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

[jonsie]

Mine are turned off so no problem. At least the mentions in the notifications on here seem to relate to the correct time for me.

[Cleoriff]

@Martin-O2 @Marjo @EmilieT 

A few of us are experiencing a real 'go slow' on the forum from yesterday and this morning.

We were discussing it in the lounge last night Virtual lounge

No other online site is affected, just the forum. I got the 'Processing bar' for most of my posts after 22.00 and one even timed out.

Mine is on my PC using Win 10 and Firefox. @Glory1 would be using her phone, not sure what @jonsie was using.

I hoped it would be better this morning. It's not. Any ideas?

[pgn]

Ditto here, replying to something at ça 22:45 last night, thought is was going to cowp... (fall over).

[Cleoriff]

---

@pgn wrote:
Ditto here, replying to something at ça 22:45 last night, thought is was going to cowp... (fall over).

---

So that's at least 4 of us then @pgn ...and not much better this morning!! Though it is intermittent now?

[Marjo]

Good morning guys,

We've noticed some slowness happening too, normally during night-times. Thanks for reporting this and for the details! We'll pass on to the platform provider to find out what's happening.  Any screenshots or examples of exact times when you notice slowness or the progress bar, would also be helpful.

[Cleoriff]

@Marjo 

I haven't got a screenshot...I think someone took one the last time it happened.

However, on my PC, you press post and a white screen appears eventually and along the top is a grey bar with a rolling icon stating 'Processing'

I move onto another tab (leaving that one to 'process', whilst answering another post.)

By the time I have done that and press send, the same thing happens.....but the first one has eventually posted. 

It is intermittent and as you can see, it happens at different times for others affected. @Glory1 and @jonsie experienced it during the day, whilst @pgn  and I, fell foul of the slowdown about 22.00

[Glory1]

I experienced it last night too, trying to post a reply to the music game got the processing bar twice last night after 10pm. I nearly gave up. But eventually managed to post reply.

[Marjo]

Thanks a lot for the added details @Cleoriff , @Glory1 !

[jonsie]

I've said for a while that the site is slow in comparison to any other site I frequent but this last few days has been terrible. Tonight it's been relatively ok but still not as it should be. Posting replies can take an age and sometimes there have been 2 or 3 further posts when yu go back and you feel like you are repeating someone else's post.

[gmarkj]

It might be a little slower today, but I am getting the lovely unread topics problem again...
I have read the double data thread before it was split out, and since but despite opening it 3-4 times (and manually marking thread as read) it is still in the unread posts page.
It has finally cleared using the mark all posts read option on the unread posts page.
Any update from Lithium @EmilieT @Martin-O2 @Marjo?