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

[pgn]

I hit the same thing Sunday, I think--one thread just would not go aaway ...  SO... I marked all topics read, no way out of it.

Can't remember the thread... But decided to rely on my email notifications to keep abreast of things, and those have been a bit bursty (!!) lately too: nothing for a few hours, then a deluge of'em. 

[jonsie]

I had this yesterday when I was the last to post. It was continually at the top of the unread posts with my name showing. It was cleared a little time later once someone else posted on the thread.

[EmilieT]

Hi guys, 

We had originally set up this topic in order to gather your initial feedback on the new homepage - now that we've got a pretty clear overview of your thoughts and suggestions, for more clarity, we will update this new topic on development & bugs updates going forward as and when we have more news to share on our progress

Have a nice Friday!

[Mi-Amigo]

---

@EmilieT wrote:

Hi guys, 

We had originally set up this topic in order to gather your initial feedback on the new homepage - now that we've got a pretty clear overview of your thoughts and suggestions, for more clarity, we will update this new topic on development & bugs updates going forward as and when we have more news to share on our progress

Have a nice Friday!

---

I`ve looked at the new topic and do like the idea of the issues listed being on a separate topic and that we will be kept informed of progress on each of the issues mentioned. 

[Cleoriff]

Great idea @EmilieT 

This thread is now being used for everything which goes wrong with the forum, so we do need one which keeps us up to date with ongoing bugs/updates. Also allows us to post new issues.

[EmilieT]

@Cleoriff @Mi-Amigo Good to hear you like the idea! We'll update that new thread as regularly as we can based on the progress we make on our end on both the feedback and the reported bugs 

[jonsie]

Good to have an update page @EmilieT