Community improvements - We've been listening!

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.

  • No good thanking me for my patience......  my patience is fast running out!!  I have two ways of getting into the Site, and one of them will not accept me whatever I do, as it says I'm using the wrong password, which is ridiculous as its the one I've always had and is "remembered" by my desktop pc.  Now that I've finally got in here, I've spent over five minutes doodling around trying to find a way to submit my BirdWatch findings, and there is no way to see where you should go - what happens when non members come on here and find it so user UNfriendly, I don't know! - you'll lose a lot of possible members as well as many present ones with this stupid system and way of navigation around.

    I noticed that both Limpy & Clare had stopped posting, and I have myself stopped several times, instead of my daily visits I now find it very frustrating in every way.  Last time the site was updated we were all apprehensive, but found it to be workable even though different.  This time it's become something which is not useable nor workable.

  • And like the last time which is very annoying for me, no one from the RSPB staff are replying, just like the last time when a number of forum members left. As I’ve mentioed earlier Clare and Limpy are founder members of this forum and I joined soon after and I feel like leaving and I’ve always loved this forum and posting and reading all the posts have been fantastic. It’s just so frustrating that no one seems to be listening to any of the forum members. There seems to be a deafening silence from the RSPB, as though they aren’t bothered or listening about this forum or forum members views at all. It’s just so unsatisfactory from the RSPB and I’ll leave it at that for now.

    Regards,

    Ian.

    Regards,

    Ian.

  • Just as an update to reassure everyone, I bumped into Clare at Minsmere today.  Making tea :-)

    ___

    Find me on Flickr / All about your camera - The Getting off Auto Index

  • I did email Clare about 6 days ago, but sadly I haven’t had a reply. Glad to hear she’s ok.

    Regards,

    Ian.

    Regards,

    Ian.

  • This time it's become something which is not useable nor workable.

    Sorry about your frustrations, Lindybird :-*  I'm hoping for, but not expecting, major improvements "soon" :'(

  • but not expecting, major improvements "soon" :'(

    CHOL:):) see HERE

     

  • Thank you IT folks, more updates as promised. Larger, bolder text in reply box, date and time now shown when a post has been made, numbered pages, oldest to newest posts, signatures now showing and I now have spellcheck when on iPad, great! Maybe there are more tweaks that I have not yet found. Thanks.

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

  • I've not had any email notifications for over a week, then all of a sudden, a whole batch appear!

    Has the site been down for maintenance I wonder!

    Nice to see the page numbers at the bottom, so something definitely has changed, for the better. Definitely a 'thumbs up' from me. Thumbsup