After months of work and testing, we’ve finally launched our new forum experience. We explored many options before arriving at this one, but change was necessary to improve our community experience and increase participation on College Confidential. The new platform solves many issues people have experienced finding and following discussions they are interested in. It’s always difficult to get used to a new interface, but I think most people will find this platform a smoother experience. I found these tips and tricks helpful as I was starting to test the platform. You can also check out our FAQs section where @CC_Jon and I will be sharing how-to posts and videos as well.
This is far more than a cosmetic change. In the past, we experienced friction fixing issues and creating new features for the forums. As of today, the College Confidential Forum runs off of servers that our developers control and uses technology that is well-supported. In addition, the new software is highly configurable so that community managers can tune the way the forum functions. That means fewer frustrations and more improvements for everyone.
We know there are important items that need to be addressed immediately. In order to reduce downtime at launch, we put off importing:
private messages
bookmarks
reactions: agrees, helpfuls, and likes
view counts
some avatars may not have been properly imported; those affected, please re-upload your profile pic
In addition, @mentions are currently not linking to user profiles, but you will still get a notification when someone mentions/tags you.
We will keep you posted as we work to import these items/fix these issues as soon as possible.
There is one unfortunate change that we can’t do much about. Some special characters (like apostrophes) are not allowed in username and have been changed to underscores (_). If your name was changed because of the import and you’d like to change to something else, please use the contact form to let us know. We’ll do what we can to make things right.
Meanwhile, we’re also going over all of the feedback from testing with moderators, 1-on-1 interviews and the generous volunteers who looked at the preview site over the last month. As we look at the list and prioritize the work, we’ll update you all on what we are working on. You can expect those updates to be a regular occurrence.
Thank you for the update. Working on my iPad…I still find the right side column of I think latest posts too busy and would love to some how get rid of it.
Also, at the top of my iPad screen, there is a bar that includes “Forums”. I thought that would take me back to the forum list page,but it seems to do…nothing.
I absolutely hate the redesign. Perhaps it’s not yet ready for prime time. I am really fed up that all my bookmarks seem to be gone. I can’t find a way to get to the end of a thread.
There is a vertical scroll on each thread showing your progress as you read through the replies. Click on the bottom end of that scroll and it should take you to the last post.
That doesn’t work. The site is loading so slowly that when I do that, it only takes me to about the 20th reply. Then the scroll bar disappears. Long threads aren’t loading.
So no more page numbers? That is a bummer for long threads. I often refer to page numbers a particular post is on in case I want to go back to it for reference once I’ve made it to the end of a thread. That will be impossible now?
How long until we get our bookmarks back? And why is the Parents Forum all jumbled up with posts from Parents Cafe and the Class of … subforms? Are you planning to fix that?
This is now the default view. You need to select “none” in the top menu to filter only for posts in that parent forum. The default setting is “all” so you see all threads from both the parent forum and sub-forums. Here’s a screenshot that should help:
If the goal was to provide additional exercise by forcing me scan scan left, right, left, right across the page to see when the topics was last posted to, I guess mission accomplished. I probably look like I’m watching a tennis match trying to scan through topics looking for something that’s been updated since my last visit.
Getting rid of information on who last posted is a bonus “make it harder to use” feature.
But I’m sure the graphics folks are proud of moving all the useful data from a single, easily readable location to all over and/or missing to make “white space” and “modern fonts”, providing a “less cluttered experience”, or whatever that latest UX mantra is.
Being randomly forwarded to a different forum home page when I hit the Log In button was an additional bonus adventure.
As is the entire screen scrolling off the page on an iPad when the keyboard pops up to type, leaving a blank white and gray page.
I dislike the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it saying”. But the right approach is “,work to improve it”, not “,make it worse”.
How am I supposed to edit this?
(Nice - an “Add an Image” button that asks for the source of the image, let’s me select it, says it’s uploading, and only when I Save tells me “Sorry, you can’t embed media items in your post” is a bonus time waster.)
Unless you’re on an iPad, where the bottom of this scroll is off the bottom of the screen. And that’s not what every web user on the planet recognizes as a scroll bar.
And no “quote” function to reply to a post? Oh cute - unlike every other function that is action-item, you need to select the text first and then a “quote” button suddenly appears.
Why did the UX designers decide that the standard convention every web site uses, and that users understand, shouldn’t be used and they would invent their own?
I’m going to log off now. 20 years as an IT project leader - I’d fire my team if they presented this to me.
Something is wrong with the scroll functionality, at least on my iPhone. It shows as a vertical bar. When I tap it I see the horizontal bar, and I can scroll the bar to jump to a different post, but only the scroll bar - the thread itself never actually makes the jump to another post.
But overall this layout is easier for me than the old layout because I have used Discourse elsewhere. I would often navigate the old layout via Google search. So I appreciate this update and think it’ll make more sense to people once scroll functionality is repaired.
I just tried to bookmark something and got this pop up window. Is there a way to just bookmark without this? I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to put in the “What is this bookmark for” box. I just want to bookmark it find it easily in the future.
Oops, I guess the Photos link In the toolbar does not work either as it is not allowing me to add a screenshot of the text box that popped up.
