The new look Forum - Feedback required

34 replies

Hi all,

Well - pretty much as expected there have been mixed reactions to the 'new' look forum - and some criticisms are indeed perfectly justified.. we feel the same.

Let me first explain why we 'upgraded' the Forum though - this is important..

Telligent, when we first started with them, gave us the option of two 'themes' (the way the forum is displayed basically). They were called 'Lean and Green' and 'Hawaii'. 

We decided 'Lean and Green' would best meet our needs in respect of the way it laid out the forum, so Keith and Van set to work completely redesigning the graphics to fall into line with the BeoWorld 'look and feel'. Keith added extra code that Telligent couldn't or wouldn't write (think stars, founder and lots of other little personalisations).  That gave us the forum in the old guise, and we happily added the Telligent updates as they happened.

Telligent, recently, decided that focusing on two different forum 'themes' was a waste of man hours and focus, so announced they were going to drop one of the themes.  We waited with baited breath, and were very disappointed when they announced the theme that would no longer be continued was 'Lean and Green'.

This basically meant an imminent end to all support, updates and improvements for us - not good, so the only option was to start the long process of migrating the whole forum to the 'Hawaii' theme.  Keith and Van have spent the last few months, in constant discussion with the moderating team basically building the new look forum so we could have a totally uninterrupted transition. This worked perfectly of course and the downtime was zero. Hats off to Keith on that one.

So, here we are with basically a new layout which has been given the 'look and feel' of BeoWorld, but isn't quite perfect for us. This is where we are asking for your help and thoughts.

Please, please don't just say things like 'i don't like it', 'i can't navigate it' or 'i don't like the tags' - we need constructive suggestions. Where would you like to see things, how would you change it and what would you prefer? Be specific.

As we are - it's all 'off the shelf' and any changes would involve Keith writing hundreds and hundreds of lines of new code. This is something Keith is prepared to do as he takes great pride in what he does and wants the BeoWorld Forum experience to be enjoyable and easy to use for absolutely everyone - as we all do.

So - your comments please.  Make them precise, give us suggestions, and let's not turn this into a ramble - it's important that we get as much quality feedback as possible in order to make things better for you - the user. 

We look forward to your thoughts..

Kindest Regards

The BeoWorld Team

🙂

Can I ask if the "Inbox" (1) notification is still impossible to do after this recent change?

The INBOX(1) notification has never been in the supplied Telligent code, it was added by us.

However, when Telligent replaced "PM's" with "Conversations" as is implemented in the current Beoworld site we are running at the moment they took away the SQL table which holds all the unread "PM's" count by user, so the code would always find zero and therefore the added code became useless.

I have been assured by Telligent that the future versions we plan to install will have the table back again. I don't understand why they removed it in the first place actually. Having said that, until I actually install the future release I will not know for sure.

So, in answer to your core question, the change of "Theme" does not allow the return of INBOX(1) notification, but when we go to the next release I am hoping it will allow it to return.

Location: Hampshire, England

I find the colour scheme not contrasted enough... the text is too pale, on a lightly grey background. Find it quite tiring to read.

The 'sort by' options at the top is a big improvement,

I agree about the coulour scheme being a bit pale.

 

 

Location: London

PhilLondon wrote:

I find the colour scheme not contrasted enough... the text is too pale, on a lightly grey background. Find it quite tiring to read.

Yes, we agree and we will be changing that..

Location: Hampshire, England

I agree the text is tiring - I keep thinking my eyes are on the way out.

I would also love to get rid of that MASSIVE tags frame. It dominates the whole page.

Hi

I have adjusted the tone of the main body copy and made it darker which should hopefully help with legibility. If the changes have not seemingly appeared I would suggest that you refresh your browser as the old styles will be kept in your browser cache.

V

Hi

I have reduced the size of the tags frame too so that is not so in your face.

Kind regards

Blimey, that was quick! Well done Van.

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