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

[Mi-Amigo]

I`m on Firefox and "cancel" and "post" are centralized.

Also "powered by Lithium", normally at bottom right, now centralized too.

To add, just posted video on Hope thread in Off Topic, clicked video icon, dropdown for videos is now way over to left rather than in normal position.

[Glory1]

Well I can confirm that Cancel and Post are at the bottom right on my phone using Samsung Internet browser. 

So perhaps it's only a problem using Firefox on desk/laptop?!

[Cleoriff]

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@Glory1 wrote:

Well I can confirm that Cancel and Post are at the bottom right on my phone using Samsung Internet browser. 

So perhaps it's only a problem using Firefox on desk/laptop?!

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@EmilieT  It does appear to be a Firefox issue. I have accessed the forum via CHROME on pc and the cancel and post buttons are where they should be... on the right hand side.

[EmilieT]

@Cleoriff @gmarkj @Glory1 

The widget error is resolved for me, can you let me know if any of you still see it? We're still looking into the alignement of the buttons.

[Glory1]

No there's no widget using my phone in full view @EmilieT.

But there is something I've noticed which only happened since I've been posting today, from about 8/9 am. The 'body of Post Message' has increased in size.

This is not a complaint on my part, as it makes the post easier to read and, hopefully, will save me editing to correct my typos. I say hopefully.........we'll see.......

[EmilieT]

@Glory1  Just to clarify, do you mean the size of the box itself has increased, or the font? It might have to do with the fix we introduced for the Quote button to not be hidden anymore, as we essentially had to rearrange the different modules of the page slightly, but I can double check  

[Cleoriff]

@EmilieT 

The widget button is fixed and so is the POST button ie

Now aligned to the correct side (Right)

[EmilieT]

I was just about to update you guys after checking myself, you beat me to it @Cleoriff 

[Glory1]

Well @EmilieT actually both the size of the box and the font have increased. Sorry I should have made that clear. And it was well before the fix for the Quote button, which I never had a problem with on Samsung Internet but did have on Chrome

As I said I'm not raising this as a problem, as I like it and find it easier to read and check for typos. But I thought I should mention it as a change I noticed this morning.

[Anonymous]

What was up with that change this morning? Noticed it on safari using my iPhone XR