We’ve been working hard to bring you a fresh new look in forum discussions! We’ve also improved the mobile experience, now offering consistency across desktop, mobile and tablet formats.
You can walk through the major highlights [url=<a href=“https://www.collegeconfidential.com/schools/redesign-tour/%5Dhere%5B/url”>https://www.collegeconfidential.com/schools/redesign-tour/]here[/url], which includes screenshots to help you visualize the changes.
At a glance, you’ll find:
A cleaner interface that places information where you need it.
On the Forums landing page, you can browse featured threads at a glance. We’ve added a Highlights block which includes frequently-used links that carries over from page to page.
Also on the Forums landing page, new navigation of discussion topics allows for quick access to the site’s top forums.
Finding the topic you’re interested in is easier with a cleaner layout of the category pages. You’ll also see sub-level categories via an expanded breakout list.
New leaderboards showcase our most active users.
Mobile now displays more links to all areas on College Confidential, giving you quick access to our extensive article library as well as a more consistent experience no matter which device you use to view the site.
Feels like maybe this solved a problem no one had. Pages loading noticeably slower. Much more scrolling needed to view various topics within a given forum.
I know changes can take a while to be accepted, so I’ll be patient with my own views of it. Comment preview is a nice touch.
Anyhow, how do we find the list of ALL the discussion forums? Right now, I only see what you consider the most popular forums, but not ALL forums. I cannot find certain forums I read.
I can’t tell what I’m looking at. I intensely dislike the small, pale font. The font is TERRIBLE. AWFUL. NO GOOD. VERY BAD.
Is it just me? I can’t get my home page, forums or latest posts to load. I’m on an iPad. The only things I can access are this post, and schools and articles from the top bar.
Why did they get rid of my profile name on the top bar? Now I have to access my profile by going on “preferences.” That sucks.
This new design is VERY difficult for anyone who wears glasses or has poor eyesight to read. Are they trying to deter people from easily accessing the site? I’m serious.
In the old format, if there was a thread that I perused occasionally, I could go to the last page and not have to read the many posts I’d just as soon skip. I don’t know how to do that with the new format.
I’m OK to wait a little bit before I decide I hate it; everything takes time to get used to. But this might be tough.
I also don’t understand why, on the right side of my screen, is a list of posters who are “most helpful.” It takes up way too much of my screen and, as a long-time poster, I’m already familiar with those names.
The auto-loading video on the right is not a plus. (It may be all advertisements but has a long princeton review segment.) Every time I pause it, it starts back up again by itself. The ads rotate continually without stopping. It’s driving me bananas.
Can anyone suggest how to get rid of the ad video? Since it doesn’t stop and can’t be scrolled away, it’s immensely visually distracting and my computer is getting awfully hot. (I could block javascript but then I wouldn’t be able to post.) I don’t think I can use the website much until I figure out how to stop the ad from playing.
Based on my first impression of CC’s new look, to me is appears to be almost unusable. Hopefully I will figure out how to make this look better, and how to get rid of the useless ad on the upper right side of the screen. If I can’t figure out how to make the page look better, I might just need to stop using this web site.
I hope that it is still updating and layering features since it is currently taking a minute or more to load each page. This is on a desktop connected with no speed issues. It is a very frustrating experience to have no issues streaming the commercials but wait for a so long for content to load. Who has time for that? I also find it “too clean” with the only visual clutter the streaming adds/commercials that I can not exit out. It is difficult on the eyes and the features we need to access are not easily apparent or found. I will be patient and hope you are still in process of updating and making a better user experience.
I don’t mind the layout so much (although I do prefer the old one with less white space and more threads/page shown). But IMO the huge problem with this format update is that new pages are taking incredibly long to load (not sure if the video ad is part of the problem) that it is frustrating slow to use. Admittedly I don’t have the newest computer, but the upload speed is fine for work and for every other application I have.
After poking around for a few minutes, I am going to give up on CC for a day or two. Hopefully they will get enough complaints that they will go back to the old format, or give us some way to return to the old format. Right now it is not possible to navigate the site, not possible to find threads that I am interested in, and the advertisement on the upper right is just too intrusive. Life is too short to deal with this.
@CCadmin_Sorin , I’m on the desktop now, and I still cannot access the Home page or forums page without getting the Vanilla Gateway timeout page. Is this just due to heavy usage?
Also agree about the very distracting video ads constantly playing in the top right. Super distracting. I’m judging: I do not like any of this so far.
The new layout makes no visual distinction between pinned threads and current discussions. That makes it cumbersome to check for new posts in forums with not very much activity.
Ditto the other concerns about too much white space and slow loading times.
Has anyone on your “design” team ever actually use a forum on a regular basis for any amount of of time on something other than a phone? There is so much wrongness here on the browser version.
For example - when typing in the reply box, when it wraps to a new line, the box shows a line of space in-between each line, as if I hit . I can no longer distinguish where I’ve made a new paragraph.
For example - 50% or more of my window is white space or other information I don’t care about. I don’t need every single page to tell me how many bookmarks or threads I have, I don’t care.
It’s really a shame, I feel like you are essentially abandoning people on laptops. Do you ever do any actual user testing with actual users before you roll these kinds of changes out?
Color me not impressed.
I should try it with my ad blocker off, although I dread it.
ETA oh hey look - no paragraphs. Jesus.
