Hi all,
I’ve got some good news. We’ve been looking over your feedback and working on as many of your suggestions as possible for the last week and have got some improvements planned for next week. So we wanted to give you an update on where we’ve got to, next week’s improvements, what’s still to come, what we’re unfortunately not able to change and what the next steps are after these first updates.
Next Week’s Improvements
Text styling
We’re aware many of you were having difficulty with the default text styling. The text is going to be made darker overall, larger in most places and bolder in some places. We will also make the text links more consistent and clearer.
Some of the changes that were made as part of the community upgrade were to bring the styling in line with the main RSPB website - it’s important that we have a consistent look across all of our sites and the old community website had fallen away from these as it’s been a while since it was last upgraded. However, there are a lot of places where these have to be changed in the software and in many places the text was showing ‘default’ settings - the lighter grey text for example. This is where there have been some visibility issues which should be improved next week.
Forum post ordering & layout
One of the things we know you’ve been keen to see improves is how posts and replies have been displayed.
With the software upgrade came a new layout to post threads. This meant that replies to previous posts were indented or ‘nested’ which can make it harder to follow the order of replies. Also, it required clicking through multiple pages to get to the end of very long threads.
We plan on switching off the nesting entirely. When you reply to a previous post, it will show as ‘in reply to…’ next to your name in the post. The order of posts will also be reversed so that the latest posts show at the top rather than the bottom, so there’s no need to click through pages to get to the end of the thread. There will still be buttons at the top with ‘Oldest’ and ‘Newest’ so you can switch between these.
This all means that you will see a ‘flat’ list of all replies to the original post shown at the top of the page, going from most recent down to oldest. Clicking on the ‘Reply’ button shown under the original post will add to the thread as a whole, or the ‘Reply’ button under every individual reply will reply to that post itself.
We’re also adding a ‘Latest posts’ list on the right of the page (or bottom, on phones) which will show the latest 10 posts within that forum. This will replace the ‘Related’ post list which didn’t seem to be very relevant according to your survey feedback.
Community home page layout
We’re going to increase both the number of recent forum posts and recent blog posts shown on the homepage, from 10 to 15 (forum posts) and 5 to 9 (blog posts). Bear in mind that you can click through the pagination at the bottom of the forum posts to see more, and we’ve added this to the blog posts too.
We’re also adding a similar feature for photos, so you can view the latest photo/video uploads from the homepage.
On the right of the page (on larger screens, or the bottom on phones), we’re improving the lists here to show the most popular 10 forums and blogs. We have an awful lot of both and hopefully this should make it easier to find them.
Section pages
(ie. the main pages for Wildlife, Places to Visit, Get Involved, Our Work, Chat & About)
All of these pages are being improved to make them align with the main community homepage. This means that rather than just displaying the forums and blogs that live within them, they will also show all the latest forum and blog posts, more like before the upgrade.
Media uploads
The upload limit for attachments will be increased to 5Mb per file. We are continuing to look into how we can alter the software to have different default display sizes of images and video, once we have an answer on this we will let you know how we intend to update and improve this.
Post/blog content
A couple of people in the survey responded that they thought some content was moved or removed as part of the upgrade. It’s important to point out that no content was moved or deleted at all (except for a bit of spam that had crept in!). It’s all still in exactly the same place as before; the software upgrade changed nothing more than page layouts and styling.
Hopefully the upcoming changes will make it easier to navigate around and find what you’re looking for, but rest assured that it’s all still there.
Still to come
Reply box
We’re still looking at ways of making it easier to reply to a forum post, including having the reply box open by default.
Sticky header
We’re looking at removing the ‘sticky’ header so that the area at the top of the page doesn’t ‘lock’ in place as you scroll down, taking up some screen space.
Forum pages
We’re looking at ways of to make it easier to skip through pages of the forums by page number instead of having to click on a button to load the next page one at a time. If we do manage this then we may switch the post order back so that the oldest ones are shown first and the latest ones are at the bottom, but you’d start off at the latest page.
We’re not able to change
Who’s online
There used to be a list of users currently online which some people mentioned in the survey that they miss. This isn’t a feature available in the new software, though each user does have a coloured dot next to them to indicate whether they’re online or not… green if so, grey if not.
Next steps
Next week we’ll implement these improvements and comment on this thread to let you know. Once this is live take some time have a look around and get used to what will have changed then let us know here what we should look at improving next. It’s in our plan that for future improvements you’ll be asked for suggestions and we want to get you involved in the testing stages as well, to make sure this remains your community.
Thanks again to everybody for your patience and helping to feed into how we can improve.
I would like to see a clear demarcation between posts, I think I omitted that from my 'wish lists'.
IMAGICAT
Is the "Places to Visit" tab working ...............or is it just my computer as I can't get it to open ? !!
post edit: seems to open from some tabs so perhaps the site is just slow in areas but not others and I can reach it via right hand side list ..........
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Regards, Hazel
Hi Hazel, yes working for me also (ipad via Puffin) but is very slow to open.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Like you say Hazel, Slow.
Jim
My Pictures
My Fbook Group
It’s taken ages to access the RSPB Community Forum from the RSPB Homepage at times and I’m not visiting The this forum as regularly during each day as I’m not enjoying trying to find posts and everything is just gobbledygook on this forum website.
Regards,
Ian.
Where on the earth do you find the list of RSPB reserves in the places to visit section as I thought I had managed to reply in one of the blogs from one of the reserve posts from a reserve member of staff. My post doesn’t seem to be there since I thought it had posted successfully, but it hasn’t. Everything on this forum is just so complicated and I know of some members of this forum who’ve left because of this sad situation and even though I don’t want to leave, like one member of this forum who was a member before me and probably right from the launch of this forum, said in probably his last post, I just can’t get my head round this forum and sadly hasn’t posted since and that was just after the launch of this new style RSPB Forum. I have said I have no enjoyment now coming onto this forum and I never never thought I would say that as I’m a Life Member of the RSPB and a member from approx 1973. But sadly I’m coming to the conclusion I might have to leave this forum as I’ve always enjoyed reading other members posts.and enjoyed this forum. But it’s just so complicated and such a mess and I’m not very technical with software or computers or tablets and this is just a normal person who wants something simple to use and easy to understand and I’m afraid this is not the case. The technical staff should have made improvements that are very simple, but which is now not the case and nealy all organisation that make so called improvement make thing so technically more complicated as well as worse for the average user who just wants something simple to use and the RSPB technical staff have failed on this sad situation. I did email Mick Clark the executive director after the previous change before this present change to these forums and I did get a reply from Mike Clarke a number of years ago, but sadly that didn’t make any difference and the RSPB should realise that they wouldn’t survive without the subscriptions from the RSPB members and sadly little notice is taken of criticism of the members as has been shown before and now sadly. I hate to say this as a Life Member, but I’m just not getting any enjoyment from using these Forums any more. Just to to say I’ve found out how to find individual reserve blogs, but how on earth do you post a reply now to a blog. I tried and it seems to have failed to post. I am a member of a number of individual reserves but I now can’t to see how to reply to a blog in an easy understandable way. And it’s just so slow trying to find a reserve between the different pages. I’ll finish posting my thoughts about the RSPB Community Forums at present. I’m not happy.
As far as I can see Thomo, to get the Blogs, hit the RSPB logo at the top left, down the right hand side of the main pages you can then see the blogs, open which one you want to read, then once in the blog you can open which one you want to read. Aftrer the initial post, your reply box should show for you to reply.
I think the banner running across the top "We've been making improvements! Click for details" could do with removing now. They've done nothing more in the last month & don't seem to be listening.
Best wishes
Hazel in Southwest France
All the RSPB staff responsible for this Forum should be back at work next week. I think it's time we put pressure on them to get outstanding issues fixed.
I dislike the latest posts appearing at the top especially because they follow the very first post which can sometimes be weeks or even months old. It's just WRONG to have to scan downwards to see earlier posts. I want a simple list of posts starting with the earliest and finishing with the latest.
I would still like to see photos filling the width available by default. It's a pain to have to alter the dimensions manually in the image dialogue box to achieve this. In many cases it would obviate the need to open the image to see the detail which ca be rather slow.
I find the text rather faint for my aging eyes and would like it to be more visible. Also, hypertext links don't show up very well unless you put them in bold as I think Korky has done elsewhere.
Those are probably the main irritations for me but I'm sure other folk will have other issues to raise.
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Tony
My Flickr Photostream
Since the upgrade this Community appears to be used a lot less frequently and I really miss the amount of good posts that once used to entertain us; I feel as if we are on slippery slide where folk are becoming more and more disenchanted with the current layout/settings and waiting for further improvements requested. I too hate the default settings for dimensions, having to keep changing it to display photos more full frame and still find the latest post first which follows under the initial post just so tedious as nothing flows properly (like it should in a story - it's like chapters start in reverse after the first prologue so you can't follow the "story", hence you can't read a thread easily, having to click more ...... more...... each time and then follow it backwards.
Because I love having a community forum, gaining such a lot of helpful tips, knowledge and seeing folks bird/wildlife outings and photos, I have stuck with this hoping we can regain some of the old tried and tested familiar layout that we used to once be able to follow and enjoy. Meantime, I will try remain optimistic at the moment, hoping that we will get the majority of changes we require (certainly those changes that are still possible) in order to ensure this Community not only survives long term but also encourages more folk to join in and encourage those people who have left, to rejoin the fold.
Paul A: if you are reading this, we need a quiz to keep us entertained LOL