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New EN Forum Feedback Thread...

We are about ready to launch new Endurance Nation forums and we need some help. We’ll pause here to let you get back up off the floor. The link is on EN, under Forums…you’ll see New Forums which will take you to the Categories Page. 



There’s a ton of reasons, but the three biggest issues were: 



1. Broken Search - peeps couldn’t find what they needed. 

2. Posting Images and Videos - Not having this pushed folks to use stuff like Facebook and Instagram instead of staying inside the Team. 

3. Mobile Access — It never really worked and despite an external solution we had to turn it off. 



So we have found an alternative, hooked it up to EN and imported a bunch of our posts thru early December. When we are ready to go live we’ll import all the most recent ones.



Here’s a walkthrough: https://goo.gl/0RFBuX 



It’s shiny and new, and it works (please search for something or click the drop down to get more specific)!



But there are some things that we’d like your feedback on:



1. Where to send folks? To the category page that shows the infastructure…or to the activity page that shows the most recent conversations? You can navigate to either once you are there…but thoughts? 



2. How easy was it for you to get over to the new forums from inside EN? Was it one click? Did you have to sign in again? 



3. Please write a new post…was it easy to do? What can be improved there? 



4. Are the forum categories intuitive? IOW, can folks poke around to find what they need? Or do we need to rename stuff? 



5. Anything else? 



We have a few more things to work on before our import, including making everyone show up as First Name Last Name vs username…but that might take a little while…



Here’s the temporary link only for you guys:

http://endurancenation.vanillacommu...Categories



Thanks in advance for your feedback!



~ Coach P and R

Comments

  • The navigation and posting went fine for me. A few additional thoughts:
    What I like:
    -I imagine the smileys will be replaced w people's avatars? cool.
    -I liked the blue ground / white lettering. Looking at the "classic" now makes my eyes hurt.
    -And the picture posting was perfect. and very fast.
    -searching did what it should.


    To the specific questions:

    1. Where to send folks? To the category page that shows the infastructure…or to the activity page that shows the most recent conversations? You can navigate to either once you are there…but thoughts?
    -I would prefer to arrive at the category page, with fewer categories, and an "unread messages" link.

    2. How easy was it for you to get over to the new forums from inside EN? Was it one click? Did you have to sign in again?
    -one click. easy.

    3. Please write a new post…was it easy to do? What can be improved there?
    yep, writing, adding photo and posting was intuitive and easy.

    4. Are the forum categories intuitive? IOW, can folks poke around to find what they need? Or do we need to rename stuff?
    The categories are intuitive, but there's proliferation. Probably 3-4 primary categories (MVP,training and racing, specific race / training communities, other non-tri stuff), and then branch off.

    5. Anything else?
    Great to see you guys tackling this. I'm all in favour of redirecting team energy and chatter to fora ... with all the other platforms and socials out there, it runs a risk of starting to look like an abandoned strip mall that used to have really cool stores back in the day, before they moved to that shiny mall on the outskirts of town.
  • Hi Coach P!




    Well this is fun, thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback!

    1 - MUCH prettier and easier to use!

    2 - Am I missing signature lines?  Are we giving up on them?

    3 - The photos that showed in this post no longer show.  No biggie if we know what will work moving forward, but some may be lost in the transition, FYI. http://endurancenation.vanillacommu...ort#latest

    4 - A search for "Nutrition Calculator" brought up a bunch of mentions of it, but none of the hyperlinks were available in the results. So it wasn't clear which post I could click on to actually click through to find the nutrition calculator.  A search of "nutrition calculator wiki" brought up zero results, even though I saw some with wiki references earlier. Hmmmm.  It also didn't take me to the wiki but I'm pretty sure that's out of scope.

    5 - I did not have to sign in again.

    6 - Aesthetically I would line up items with a graphic to the left, then move right. I'd also pull out the actual category into it's own column so folks can sort (or even just review) by that column. I find the square graphics (for started by and most recent) a bit of an eyesore when they're randomly in the table.  . For example l--> r consider: started by, most recent, category, topic, views, replys. Or give each forum (even just the highest level on down) a graphic as well and start with that on the left.  Much easier to look at.

    7 - Love the "who's online" button.  How do we envision folks using it?  Can I side chat someone?

    8 - In trying to refine a search for "Kona" to just something with "Kona" in the subject, it still returns stuff (everything?) with Kona in the text?

    9 - How will we use and who will manage tags?

    10 - EN is awesome. Carry on!




    :-) -J












  • All, great feedback thus far...many thanks here...we are working on this...really appreciate it.

    Can't wait to hear from your teammates!!!

    ~ Coach P
  • I put my comments in the new forum. Overall... "Like"!
  • Great feedback so far, I'll try not to duplicate thoughts already mentioned.

    Search: It seems to me that a search with multiple words searches for discussions with that exact phrase (as if it were within quotes) rather than for discussions with all or some of the words. Not sure if that is the intention or not, but it does make it harder to search for stuff if you have to know the exact phrase.

    Where to land: I'd also prefer an "unviewed" landing page with the categories listed on the side. There is a "Mark all Viewed" button, but I wasn't quite sure

    The formatting in the thread is very basic. It doesn't handle tables (either from excel or word) very well. Not sure we use those much, but thought it should be noted. I also had trouble getting center and right alignment to work within a post. Once I set it to one or the other, everything after followed. So I couldn't center something and the left correct the rest of the page.

    The picture and link posts worked great and were a lot easier than before. The one thing I'd point out is that I didn't seem to have any control over the size of the picture (which made it enormous).

    Copy/pasting text from a word doc works a lot better than the old forum (where the formatting would really get messed up ) except of course if you have a table in your word doc as I noted above.

    I don't see a way to "Subscribe" to a Thread if I want to follow it. I've found that to be a useful option in the current forum. Will it exist in the new one?

    That's probably enough for now. I'll keep playing with it!
  • OK- updating the profile picture and sig line is SOOOOOOO much easier! Big thumbs up there. Also, I found the area in the Profile settings that lets you get notified to certain items (my posts, posts I've bookmarked, etc). So that answers one of my above questions.
  • Initial five minutes playing around, with the things I find most critical in my use of the forums:

    • I was able to put in a sig line! And it appeared in the post I wrote!
    • I easily put in a profile picture.
    • I easily put pic into my post.
    • SEARCH IS AMAZING...I tried a few things which appeared only in comments, not titles, and results appeared...well...instantly. Is this a function of the closed system, will it work as fast when it is out in wild wooly world of the web?
    • I was impressed to find that I have created 260 unique topic threads since 2010. This a a cool feature, so I can easily search old threads of mine and not have to repeat myself
    • Notifications: all that's fine, but is there an option to (a) flag a thread so that (b) I am sent an email (to my home email address, not a message within EN) whenever a new post appears. This is pretty much the exclusive way I participate in the forums, so I only have to worry about the topics I'm interested in. E.g., I am not "signed up" in the nutrition or medical help forums, and I would be a bull in a china shop there.
    • What are the stars which can be clicked at the top right of a thread? It says "bookmark" when I hover over it, but what does that mean? (I know what "bookmark" means on my browser, but what does it mean within the context of the forums?)
    • I like the "flag quote like" etc options at the bottom of a post
    • When I click to link to Facebook, I get a gibberish page. I assume that's cause were in a closed environment?
    • When I use my iPad in landscape mode, on the first page I come to ("Categories"), the column headings "Comments" and "Latest Post" bleed over each other.

    I'm going to head over to my iPad, and see how things work on that...

  • So things worked pretty smoothly on the iPad. I tried Quote, and posting both a picture and a link, works fine. I didn't find any other display issues, except the one I already mentioned.

    Reading others' comments, "Bookmark" is the thing to click so I get home email notifications? 

    Finally, is having the "Activity" tab really such a good idea? I'm already pissed that Nemo and Tim have more "points" (whatever that means) than I do! Coach P, I'm OK with him being ahead, he gets paid for it...

  • Al, don't worry. You passed me on the top # posts a long time ago and I won't catch up now!
  • Finally getting around to this. Overall, the update is truly awesome. Great work. The search function is a huge step forward. The one "failure" I experienced there was searching for general discussions or concepts that I know have been discussed. For example, when I search "Truscott," I get too much. If I want to re-visit Al's many comments on IM running in heat, searching for "Truscott heat" or "Truscott & heat" or "Truscott and heat" produced no results. I may very well be missing an easy solution to this, but I throw it out there even if this was user error.

    Only other thing I saw that I don't like is the forum "disagree" button. I'm 100% in favor of promoting the great forum discussions that are a key feature of this team, but I like making us go through the step of drafting a real reply. Even if we don't agree with something in the OP, a button makes it too easy to do a drive-by dis. The Feed has a "like" button only and not a "dislike" one - thankfully. If there are "dislike" or "thumbs down" or "disagree" buttons, I guarantee you're going to see some "what part of my post do you disagree with, Paul?" replies, which will create instant tension. If I want to see childlike tri-based tantrums and cat fights, I can go to ST. Any step we take toward making EN a bit more like ST - even if unintentional - is a wrong step, IMO.

    I'll continue messing around and will report more if I see something interesting. Thanks so much for doing this.
  • Thanks everyone for your feedback. I think you've almost of the features over time, let me see if I can answer your questions:

    + yes we can set the landing page to being most recent categories on the side. Consider that done.

    + I was able to paste in the table from Excel. It took a table shape, it just wasn't formatted with bold etc.

    + the way to subscribe to a thread is to click the star next to the title. Then under your forum preferences you can choose to be emailed every time your bookmark threads are updated.

    + I don't see the link to Facebook you mentioned, Al…let me know where it is I am sure that’s an easy fix.

    + I let them know about the iPad formatting issue, thank you.

    + let's see how the activity tab plays out. Right now the rules are totally arbitrary so if we organize them properly that might be better?

    + I told agree I have removed the dislike, Spam, Flag elements to the forum posts.

    + for a more detailed search, you have to click the down arrow next to the search button. That allows you to specify the author as well as the topic or tag etc. It wasn't 100% accurate, but I was able to find a post from Al that he wrote about riding in the heat.

    We are really excited about the update…thanks for your patience. A few more edits and then we roll over to the new forums in early January!!!!

    image

    ~ Coach P

  • Posted By Mike Roberts on 29 Dec 2016 07:33 AM


    Finally getting around to this. Overall, the update is truly awesome. Great work. The search function is a huge step forward. The one "failure" I experienced there was searching for general discussions or concepts that I know have been discussed. For example, when I search "Truscott," I get too much. If I want to re-visit Al's many comments on IM running in heat, searching for "Truscott heat" or "Truscott & heat" or "Truscott and heat" produced no results. I may very well be missing an easy solution to this, but I throw it out there even if this was user error.



    Only other thing I saw that I don't like is the forum "disagree" button. I'm 100% in favor of promoting the great forum discussions that are a key feature of this team, but I like making us go through the step of drafting a real reply. Even if we don't agree with something in the OP, a button makes it too easy to do a drive-by dis. The Feed has a "like" button only and not a "dislike" one - thankfully. If there are "dislike" or "thumbs down" or "disagree" buttons, I guarantee you're going to see some "what part of my post do you disagree with, Paul?" replies, which will create instant tension. If I want to see childlike tri-based tantrums and cat fights, I can go to ST. Any step we take toward making EN a bit more like ST - even if unintentional - is a wrong step, IMO.



    I'll continue messing around and will report more if I see something interesting. Thanks so much for doing this.
    Are you talking to me?!! 


  • If I would have said Jenn or Tim, the point would have been lost. I needed to go with a real villain. image

  • Posted By Coach Patrick on 30 Dec 2016 03:37 PM


    ...



    + I don't see the link to Facebook you mentioned, Al…let me know where it is I am sure that’s an easy fix....







    ~ Coach P

    Here's a screen shot of the page I was talking about. It was a link from the "Profile" page, to a category called "Social". But I don;'t see it the link there now, but the page still exists..

    Clicking on the Facebook link produces this:


    { "error": { "message": "Missing client_id parameter.", "type": "OAuthException", "code": 101, "fbtrace_id": "HR2R5avP1/4" } }
  • Other things are gone from that sidebar list of links as well like, umm, the link to change sig lines, and the Quotes preferences. Could this have something to do with changing to the activity page as the landing page?

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