Special announcement - Forum changes

[Matt Hill]

On April 14th this year Carers UK relaunched its website with a new brand. As part of that move the forum began operating with a new system.

From the start there were some serious problems with it. When you move a forum there are always problems, but it became clear that something was really not working well. I know many of you were unable to login, there were bugs and other problems. Some of these continue - for example the private message system is just not good enough.

Since then we've been listening to your concerns and trying to fix as many of the problems as we can. We've managed to get a lot of things working much better. But it's still not to the standard we think you all deserve. So for that reason, over the last few weeks we've been looking at other forum systems and considering what's best for the future of our forum.

With the sterling support of our volunteer forum moderators we've started testing a different forum and early signs are positive. But we won't make any changes until we're sure it's going to be an improvement.

I'll keep you posted over the next few weeks.

Matt

[bowlingbun]

Matt, it seems to me that this forum has failed because it was imposed on us. There was never any attempt to involve the membership whatsoever. There may be people here who use other better forums who might have some good ideas - not me though. I'm just very concerned at the drop off of members posting. Another disaster might finish us off completely!

[ladybird]

Hi Matt

I wouldn't personally class this present forum as an imposition but I do understand where BB is coming from. When you start expecting service users (which we are really) to conform to something because it fits a new (corporate) image, then there will be problems and not just of the minor kind. It is a fine line to tread and it would of course not be practical nor possible to involve CUK members of each decision that is made but maybe in this instance, it might be an idea.

You have said you are testing out new ideas and I'm grateful for that. But you tested this forum, quite extensively we were given to believe, and you have had a bit of a failure on your hands. It functions but not well with serious problems which will no doubt be off putting to a new visitor. What are you doing differently this time to ensure the same problems don't happen again? What type of forum are you testing? Will it meet the needs of your members? I'm fairly sure about the answer to the last one but it's good to keep you on your toes

Just chucking some thoughts out there Angie x

[bowlingbun]

After this new forum came online, we all struggled. Is it not possible to tweak this one, to give us some of the attributes of the old one we miss? For example, we were automatically notified when there was a new posting added to a thread we were following. Now we have to tick a box at the bottom of the thread. Is it not possible to change the default setting, so that we tick the box if we do NOT want to be notified, instead? I didn't know what the icons meant to the left of the index. Is it not possible to have an explanation overwritten on the icon?

[susieq]

Ladybird and BB - I'm sending you both a pm

[jenny lucas]

Is it me, or does this latest version seem more like the original one?? Certainly the private messaging bit seems more similar to what it used to be?

I now find I'm missing the 'Recent Posts' button, which I discovered to be very useful, and saved me having to go into each section to spot the latest posts. I don't think I can see an equivalent right now??

Overall, though, I find this latest version more comfortab le to use, and clearer too, but I didn't really mind the previous one either particularly.

That said, I agree with BB that forum users can get very, very (very!) proprietorial about 'their' forum, and uttterly loathe any changes at all (whether good or bad!).

However, I think we all have to remember that although running a forum looks #trivial#, that a LOT of work goes into setting them up and maitaining them, etc etc. That can sometimes go underappreciated I feel!

For me, being lazy, the most useful aspect of any forum is the Remember Me button - it's such a pain to have to go into email to get the latest posts. I'm forever forgetting my password (I have a lot!) so I like being auto logged in.

All best Jenny.

[Brindleboy123]

Jenny, just under the purple banner on the index page you will see a line that says "unanswered posts", "unread posts" etc. This may be what you are looking for?

Bell x

[Matt Hill]

Is it me, or does this latest version seem more like the original one??

Yes it's the same system we had pre-April 16th. But we have added on a lot of things behind the scenes so it can be synchronised with our new website and membership sign up.

Jenny, just under the purple banner on the index page you will see a line that says "unanswered posts", "unread posts" etc. This may be what you are looking for?

new posts.jpg (32.16 KiB) Viewed 1858 times