Upcoming changes to the Community

[Jeremy_M]

 Hello Community,

We wanted to let you know that we will be making some changes to the way the Community is organized over the next few weeks. We’re creating new categories, consolidating old categories, and moving some things around - sort of like a “Spring Cleaning” but for the Community.

We are also incorporating some of the great suggestions and ideas for the Community that you brought forward in the Public Lab.

Stay tuned!

[Jeremy_M]

Hey @NDesai,

We are still working on updating the Community, the big changes will come in a few months 🙂

We decided to remove "latest posts" as we found it repetitive with the latest topics. 

Cheers,

Jeremy

[NDesai]

@Jeremy_M Is the community still under maintenance? If not, did you remove Latest Post completely? 

[imm1304]

I also experienced slower than usual page loading speeds this afternoon.  The notification on the main Community page were also not functioning.

I assumed that with the hype generated by the new plan launch, the community pages were generating a much higher traffic than usual.

Back to normal now.  

[NDesai]

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@Luddite wrote:

All normal here @NDesai. Have you checked your notification preferences in your profile in case they were deleted?

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Ok seems to be working now 🙂 

May be some random glitch...

[Luddite]

All normal here @NDesai. Have you checked your notification preferences in your profile in case they were deleted?

[NDesai]

Community page loading looks normal but notification is not working 😞

[NDesai]

@Jeremy_M With the new change in plan, i have seen very slow page loading and notification doesn't seem to be working atm. I understand what's happening, but just wanted to let you know. 

[NDesai]

@Luddite Latest Post is back now and yes i just noticed that my post in old thread did not show up. 

[Luddite]

@NDesai Today's look seem to be the new standard. If you post to an "old" thread it will not be visible on the front page and only anyone who has subscribed earlier will be notified. If you wish to see new posts to older threads you must scroll through the View All list looking for receny posts.

[NDesai]

I saw Latest Post section was back yesterday.

What happen now? It disappeared again 

EDIT: Its back now 🙂 

[jtqt]

Just joined! 

Excited to see a new and improved forum. 

Still getting used to things but I like it when things get cleaned up regardless =). 

[Jeremy_M]

@Luddite thank you for the valuable feedback, it's much appreciated 🙂

So far the changes look promising and I do agree that we need to find a method to organize the "Topics" with the most recent on top.

I'm working on this......will update this thread shortly.

Thanks,

Jeremy

[Luddite]

@Jeremy_M So far I've seen no irate customers reporting their topic has been lost so this is my last observation on this topic.

The organization by Topic with most recent on top can bury an unresolved topic quite quickly. For example, this one is now on page 3 and so would never be subscribed by anyone new. Why not simply sort the "View All" screen by "Most Recent Post"? 

Anyway I'm willing to try any version but I can see a weekend or night time situation arising where several new topics are posted before any reply to the first is made and so it is "permanently" lost. It would not even move to the first screen with a response.  

[TroyDaBes]

Woah. This is getting interesting. 

[kutzki]

YAY! Finally, incorporation. 😉 Keep up the stellar work @Jeremy_M and the WHOLE PM team. 🙂

[Luddite]

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@Jeremy_M wrote:

Hey @Luddite, 

Thanks for the feedback and concern. Let me know what you think if we can leave it the way it is until Tuesday. Then we can reassess if it's worth reverting back. Does that sound fair?

_______________________________________________________________________________

@Jeremy_M No problem for me. Hopefully you have a way to assess how many customers are left too long without contact from the Community because of their lack of knowhow to create a new thread. 

Just noticed that ability to sort the View All by latest post date/time would bring posts to old threads higher in the list. 

[Jeremy_M]

Hey @Luddite, 

Thanks for the feedback and concern. Let me know what you think if we can leave it the way it is until Tuesday. Then we can reassess if it's worth reverting back. Does that sound fair?

@makkahn28, I'm happy to hear your loving your class! I do have a few adobe products, the one I most frequently use is photoshop.

[makkahn28]

@Jeremy_M, just curious:

Do you use any Adobe product, photoshop, illustrator, Wacom Tablets?

I'm taking class taking it, love it,  

[Luddite]

@Jeremy_M Urgent fix needed to find latest post is required. Just now a customer posted but it only appeared to me because I had subscribed to an old thread. 

[makkahn28]

Hi. Finally, PM, has rocked da house, love PM, excellent carrier 

[jairolevi]

Awesome!

This is long time needed.

JL.

[Jeremy_M]

Hey @Luddite & @imm1304,

Good eyes :), this is one of the smaller changes we wanted to start with. As @David_J mentioned, we see that both areas can become somewhat repetitive and annoying. We wanted to feature the accepted solutions to help Community members / visitors find a quicker way to get answers to their questions, and therefore, we added the "New Solutions" board.

With the change in place, you can still find the most relevant post. Below is a screenshot of the home page of the Community. As you can see to your right the latest post to "How are you celebrating" was from Cat_L 2 min ago. 

Another way of finding the most relevant discussions is by clicking "View All" as circled above and the result would be as seen below. Again you can find who and when the latest post was posted to the latest topic.

I understand the concern with Community members posting on topics that are already "Accepted Solutions"  we are working on finding an alternative method or option so this would stop from reoccurring.

Change is not always fun, I know, but I'm confident that with the changes we do deploy today, will make for a better Community tomorrow.

@David_J is flexible as well, so if something really doesn't work we can always ask him to revert it back to the way it was 🙂

Cheers,

Jeremy

[NDesai]

Exciting, looking forward to see the new changes. 

[imm1304]

HI @David_J!

You have a legitimate point too.  

Is it possible to modify the "Latest Posts" section by reducing it to a box on the right side with "Currently Active threads" title.  So no matter how many comments are currently being made in a particular thread, it can only appear in this list once.  

New customers, or first time community users often search the Community and find an old thread they can relate to.  And they tend to post a question there.   Under the current layout, only the handful of people who had commented on that old thread would get a notification.  The rest of the community won't know if someone posted in the wrong place and the customer may feel ignored.  

PS:  don't mean to give you a hard time, it may be worthwhile to just give the current layout a go as well.  Can also make a prominent textbox for starting a new thread on the search results page with some tagline like "Didn't find an aswer?  Ask the Community"  

[Luddite]

That was a two edged sword: sometimes eliminated posts worth keeping around, but more often removed annoyances from view. 

The primary concern is locating posters with real problems who attach to old threads.

[David_J]

Hi @Luddite , @imm1304 

The objective for the change was to eliminate some of the repetition on the page - sometimes there is an active thread which consumes all 5 spaces on 'Latest Posts'.

That being said, your proposal is possible to place the 'New Solutions' on the right nav and put 'Latest Posts' back where it was.

[imm1304]

Good point @Luddite

I  would like to suggest a 2 column approach for that part of the page:

1/3rd on the left side would be "New Soultions" and the right 2/3rd of the screen would be the old "Most Recent Posts" section.  

Alternatively, "Latest Topics" and "Most Recent Posts" can be 2 coulmns side by side. 

[Luddite]

Just noticed that "Most Recent Posts" are now missing from the main web page and instead there are New Solutions. On the surface this would seem to make it impossible to find new posts on topics with solutions? Many times I see customers posting under existing threads, even those with a solution. How will we find those?

[imm1304]

Great to hear.  

Look forward to discovering the re-organised Community.