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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
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I forgot to add I'm having no problems with spellcheck. On laptop using FF.
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@gmarkj wrote:
I must admit that the number of new posts each day SEEMS to be down.
There used to be 20-30+ pages of unread posts when I logged on, but the last couple of days this was less than 20 (this morning was 13).
I am not having the log out problem @Glory1 - are you closing your browser completely? It might be that your phone is killing the app if it is not used which means that the forum cookies are deleted and you have to log in. I used to get that periodically if I didn't use the Chrome browser every so often.
Thanks for that bit of advice @gmarkj. I am flitting in and out of the website but not logging out. I'm doing other things on my phone.
However, I have noticed if I enter the forum through the O2 website I remained logged in. It's only if I enter the forum through an email I had to keep logging in. Weird!!
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I bookmarked this route and now log in via it on a daily basis.
If I scroll past the massive forum header, there is an option below which allows me to log in.
If I access the site via my emails, (as I always used to) I have to click on reply to a topic, I am then re-directed to log in. A real faff as I may not want to reply to the damn topic!!
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We haven't been discussing lack of email notifications?
The issue about notifications was in relation to Private Messages. If we had a PM in the past there was a number next to messages. So we were aware immediately that someone had sent us a PM
That's the part which is no longer working.
Yes I get an email notification that I have received a PM, though as I don't keep flicking back to check emails it could be 4 hrs before I know I have received one.
Change is a good thing ONLY if it improves a service. This change hasn't improved the community at all. It now takes a lot longer to answer a question if you need to provide links. What used to be a one click process, now involves a lot more clicking about.
As someone who posts on here on a daily basis, I can't see any improvement whatsoever.
I embrace change as a general rule. So I can't be accused of not trying.
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@jezza1234 wrote:
Aaaaaand..... that’s me told🤣🤣🤣🤣. Off back into read only mode
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