isn't change for the sake of change. The new version will be more accessible, more stable, better suited to mobile and will pave the way for a bevy of new features down the line. 

New homepage 

There’ll be a new homepage to showcase much, much more of what you’re up to. We’ll be highlighting the best posts we find on our travels around the Forum, and we welcome your ideas for other things to include. (Polls? Spotlight on a regular Forumite?) There’ll be a dedicated Site Feedback thread for your homepage suggestions.  

Categories and boards 
 
The category and board pages are changing too, but will have all the same functionality as before. They’ll be more accessible, more mobile-friendly and more adaptable for regular improvements. 

Feedback 
 
We're going to harness this upgrade to make the Forum an even safer, friendlier space to chat about all things MoneySaving. From launch day next week, your feedback will be crucial. 
 
The Forum Team

deannagone

I have to be honest, change is difficult for me.  I hope the site will detail clear instructions on what changes are happening to how the forum functions and how to do whatever 'new things' we need to do.  Personally, its the simple things that no one thinks to tell you that always get me stuck.

I suspect that the light yellow background on the warning of the upcoming changes is not gathering enough attention.  This thread has only had a hundred views so far.  Please do something to make it stand out more.

MikeJXE

Didn't that happen some time ago and it was a flop ?

Pollycat

MikeJXE said:

Didn't that happen some time ago and it was a flop ?

Yes.
I hope this new version has been well tested before it goes live.

Coupon-mad

Don't suppose there's any chance we can have:

 (a). the reintroduction of sequential post numbers on a thread?  Directing someone new to forums, to the 4th post of the NEWBIES FAQS sticky thread on the parking board was soooo much easier when posts had a number!

and

 (b).  the ability on a mobile to click straight to page one of a 30 page thread instead of automatically being stuck in a place where - on a looong parking fine saga thread where the forum plonks you on 'latest' by default - page one is no longer showing to be clicked (only an issue on a mobile)

and

(c).  a search function that defaults automatically to sort results by 'NEWEST' and not to the supposedly 'best match' from a hundred years ago.

My fingers are crossed!

Thankyou for the heads up, @MSE_JC

Sea_Shell

Here we go again....

iris

Sea_Shell said:

Here we go again....

 

 

Brie

hoping the saved draft message thingme reappears.  (like autosave in Word etc)

cymruchris

I don't mind a bit of change if the change is positive. The last rollout where the quoting system fell over was a bit of a challenge though - please say there's been in-depth testing of this new version before the upgrade hits us? By people that use forums as forums, not by software engineers or whoever is selling the product telling you how amazing it is. 

Bridlington1

I just hope we don't end up with that ghastly text editor we had the other month.

Exodi

Bridlington1 said:

I just hope we don't end up with that ghastly text editor we had the other month.

Specifically what didn't you like about it?

The current quoting system is messy - I find myself in HTML view more often than not.

Judging from the negative replies in this thread already - I'd just like to say to the MSE team not to be discouraged. Humans are hardwired to resist change and I spend half my life dragging my team kicking and screaming onto systems which they usually end up accepting are superior later on.