Agree with @CTTC - I personally am at the “pain point” for sure. I’m following threads that I had already bookmarked before the redesign, but I haven’t added any new ones; I’ll likely phase out as the old threads run out of steam. It’s too difficult to find the threads where I can make a meaningful contribution, and that additional barrier has given me the impetus I needed to question why I’m volunteering to create content for CC to monetize, in the first place.
It isn’t just this most recent change. Every refresh since I’ve been on CC has made the search engine worse. It’s like a department store that makes things difficult to find, by design, in hopes that you’ll wander around and buy things you hadn’t intended to. It wastes all of our effort, because we have to keep having the same discussions over and over rather than being able to reference past content easily.
I love helping kids to brainstorm and problem-solve about their college plans; but I’m not going to keep swimming upstream, against a current that is wholly arbitrary, for the privilege of doing this for free.
@socaldad2002 And people thought MySpace would last forever, too.
It’s not that we resist change. Just the opposite. Our experiences lead us to expect “better” (or “fresh,”) when better is promised. None of us could get away with this performance in our own work.
We “had a thing going.” Hard to accept we now spend our time just trying to figure out the dang road map. Plus the host of inane new posts. And the arguing from kids, (more than several posting as self designated experts.) Where’s the light?
There are other educational companies. They just have to see the worth. Right now CC has no competition. If that were to change trust me the website would be fixed pronto.
@socaldad2002
I am with you here. Maybe because I have only been on CC for a couple of years? I don’t think the “upgrade” of this site is done perfectly, but I got the hang of it and can use it now smoothly like before. Kind of surprised that so much frustration is still in the air. Yes, the look is not the best but CC’s working for me.
Funny thing, but if you can’t save a draft, it does affect your response. You can sit there and count to 15, hope that’s enough (which it isn’t, always.) Or wait to see if the “Draft Saved” popup appears (no rhyme or reason when it does or doesn’t, for me.) Or keep your fingers strictly on the keyboard, not to trigger any nonsense.
Or just rush out a post. Bet that works for the young’uns. Maybe that’s why some are so testy.
I’m checking out of this thread. It’s going no where in terms of results except for making ME testy and it’s become depressing that after 110 pages and 3.5 weeks we have neither nothing we have gained.
I think disregarding those that have contributed greatly over years (and the comments they are making here) is foolish, because these posters know what has made a thread tick, and what they contribute actually matters - it matters very much. Like many, I frequent a few schools sites more than others. On those that are the most helpful and do what cc intended - there is either a forum champion or long time contributor that keeps the thread alive, accurate, and vibrant. I have also checked in on other sites without those types of posters and those schools have forums that have just been fading into obsurity for years - they have no useful purpose even being on line. People ask questions, they sit stagnant, then a year later, someone asks the same questions and again no real response or community develops.
So if they don’t heed at least some of the advice/suggestions of some of these very active posters - more forums will become stagnant with their departure and absence. The names seen throughout this thread are the who’s who of contributors - they make a huge difference to this site, they do it for free and give a lot of their time to help others. It makes this site what it is.
A lot of people just get what they can from cc, it is full of posters that post from 1-10 times, contributing nothing, only asking questions - the “takers” or the “hit and runs.” It is the long term poster that keeps a forum alive, helps it grow, makes it a community and makes it buzz as a reliable place to come. I think listening to the concerns of this majority or minority - whatever the number - and acknowledging them is the least CC can do. It can only help.
@blueskies2day Great point and the proof of this too is the badges they implemented. I had no idea that so few posters contributed long term. The number of posters with 1,000 comments is a few hundred. A site like this won’t survive if the only activity was from one and done/lurking users.
thanks @notrichenough
the ##'s dont lie. They NEVER do.
The changes that were recently made = a drastic decrease in posts, page views, unique visitors, google indexed pages, etc. etc.
this version is driving people AWAY, not TOWARD CC.
too bad since a major revision was NOT necessary and was done by idiots who obviously did not understand how or why CC became so famous and popular.
the countdown clock is ticking, ticking, ticking…
and the only ones to blame for the eventual demise of CC will be TPTB.
Please delete the badges. They are totally unnecessary. The only way to know what a badge means is to click on the badge. I know that might increase clicks on this site…but they are meaningless clicks.
Vincit seems to have quite a lot of activity on Twitter. I had previously tweeted Strada with no response, but I just tweeted them and VincitCali. Let’s see if anyone responds.
I know I’m late to this thread and the topic of discussion seems to have shifted somewhat, but just wanted to add my frustration with this redesign. As I’m typing this response, I notice another issue: why is text in the Reply box double-spaced? Why is a quarter of the page’s vertical real-estate taken up by a “Recent Activity” feed at the bottom of the page, which makes it impossible for me to easily scroll to the end of a thread without scrolling past into the useless “Recent Activity” section? Everything about this redesign screams poor use of space. And this is without even mentioning the complete mess it is attempting to navigate the forums, which I’m sure has been discussed to death after 111 pages.
The previous designs were cleaner, simpler, and functional. This one is none of those things. Having lived through many redesigns on many forums and websites over the years, this is easily one of the ugliest and most non-functional. I cannot imagine that any usability testing was done before this was rolled out.
While we respect everyone’s opinion about the new theme (and, as said, we have taken notes and are working on providing improvements), please note that it is against the site rules to incite other users to reach out to random people you assume are “responsible” for this implementation. You are targeting people that have nothing to do with it. Please refrain from such actions!
@notrichenough -your link to the analytics page is helpful, but it shows a dropoff in traffic that goes back quite a while, and also suggests a problem or issue with Google indexing. Google has been pushing for a while to get the sites it indexes mobile-friendly-- basically, it penalizes sites that don’t display well on tiny screens. And the Googlebot “sees” sites from its point of view – so it is possible that the “new look” is an effort by web designers / SEO specialists to essentially make the site prettier for the Googlebot. I find the new design loads much more slowly for me on mobile than it used to (which is NOT a good thing – Google also penalizes sites for slow load times) — but it does seem to me to have a cleaner, more easily scrollable look on the small screen.
Obviously, we are humans and not bots and many of us are using laptops or tablets most of the time, so a redesign with the small screen in mind is not at all helpful. But that might be the motivating factor behind the change. The search engines index but they don’t post or engage, so the usability problems we experience maybe irrelevant for the search engines, as long as buttons and other graphic elements are large enough to meet their criteria.
That whole design-for-the-small-screen thing is why so many websites these days have gone to a very simplistic, boxy look. The same thing that looks sparse, with too much white space, on a desktop or laptop will fit very nicely on a smaller display – and website design protocols these days encourage an approach of building from the smallest display side up, rather than the other way around.