Hi all,
Thanks for your patience over the last week or so while the community has been in lockdown. Good news – the upgrade has now been implemented and you’re free to start commenting and posting across the community again.
With the upgrade I’m sure you’ll notice quickly that there are some minor differences in how you find and create posts, please give it a bit of time to get used to it. To help we’re producing some step by step guides about the most commonly used feature’s on here which will be posted in this thread as well. We're hoping to have these live by the end of the week.
While the community has been thoroughly checked we’re sure that the eagle-eyed amongst you will find some issues so please if you do find any errors drop them in this thread that we’ll be moderating to make sure any issues are picked up on and corrected asap.
We know you’ve been keen to get some new features on the community as part of the upgrade and I have some news on that as well.
Thanks again for the enthusiasm and support, we hope you like it.
RSPB Digital Team
It depends what you're using to view it - on an iPad for example, although you see a similar layout to the PC, it is NOT the PC view. So the Join & Donate button shows on laptop, but not iPad or phone ( for me anyway). Such "adaptive designs" are common nowadays, but do make it a right pain in the posterior for testers....
The fact the button is deemed unimportant enough to not show on anything but PC give weight to the idea of removing it completely from immediate view - save the real estate :-)
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Find me on Flickr / All about your camera - The Getting off Auto Index
Well, I've filled out the questionnaire & asked to have it back as it was & future changes made (like quicker photo uploading) bit at a time. We will see! I'm not an old codger & normally adapt to change, but this new forum is beyond belief.
Best wishes
Hazel in Southwest France
It would have made more sense to have had a small group of community members invited over to HQ to discuss the essential changes needed (from our side of the fence) regarding this latest upgrade in order to provide a user friendly platform with less clutter and simple navigation. Unless you are a regular user of this commuity forum you wouldn't have a clue how it feels to post threads/photos/blogs or navigate around the site on a daily basis, therefore how can non forum-user techies understand the frustrations we feel in the day to day operation of this site, let alone comprehend what we are requesting and the reasons for it unless they are using it as frequently as we are. Would have been better to have had a meeting with a couple of forum representatives (not me ! ) to put our side of things out there for discussion and talk face to face with the powers that be and then have a few forum members trial it out as Beta testers prior to going live. If we are limited within the software to what we can have changed, that's absolutely fine, just let's be able to have clarified what can be changed and what can't so we can stop repeating ourselves and try have the best, easiest to operate platform that is possible and most importantly, welcoming to newcomers - without the clutter of unneccesary emoji, awards and other similar irrelevant nonsense. A lot of these initial changes now requested are not rocket science; removal of some icons/buttons and addition of others like a scroll arrow to the top of page, narrowing of header/footers etc. let's start having updates please Techies on what you are intending to improve upon and please, please keep us in the loop. I love this Community and hope I can still continue to contrubute my posts as in the past and enjoy other forumates posts/pics/blogs. We have a wonderful community here with equally wonderful bird/nature/wildlife loving and caring people so let's not demolish it. Thanks for listening .
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Regards, Hazel
As a good example of it's faults, Sheila posted on here 36 minutes ago according to the front page, but at the end of the thread is Hazys post of 2 hours ago! Everything is all over the place. I can say definately now, that if it doesn't go back to all the posts in a logical order, I'm finished. I've no hair left to pull out! LOL
Noisette said:Sheila posted on here 36 minutes ago according to the front page, but at the end of the thread is Hazys post of 2 hours ago! Everything is all over the place. I can say definately now, that if it doesn't go back to all the posts in a logical order,
Sheilas post is higher up the page. I think you will find that she used the reply button to a particular post, therefore her post will follow on from the one that was commented on.
If Sheila had used the reply button after the original (first) post in the thread then it would appear at the bottom of the list in correct time order
Richard B
Thankyou Richard, yes, I can understand that very well. BUT if 2 or 3 people had posted in the time that I was absent from the computer & their posts were hidden in the text way up, I would have no idea! We have insect & moth threads running & they only make sense if they are in chronological order. It's crazy.
Why, oh why, oh why did you include that 'top replies' nonsense??? Misleading, takes up valuable space & time, making us read the same thing twice ... we apologise for occasionally making double posts like that ... please don't treat us like idiots ... CHRONOLOGICAL is the only way!
2013 photos & vids here
eff37 on Flickr
Hi, I would urge everyone to complete the survey so that RSPB can truly gauge the genuine upset that the upgrade has caused. Ian
Noisette said: It's crazy
It certainly is.
I wouldn't like to be sitting where the Techies are at the moment, I expect they are geting it from all directions.
It ceetainly seems like there are a few things to iron out.
I filled the survey in 2 days ago. But I doubt the RSPB staff involved in these changes to these forums, will take any notice. They never took any notice the last time with the last upgrade quite a few years ago and never replied or took any notice of the survey way back those years ago. I even emailed Mike Clarke the Executive Director of the RSPB by email after the last upgrade and although he replied to my email it made no difference to the last upgrade a number of years ago.
Regards,
Ian.