Welcome to our new look community!

[Martin-O2]

Hey everyone, 

Unless you're very new to the community you've likely noticed a few changes to how the forum looks this morning. As we announced yesterday the O2 community has been upgraded! In addition to the new look there are several new features, some requested and a few new ones for good measure. 😄

New home page 

Starting at the top we have a new integrated header for the community. The new header contains some useful links. On the left side you have a link to the main O2 site. 

You then have links to the O2 shop page > O2 help and support page > My O2 and your shop basket.

On the right of these links you will see your community notifications > private messages and your profile picture.

Clicking on your profile picture will bring up a drop down menu which contains the following... 

Directly below the header you will find the new community navigation! The community categories are listed here and if you hover over you will see a drop down of the different boards. 

The next level down is the community search bar and your latests stats and notifications! 

Below this is our new featured content widget. This is similar to Latest News section on the old home page but is in a much more prominent place than before. 

Next is the new trending topics section which is a live feed of the most popular conversations happening in real time! 

Below to trending topics you will see the familiar Community Activity where you can see the latest topics and filter them by most recent > most viewed > most commented and most liked. 

Down at the bottom of the home page you will see a feed that highlights the most recent guides and reviews. If you hit the View All button it will take you to the guides and reviews category. 

Finally the familiar community stats can be found at the very bottom of the page. 

New private messaging interface

We also have a brand new private message system which will display your message conversations in a threaded view so no more going back and forth between your inbox and outbox. Please note: Only messages exchanged after the upgrade goes live will be in the threaded view. 

Solution highlight 

The next new feature to talk about is floated solutions. When a solution is picked on a thread it will be highlighted at the top of the discussion for easy viewing. The solution will still be in it's proper position down the chain of messages. 

The new version has an updated text editor box for topics, replies and private messages. 

Please have a good look around the new community and let us know any feedback, questions or issues in the comments below! 

Issue log and updates: 

Text font and formatting - Fixed. To correct this please clear the cache on your bowser 

Signature cut off - Fixed. The hight of the signature box has been increased. 

Continuity problem on long topics - Fixed. This was an admin setting that has now been turned off 

Guide and review boards formatting issues - Fixed. We now have a tiled view for guides and reviews. 

Topics on the board level not sorting by most recent post -Fixed. The topics will now sort at the board level by most recent reply. 

Image gallery missing from profile page - Fixed. You can now find your image gallery on your profile page and the public image gallery of other members on their profile page. 

Increase emoji size - Fixed. The size of the emoji's in posts and messaging has now been increased. 

Add friends from member profile -Fixed. Add and remove friend has been added to profile pages. 

Missing options in text editor on mobile view (video link, quote and emoji’s) - Fixed. Quotes and emoji's have been added to the mobile view text editor. Adding videos is not currently supported however this will be added in a future platform upgrade. 

Adding unanswered topics to homepage dropdown - Fixed. A widget for unread posts has been added to the home page. 

Guide links not working - Fixed. Guide links now take you directly to the guide page. 

Adding post count and views to replies - Fixed. Post count and views have now been added.

Errors in footer formatting - Fixed. We have now corrected all of the errors.

Topic first post is displayed on all pages of replies - Fixed. Now the OP is only visible on the first page of the thread.

Spell checker in text editor  - In progress. We have 2 different options for the spell checker. Inline, realtime or with the old style click to check for misspelled words. We'll decide this at a later date. 

Spell checker change from US English to UK English - Investigating

Your own posts showing in the unread message page - Investigating 

Clicking an unread message takes you to different unread message then highlighted - Investigating

Using male/female emoji’s adds extra emoji’s - Investigating

Quoting options - Closed. Unfortunately there is only one way of quoting on the current platform design.

Guides and Reviews slow loading times - Closed. There was no issue found in the loading times of guides and reviews.

“View all” for posts and replies option on member profile - Closed. Unfortunately this option cannot be added to the member profile. 

Cant see if sent messages have been read - Closed. Unfortunately this feature cannot be added to the new messaging system. 

[Cleoriff]

---

@pgn wrote:

As I browsed some of the Guides section earlier, hunting for something, it struck me that many guides have a standard picture of what looks like a marketing team casual discussion group gesturing with their hands:

Any Guide that has a picture in it is shown with that picture instead - and where a guide has lots of pictures in it, it seems to be the most recently-loaded pic that is used.

Just wondered if the default image, where a Community guide has no image or picture in it, could be changed to something more akin to a Guide, or How-To?

Here's what the Guides section looks like today - lots of hands everywhere:

What's wrong with a simple picture, like one of these?

Not a high-priority thing, but a nice touch, perhaps?

---

Totally agree @pgn. If you HAVE to have pictures showing in the guides, it should be something relevant?

[pgn]

Another observation, from down in the depths of the O2 Forum "Aladdin's Cave" that is the Guides and Reviews section:

https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Reviews/bg-p/TryTheTech

Clicking on pretty much any of the Reviews results in a mega-long delay, of the order of minutes, before anything comes back to the user (both Mobile/Android and Laptop - Chrome browser on each):

Examples:

https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Reviews/This-is-Sony-Xperia-1ii/ba-p/1406712

https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Reviews/REVIEW-SAMSUNG-GALAXY-NOTE-10/ba-p/1250580

Could be some of these have a larger number of hi-quality photos on them, I guess - but I know I've a wait-span of about 18 seconds before I go search elsewhere, so perhaps something at the back-end of the Forum needs a tweak?

Once they review is up, read performance is OK - but try again a day later and the long delay is back:

https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Reviews/And-now-for-something-completely-different/ba-p/1187141

[pgn]

Yes, the "seeing your own posts in the "Unread Posts" list is on the list already - annoying, though!

And a quick way to show posts without an answer yet would be great as well - the old forum had it, very useful.

Unread Posts pic, showing my own responses as "Unread":

 

[Cleoriff]

As things slowly get sorted out, this UNREAD post issue is more than annoying. Particularly when it's your OWN post. If I have a flick round the forum and comment on a few topics, it's infuriating going to unread posts and seeing a list of posts you have just made. 

Then I have to scroll down a long way to find something which needs answering!!

[Anonymous]

Is there anyway to quote someone without having to click reply to their post first?

Another forum i'm at you can highlight the text & a tiny clickable box opens with the word 'quote' in it.

It doesn't notify the person you quoted but it does highlight their username & makes it clear(er) what you are talking about. Only the selected text gets quoted, making the posts smaller, more accurate & able to fit more on my tiny 11 inch screen.

Just a thought

[pgn]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Is there anyway to quote someone without having to click reply to their post first?

...highlight the text & a tiny clickable box opens with the word 'quote' in it.

Just a thought

---

That would be dead handy, @Anonymous - mobile phone users like me would be eternally grateful 👍

[Cleoriff]

Didn't we have that before the change @Anonymous ? We had two reply boxes. One normal size and the other 'Quick reply' which was a much smaller box? Not sure if that's what you mean?

[TheresaV]

Thanks for raising the issue with the guides @pgn, we will have the load time investigated. With regards to the images, the image currently used is the default image we set for now. However, we are working on gathering a set of images that can be used for different guides and are more relevant to the guide's individual content. 

I am not sure if this is an available feature @Anonymous but we will raise this internally and double check 🙂

As @Martin-O2 mentioned before, the Unread Posts issue is still being investigated and we will keep you up to date on any news.

Thank you all for continuously looking through the community and raising issues. Even though we as a team tried to fix all issues pre-launch and optimise the new layout for the community, there are always a couple of bugs that come with a new look that will only become apparent when the design is actually live. 

[Cleoriff]

Thanks for that info @TheresaV 

[Mi-Amigo]

@TheresaV 

As you seem to be in the "hot seat" - answering queries about the issues affecting the New Look - have you any response to the issue raised by me @Mi-Amigo and @Cleoriff with regards to the on-going saga of the OP appearing at the top of each page?

@Martin-O2 posted

Topic first post is displayed on all pages of replies - Fixed. Now the OP is only displayed when you first land on a thread from a board, mention or unread post. Let me know what you think of this one guys. I think it's quite good to have the OP there as a reminder when you return to a thread but interested to hear your thoughts. 

To which me @Mi-Amigo and @Cleoriff replied

https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Welcome-News/Welcome-to-our-new-look-community/td-p/1475558/page/4

and I pointed out

Regulars are tagged when WHD is opened, but join in the game at various times and from various places - e.g. from tag, from another board, or unread post. So they could see "OP at top of page" part way thru the game, which would throw the game out of sync and cause confusion to all players.

In my opinion, and not just because of WHD but for the benefit of everyone, the most sensible way to dealing with this issue is for the OP to appear on the first page ONLY - no matter which thread or topic.

Could you please let us know what is happening, and when this persistent problem will finally be fixed - in accordance with the wishes of the regular users of the Community - and not have to make do with a partial fix which pleases no-one and nobody wants ?

Thank you.