New Community homepage is live! :)

[Martin-O2]

Hi everyone,

I'm sure you've noticed if you've visited before, that our forum is looking a bit different today. We've been working hard for the past several months on making changes to the community homepage, and finally went live with the new version this morning!

We have been listening to your feedback from our discussions around what you like or don’t like on the homepage, passing it on to the designers and developers, along with ideas that you’ve come up with, and tried to get as much as possible included. A BIG thank you to everyone who have provided your views over the years. 

The update has brought several changes to the layout and to the different features of the page:

Welcome and search

• FAQs are linked from the top underneath the search bar, for quick look at the most-asked questions.
• If you're logged in, you have quick access to your latest posts right on the homepage. If you're logged out, you will see instead a login box and quick general information about what the community is about.
• Underneath that you have 3 quick links to help you get started: 1) info topic on what's the community about and how to get help, 2) topic listing all the different forum boards, and 3) the how-to guides board.

Notification Feed

A new feature on the right side of your avatar, next to your "My Settings", "Messages" (PMs) and "Unread posts" links when you are signed in. You can see a list of recent activity here related to topics you've participated in, e.g. if someone has given you a Kudos, replied to your posts, or @-mentioned you on the forum.

Community Topics and contributors

• See what everyone’s been chatting about with top and latest discussions.
• You can also help with unanswered questions or ask your own.
• You can see a list of current top contributors on the right

Most Popular Searches

• See the popular searches that others have made on the community to help you with your query

Latest News

• 3 latest topics that we've wanted to highlight!

Popular Topics

• Especially helpful for those looking for help: you'll see 2 most-used community how-to guides, with related Solved topics underneath.

Activity

• Some stats about the community where you can see number of active members and click into member search, number of members online (if they've set themselves visible in their settings) with a link to view all, total posts and questions solved.

We know that big changes can be annoying and even stressful to users if the old layout has been there for long (we had the previous look since 2014!!), and some of the abovementioned elements are both new and different from what we've had before. Now that the changes are live, we will be testing and monitoring over time to see how the page performs.

We'd love to hear your feedback:

We'd love to hear what you think of this new change. Do you like the design and feel of the homepage and its new sections? Do you think it's an improvement to the old design? What is your initial feeling around navigating the forum, finding and replying to topics, etc? 

Also, since we've just gone live today, don't hesitate to alert us if you see something that's not quite right. We've done a lot of testing but there can always be some lingering bugs or issues that we might have missed. 

Your continued feedback will be much appreciated as always to help us plan for future improvements. 

Cheers,

The Community Team

[Marjo]

Hey @jezza1234 glad to hear you found it. It's very different from what we've had for years before so understandable that it might take some time getting used to! What do you think of the general feel of the new page?

@Cleoriff The menu at the top is the one used elsewhere on the O2 website now, if you remember it was updated some time ago, but our community was still using the old version. We had to make it consistent with the rest of the website. Good to get some feedback around that as well though - cheers for the comments.

You mentioned that when you login to the community, it also logs you in to My O2. Did I understand correctly? Let me know if you meant something else and we'll have a closer look. It's the same as in the past, you need a My O2 account to be able to use the community. 

[Bambino]

So far, I'm giving it a big 'meh'. Having to do too much scrolling. The O2 photo is much too big. Needs a fair amount of tweaking, I think.

[Cleoriff]

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@Marjo wrote:

@Cleoriff You mentioned that when you login to the community, it also logs you in to My O2. Did I understand correctly? Let me know if you meant something else and we'll have a closer look. It's the same as in the past, you need a My O2 account to be able to use the community.

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That's what I meant (only it doesn't ALSO log me into My O2, It ONLY logs me into My O2) @Marjo

I access the forum from my email notifications. When I did that this morning it took me to the new homepage which is fine ...but the only option to sign in is here (where I have highlighted in yellow)

When I did that it signed me into My O2?? I don't want My O2. I want to log into the forum!

[Marjo]

Ok thanks for the screenshot, that's very helpful, I got what you meant now @Cleoriff! So when you login from the top where you highlighted, that's the My O2 side of the login so will take you to My O2 instead of the community. You'd need to use the login function that's displayed on the community homepage, or click "reply" on any thread, and it will prompt you to login.

[Cleoriff]

How do I get back to the homepage once I'm logged in @Marjo?

I have just tried to do that and got this....

Hello Cleoriff, Welcome back. Here are your latest posts.

So once logged in...how do I navigate back to the homepage??

[Marjo]

That's the top part of the homepage - you can see (when you're logged in), a recap of your latest posts at the top. It's only visible for yourself and when you click view all at the bottom of that module, it takes you to the page where all your latest posts are listed.

Additionally, when you click on the "O2 Community" in the header image, above the search bar, that also takes you to the homepage.

[jonsie]

I have my bookmark as the unread page so I do get a prompt to sign in straight away. I'm not keen on all the changes and it seems difficult to find how to post a new thread in an individual section such as off topic? Not keen on such wholesale changes but like everything else in life we will get used to it.

[Cleoriff]

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@Marjo wrote:

.

Additionally, when you click on the "O2 Community" in the header image, above the search bar, that also takes you to the homepage.

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No it doesn't @Marjo

When I click on the part you mentioned (which I have highlighted, it takes me to this again

Hello Cleoriff, Welcome back. Here are your latest posts.

No sign of the home page!

[Poppysmum]

So far i am not liking it i normally get home from work and have a quick look at new posts but all i could see was my threads i dont want to see them. 

Will be back later i not in mood to try and fathom out how to read posts i want lol

[Marjo]

Hey @Cleoriff, trying to figure out what might be happening for you. What happens / what do you see when you try scroll down from the "Welcome back. Here are your latest posts" part? There should be all the new homepage elements visible when you scroll down that I've listed above in the OP, starting with these in my screenshot below: