March 22: Follow up information on Navigation updates!
Hello everyone!
In this post, I outlined our plans for navigation updates. We've been working on these updates over the past few days and will launch them tomorrow morning. Below you will find further details on what to expect. Changing the navigation may throw you off a little bit. It's like we are rearranging some of the furniture in the house. Please take a little extra time to get used to the feature.
As a reminder, the purpose of the update:
------> Update the main sub-community landing page to be more relevant for each individual
------> Make it easier for new users to find sub-communities and connect with them
------> Create a central hub for you to find important community information like: alerts, 7 Cups feed posts, recent blog posts, Group support events...etc and more!
Here is what you can expect:
The top navigation bar will look like this:
The community button will no longer be a drop down (ignore the arrow you see there presently). When you click this top community bar, you will be brought to this page:
Items to keep in mind on this main community page:
------> The following community & site features will be housed on this page: blog, community calendar, information on reputation, internships, community guidelines and about us! These items will be located on the bottom right hand side and look like this:
------> There are two direct linking buttons to the forum (one circled in pink) and the other is listed on left bar direct below the last sub-community
------> Alerts will be located directly above the calendar on the right side
------> On the left side, you will see a list of the communities you subscribe to. Below my subscribed communities, will be a list of other communities you can join!
------> Chatrooms are located in the middle! The rooms listed will be only those associated with the sub-communities you are subcribe to!
Additionally, we've moved the direct link to the feed & support buttons! They are now located in the drop down under your picture icon on the right side of the page.
Thank you for all of the feedback everyone! I've condensed all of the feedback into a master list. Check it out below:
Navigation Updates - Feedback from Community:
1) 2 clicks to get to the forum - people do not like this extra click
One suggestion - How about similar to the "Chat" we have a "Post" drop down menu? Under that it could have the Forum, Feed and Q&A links?
2) Group support - we only list the rooms for which you are subscribed too. Could we add a "see all rooms" button?
3) add additional text (or hover text) on those forum home buttons that reads, " can't find your community? Check here for a robust list of all of our topics"
4) If you subscribe to no communities, there is a large white space in the middle of the page
5) Some of the stuff on the right side column looks too squeezed together. these items need more width. The text is too small on the side pannel.
6) One of you thought that the group support buttons in the middle would link to the main sub-community, not the rooms.
7) Bow Valley post is showing when it shouldnt be - It appears to be an organization (Bow Valley College: https://www.7cups.com/forum/BowValleyForums_163/BowValleyCommunity_1107/Welcometothe7cupsBVCListenerforum_64291/). If people cannot access the post, it should't be showing up for them.
8) Isaac's screen grab about the labeling (check it out above)
If you believe I missed anything - please chime in & let me know. I am passing this list on to our dev / product team (aka Krink & crew)
@Laura Forgive me on this if it's been mentioned already and i am brain farting on it.
I just looked at the feed, and it's missing a TON of posts I remember having been there just yesterday. Unless the "homepage" is only supposed to show a sample of them for some reason?
@ladylazarus1971 My understanding is the feed on the community page is only showing the posts from the 7 Cups account.
I agree with everyone who says they want easier access to the full forum again. I like to check the "New Threads" section in particular, to see if there's something I can contribute, since I have experience/interests in a lot of different areas. There are often a lot of forum threads with no or insufficient replies as it is, and I imagine this would get worse with the current navigation.
@curiosityofnature - beyond the existing ways to get to the main forum page what other access points would you like to see?
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
I don't know, the old way worked perfectly fine for me. I don't see the need to take the drop-down away. You could have the "Community" portal highlighted and "All forums" further down in the drop-down menu?
Hey back with more feedback, I don't like the way the calendar is set up. I hate that the old page with the calendar is gone. Also the schedule is out of date and isn't really used.
@BurningEmber - there is still a click-through to the full calendar but right now it's on tockify instead of embedded in one of our pages as before. we'll fix that. otherwise we did not change the calendar.
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
Yeah........ I hope you fix it soon. I don't like looking at it from tockify. Too many things in a pile is overwhelming for me.
Also i want to add I like the POST tab idea! It would help with the clutter I feel the new community page is!
@BurningEmber - sure but on tockify it looks the same as it did when it was on our page just minus our navigation at the top and our footer at the bottom?
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
There were 2 ways to view the calendar before. The tocify page where it's side to side, as now.
Then there was the one where it was only going down. Similar to how it appears on the community page, but the full page of it. I can't find a way to access that anymore. Even going through my history, the link doesn't appear to work ie. https://www.7cups.com/member/communitycalendar.php
@AffyAvo
Yeah I prefer the list that Affy mentioned @KrinkTheMellowUnicorn looking at it on tockify overwhelms me
Additional issue - with the new format, more spam is being missed in the forums and left up longer. I typically check around this time of day and there are 1-2 threads from the last 15 minutes, but everything from the few hours before has been removed already. Because it's slower to get to the forum main page, I believe less spam is being spotted in the 'new threads', and I just deleted ~20 threads from the last 4 hours. Obviously this is a data point of one day, but given that I typically get to that page and check within ~5 minutes on the site and today didn't get there for 30 minutes because I didn't go through the same flow (went straight to notifications instead of forum since getting to forum is less automatic), it wouldn't surprise me if this is the beginning of a trend.
I also struggled to find the old announcements have typically been able to be spotted from the feed page (was trying to find this thread again)...perhaps just an issue of changing what I'm used to, but could also be an issue of not being intuitive to use.
@Anomalia I had the same experience yesterday-- I must have deleted close to 2 dozen in 1 go!
@Anomalia It took me a while yesterday to learn how to get to the main forums as I was confused with the layout and when I did as you said there was more spam which I did delete and had been up for a while so I share your concerns with this.
@Anomalia - thanks for this scenario. still evaluating all the feedback. in the meantime would it make sense to bookmark the main forum page?
maybe we need a favorites menu and the ability to choose which items you want direct access to. hmm just thinking out loud.
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
I WOULD LOVE A FAVORITES MENU. While you're at it a list of my subscribed threads please
@BurningEmber
Yes to both!! I'd been daydreaming about these with no hope that they'd become reality, hehe.
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn - Favorites could be intriguing...not sure if by bookmarking you mean my personal bookmarks or on the site - for my personal bookmarks, I can equally quickly just type in the forum address - my concern is more that people aren't going right there and are thus leaving spam up (and lowering engagement) than that it's hard to find if you're looking for it. But if you mean reinstating a link at the top, then I'm all for it! :D
@Anomalia - Update: this seems to be a continued issue - I've noticed it every day that I'm able to log in.
also, just throwing this out there, but navigation is starting to get *really* awkward, as in the forums, this link changes from forum to community landing page based on whether I'm on a forum page or community page. which are both accessed through the forum page. ._.'
like all in all i think the major problem with your overarching plan for the site? is that you are trying to make communities and forums the same thing, and forums accessible only through the community pages. forums can be part of communities, but forums shoud not be communities, imo. communities should be a wrapper for all content related to a subject, with the forums included but distinct, or you will never be able to fix your categorization and navigation ("being able to find stuff") problems and will only make them worse once you get over the initial orientation.
@bunnypants - i hear ya, pal. chewing over all of this
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
@Laura @7cups Does anyone know where the section "My Notes" went since the changes? I can't find them anywhere and I had some important information in them that I would like to access. Thanks in advance for any assistance.
@ZenJen19LMFT you clicks on your profile picture for that now, dear, upper right corner ^-^
is where they hid most of the community links.
I would really like to see a link to the forums back in the main dropdown menus. It was much more apparent that way, plus easier.
I'm just gonna come out and say it, these changes are too overwhelming. And newcomers are just never going to be able to find anything other than the eyeburn therapy button.
Also whyyyyyyyyyyy is this one long page?? Is this how it's going to be? No multiple pages so people aren't scrolling forever?
@Laura
Hi, Laura!
I actually like these changes, but what I would really like to see -- or perhaps I am simply unfamiliar with a current navigation system already in place -- but I have trouble "re-finding" the threads that I have contributed to. For example, if I get a notification about a forum I've already written in (such as a reply to my post or a new comment), I am only able to click on that notification once. However, if I am unable to reply at a specific/certain time, that notification disappears forever and I have to type in @janieRose in search in order to track the thread down again, and then I have to click on page after page in the forum in order to find my specific comment. It would be nice if there were a place to go, either on our home page or our feed, that allows us to more easily check-in on the places where we've been active and on our posts, specifically.
If something like this is already in place, I'd really like to know how to use it! But if not, this is something to think about, I suppose.
Thanks so much for listening!
Janine
@JanieRose I used to be heavily into message boards and forums in the early 2000's when they were still shiny and new and all the rage, and on most Forum formats, like BBC code, they had an option to see all posts by this user, and it was extremely simple, yet effective. I am confident it could be applied here and even privatized to only allow the poster to view their own log and no one else's, but I have no idea how any of the mods/admins here feel about that kind of system. I just know that it is not only possible, it is an extremely simple code to implement.
I also hope they do this, because I have also been frustrated by this exact issue.
@alereksoulmates yeah their forums have never behaved like forums. and this is why i smack unicorn's nose real hard when it comes to converting them to communities, because will never, ever, ever be proper forums with basic forum features if they do =X_X'=
@JanieRose
Same here
@JanieRose I too have this issue all the time! If enough time has passed I don't even try.
