I’m a fairly new member of CC, since March of this year. I liked the site and had become a regular visitor and had posted a bit. I access via laptop. I have a S headed off to college in the fall and a D who’s in high school - so I thought I had found a site I’d use for a few years…but I’m changing my mind. I’ve already stopped visiting the site much - and am only looking to read this thread and in hopes that I’ll hear or see that the developers are going to return to the former format. IT WAS SO MUCH MORE USER-FRIENDLY BEFORE - and it’s not just a matter of needing to ‘get used to it.’. As others have said, an upgrade to make some small improvements is almost always welcome - but this was a mistake.
Here’s what I’m realizing. I have two tabs open on my Mac laptop. One for this thread, one for the Parent Cafe. As long as I’m just refreshing this thread - going to no other threads or home pages…I’m pretty good reading it except for annoyances like searching for the posting time of a post.
But the minute I go over to the Parent Cafe homepage…I’m turned off. The format is just a boggle of words, symbols, picture avatars, etc. Very distracting and it’s difficult to be able to “sweep” the page and know where I want to go. I don’t hang around for more than a minute. I’m not even tempted to click on threads that I haven’t visited before.
This is a big problem for any longevity on this forum.
The format makes me feel claustrophobic. I used to be able to see so much more on my iPad and now I feel like I’m trapped in one little section. Very uncomfortable. PLEASE go back to the old format. It was excellent! Also please let me know if another site starts up because I’ll be joining ASAP.
Okay, so I’ve been mostly reading just this thread over the last couple of days. As a test, I didn’t have any trouble finding the financial aid forum. However, the thread I decided to read was created a while ago, and nothing new had been posted for 3 months. It can’t really be that threads aren’t listed in reverse chronological order, can it? ?
p.s. Is the default avatar a beach ball?
Has anyone determined how an ancient thread is chosen as “featured”? I keep flagging them asking for them to be closed or removed but how were they chosen to be featured in the first place?
It reminds me of using the EMR system in the hospital. You have to constantly scroll through a page and then on to the next page to make sure you haven’t missed charting something and navigating to find pertinent info can be just as laborious. This place reminds me too much of work, ?.
@RandyErika —it’s a dodgeball.
You’d be better off rolling back to the old site even if you had to give up all the posts made since the conversion. Take the site down for a couple of days if you have to. We’d wait if we knew you were doing that. If your IT folks didn’t back up the data right before starting this and didn’t have a rollback plan when they started, they really, really need to be canned.
I think this is an existential threat to CC - yeah, you paid a vendor, and maybe it is going to cost the company because you have a contract. But if the site is now unusable (as it is on an iPhone), you’ve flushed your business model anyway.
So sad!
Just wndering if CC gave up any old licenses to all or part of prior progamming, in the process of converting? (Needless to say, smart is not to, before you know the new system works.)
@scholarme, every time someone posts a dress link in the wedding section or a link to home improvement supplies, I see ads on CC for those things. If the powers that be would pay attention to the fact that CC parents discuss and spend $$$ on expensive goods, they might figure out we’re an audience they shouldn’t P.O.!
They shouldn’t have to give up any posts to change the design back, posts are completely separate. And the basic rule of any software development is never to do any changes that you cannot roll back. It’s called version control. Looking at the page source, I believe CC uses open source Vanilla software so this shouldn’t have been a problem.
You don’t know what the architecture is. They may very well have converted all the old data to a new format or new database product for the new system. And while it is certainly an obvious best practice to don’t do changes you can’t roll back, I’ve seen companies that don’t plan it well enough (sometimes they bring me in to bail them out after their mistakes in this area). Also, pretty much all deployments have a “point of no return” where you can’t really roll back because updates to the data have started, batches have run, etc. But… if you are willing to take a hit on your data on a site like this, you probably COULD still go back, even though you’d potentially lose some information.
Hi there, back again to complain.
I’ve noticed a lot of older members are saying this new look is “appealing” to younger and newer members and not to them.
I disagree. It’s just as bad to me (a young, “fresh” member) as it is to all you seasoned folks. I am a user of all the “young folk” social media apps and this design is nothing like those — it is simply unusable and unintuitive. In fact, I think we young ‘uns are actually more sensitive to user interfaces because we’re so used to good ones that were designed with us in mind (things like instagram, snapchat, twitter, discord, etc. The community rioted when Snapchat changed their design to something less intuitive.) You’re not going to attract new members, old or young, with this look. You don’t have to sacrifice functionality for aesthetic, which I think is what you were going for. (This is neither of those things, btw.)
I have a headache trying to read this thread. I found the Parent Cafe but am afraid to figure out anything else as even my bookmarks are difficult to navigate. I typically stopped in throughout the day but it is just too hard to read. It is just like the original Gardenweb gone bad.
This section makes no sense: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/bestof/everything . Who is deciding what is “most helpful”? Interesting that it’s this thread that the most representation in that area.
Also, look at this description of the last relaunch just 14 months ago. Note how they claim there to have gotten user feedback. Why didn’t they do that THIS time?
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/community-forum-issues/2078728-college-confidential-relaunch-p1.html
So I just noticed something. When you go to the icon on the very top of the page with the graduation hat /bullseye. Click that and that will show the majors link with others. That background it’s on rotates the background picture. On one picture the writing is very legible. It is a picture of a girl. BUT on the other picture the writing is very hard to read due to overlap. All they need to do is find a picture that works… Like the one of the girl and take out the other picture or turn off the transition on that field. Again not hard stuff to do and my main question is didn’t anyone preview this?
So, I just joined reddit. Can we all find a community over there together to use?
You can still get the crotch avatar if you want it! If you click on your personal avatar on your home page (it takes you to an option to change your avatar) - it pulls up a choice of 4 versions of the basketball avatar to select from. Looks like he buttcrack shot is either # 3 or # 4.