A few comments as I'd like to be fully transparent in my goals here...................
For starters I'm fully admitting the design isn't exactly where it needs to be. It was pushed live about a month early, but so far the damage has been very minimal. We were going to go in this direction later this Winter anyways so I'm not terribly disappointed things have went the way they have. We've been running this layout on a testing server for about 4 months now with minimal issues as Moderators have assisted in testing so we kinda knew what to expect once we went live. This all said, I 110% know we've gotta tinker with some more things and address them. Without a doubt the #1 thing I KNOW we need to fix (if possible) is to make it where the Default "sticks" as it's very stupid they don't. I've already been in communication with the developer to see about making this happen.
For the time being, if you preform the following steps you will recreate the old "New Posts" view...............
- Click on the "List" button as this removes all the "Preview" text and shows everything in the older format
- Click Filter and the check the "Unread Content" button
Once these are clicked the view is
almost exactly as it was before. I do stress the word almost as there are some changes, but IMHO the changes here are minimal. I do fully admit they don't stick, but I'm working with the developer to address that. Their answer maybe it's going to cost a ton of time/money to alter this in which I'll curse but I'm at least trying to fix this issue.
So why the changes?
As full discloser, I'm one of the younger people here on TFP in my early 40's. I grew up using forums and the current layout after I joined my first one in 1999. I've also been a user of many other social media sites for the last 15 years and have learned how to use many of the popular ones out there in order to help "keep tabs" on what my children are doing. For some time I've watched social media sites move towards an Interface that's totally different than forums and I've watched as younger people have somewhat struggled with the layout a forum offers. I've spent some time talking to the developer of this new layout and have agreed that there's some opportunity to help move the look/feel forward to help newer users while still also keeping things the same for established users. I don't think the interface is a carbon copy of social media sites, but it's a step in that direction. At the same time I am working towards keeping things the same for existing users, but we're not there just yet. I am taking notes of feedback here knowing changes are going to need to be made, but at the same time I'm pleased with the performance and numbers I've seen over the last 1.5 days.
As an example of what I'm working towards, take a look at the "Media" feed as it's one of the most polished at this point. I think it's in need of links to the exact thread (works for desktops but for some reason not mobile devices) but it's very friendly to use and does tend to keep you viewing more. I tossed this feed to my wife who almost never visits the forum and instantly she found herself scrolling looking at the photos seeing stuff she likes. This is what I'm hoping to see more of, but for sure there's some stuff that needs to be addressed. We're doing these changes in the Winter where traffic is down about 75% compared to the Summer, so let's hope by prime-time next year we'll be mostly pleased with the new direction and offer younger users a more modern option to view content.