@menloparkmom, the Parents Forum was always located in the College Admissions & Search forum. It was never part of Community & Forum Issues.
@privatebanker, all our Top Forums are easily accessible on the homepage on desktop.
My eyes cannot take this light lettering. My family asked me why I am not on CC like I use to be…
Tonight I went at the site (again), but this time with an open mind - got off my USC porch and ventured out with my boots on - determined to find (and conquer) my other old stomping grounds. I have done this several times this week, but I would get impatient and abort mission. So I decided to give it a real go tonight - in search of the old neighborhoods that @privatebanker just mentioned:
College Admissions
College Search and Selection
Parents Forum
Parents Cafe
But even when I got better at finding the forums and opened up a thread, the enthusiam to post that I had moments before, is just drained out of me. I am left with such a blasé feeling just reading down the thread names. It’s not just the organization of the thread, the shading of threads read/unread, and the misplaced post details (which mind you, are in disarray and a logical mess), but it’s the colors overall (or lack there of) that just deplete me of interest. The thread titles don’t pop and call me into them, it’s a big blur scanning down them. It’s just washed out - like trying to look through sink water in a dirty glass. After being on here long enough to write this post it feels like staring at the fuzzy screen on the TV in the old days when stations use to go off at 3am - it will make you crazy! Call it eye strain, call it too thin of a font, but overall, it is the most washed out and dull presentation of data that I have ever seen. As an ol’ marketing exec, this is certainly a design head-scratcher.
So I tried - I wanted to see if I could add value in other places, or jump back into a conversation on Parent Forum/Cafe - but I can’t do it, too awkard and tiring to do. I don’t see leaving my USC porch again anytime soon. I’ll stick around there to help future (hopeful) Trojans, but I assume participation will drop from the kids too so maybe this whole site will just putter out. I will certainly miss the other posters and adding what I can to the other threads (but I will have more time to learn something new - here I come Adobe Illustrator and your zillion programs)! Hope ya stop on by the ol’ USC porch sometime to say hello - if you can find the forum. (I’d put “ha-ha” if it was actually funny.) Hugs to y’all. Who knows, maybe I will try again someday, but I’m gonna go rest my eyes now.
Epic fail CC, epic fail.
The font is much too large, and there is too much white space. I have to scroll too much to see what I previously could at a glance.
It is much harder to read and follow threads with this new interface. Is there any way to return to the previous interface. I would take the inconsistencies across platforms over this new look any day. Please change back or offer a classic version…
“Easily accessible on desktop?” Does that refer to the big box set-up or some page I don’t know of? This update is supposedly to make mobile easier.
I can get to the Parents Forum by clicking the Forums space at the top and scrolling way down- on the tablet. On the cell, there is no “Admissions & Search forum” to select.
It’s either “College Search and Selection” (which yields zip) or “College Admissions,” which also offers no Parents sub header.
Nooooo, you have to click on the tiny blue lettering in the navigation trail (home/college admissions and search.) Teeny tiny
It only shows “College Admissions and Search” in that blue-lettered navigation trail. Then you scroll and scroll.
So if there’s some easy was to do this, why not spell it out? For IPhone and for Android and if there are any differences, then, for diffrent browsers. @CCadmin_Sorin
Thinking over those posts, I think you could very well be right.
I did a little searching, and I think I see what you mean. And if more people knew about this, they would be even more likely to leave this mess of a site.
I come to CC for the Parent Cafe. Reddit doesn’t have any sort of equivalent for that.
Interesting that @CCadmin_Sorin will try to answer a few questions, but is silent on the big issues, other than to say that we will not be getting the old format back. He did say something one time about limited resources, so was there perhaps a scaling back of the tech team? Is this new format cheaper to maintain? (It’s such a mess, just let everyone be confused and don’t rush to fix anything.)
I don’t know what input CCadmin_Sorin actually passes on – just glitches for the tech team? What about the other issues that have been mentioned in this thread? Do the site owners even realize what we are saying on this thread? (Or do they know and just don’t care, thinking they will get all of those all-important clickety-clicks from a new crop of students every year?)
It appears new CC wants to look jazzier, with pictures and highlight relevant discussions/articles, whereas the old CC was less flashy, but with more content. To keep the new site looking fresh, I think they are going to need paid staff to update pictures and showcase certain discussions, otherwise it is going quickly become stale. I am seeing the same pictures and articles since CC pushed out its new look, and I already bored by them. There may be new “exciting” discussions going on, but if those pictures and highlighted discussions do not change then users will perceive the site is not active.
Oh swell. Now this thread is becoming a spam magnet? (Surely the ad/spam posted above by. “new poster” @mushroom12 this will be soon removed, but still… )
@jym626. On an android phone if you go to the main page, (pressing the graduatinghat/bullseye icon from any page ), under" Get Help Now " one selection is Parents. The Parent Cafe is there.
@Knowsstuff - are you saying that’s why its at risk for being a spam magnet? (And glad to see the spam ad here has been removed).
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
A reminder of the forum rules: "“Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others. "
And I am not referring to comments about TPTB, but am referring to comments about general users. Just because this has devolved into a rant thread does not mean that ToS is suspended. It is never OK to publicly disparage or humiliate another user on this site.
If you have an issue, bring it to the moderators’ attention and escalate as needed.
On mobile you can’t click on “agree” “like” “helpful” and see who promoted those. Not my own or anyone elses. What’s the point?
@CCadmin_Sorin - Could the Parent Forum be added to the Top Forums list? And could that Top Forums list be moved to the very top of the Forums page? The scrolling to find everything, especially on mobile is too cumbersome.
Speaking of mobile, I had a new issue this morning. The ad, which was for the zoo I think, populated colored butterflies all over my screen if I was trying to scroll, covering up the text, so it was impossible to see what I was reading. I just gave up entirely.
This is crazy. I can’t believe CC is worried about the word tr-ll but not the fact that the font stinks, the page is too bright, the date is in the wrong place and it is impossible to quickly scan threads to see which you’ve posted on before and/or have new posts due to the weird backwards highlighting issue. Right now the two “Featured Discussions” on the side of my page are both for Brown - one from 2014, one from 2015. 
@abasket- I can’t do it on my desktop, either. Bizarre!
I never quite understood why CC takes the T word so seriously. It’s actually a thing that happens on this site. I feel like there’s more important things for them to focus on. Idk maybe how user friendly the site is seems like a good place to start.
@10s4life, if someone feels that a user is a tr0ll, the correct action to take is to report them. The word is considered an insult, and that is not permitted by the ToS. In the past, people were starting to use the word too freely and that’s why the rule was instituted.
@momofsenior1 I saw that ad when I was on my mobile as well. It is incredibly obnoxious! It doesn’t allow you to click anywhere!