Navigating 7 cups?

@charmingHemlock1141

Hello!

Sometimes it can be hard navigating a new website we are not familiar with yet. I hear you! Have you been given the member welcome pack yet? If not, I think it will be helpful to give it a look. It's an introduction to the site and gives a lot of helpful information to new members! Here it is just in case you want to give it a look! I feel it will be helpful! :) Member Welcome Pack! 💛💫

Also, the Dashboard works as a homepage! While the Community tab is where you can explore the forums. You can also Browse Listeners! Hope this helps a bit!

@charmingHemlock1141 No, there is no easy way to navigate the site.

Instead of a single home page, 7 Cups has three different ones (or four if you count the app).

If you go to 7cups.com while you are not logged in, you see an "onboarding" page—as in, "Welcome on board!" like we're a ship 😉 Once you are logged in, you cannot return to this home page.

If you go to 7cups.com while you are logged in, you are redirected to your dashboard, which is your personal home page. The page itself doesn't contain the word "dashboard" but you can see what page it is in the title and the URL.

If you go to 7cups.com/home then you get the community home page, which is really a forum. The page itself doesn't say it's a forum.

If you log in on a device that someone else has used recently (maybe because a family member borrowed it, or it's a shared computer in a library or an Internet café), then 7 Cups might redirect you to whatever page that other person was reading, instead of to your own dashboard. Personally, I think this is a bug.

There are also some bugs in the notifications, and unfortunately they never seem to get completely fixed, although the colours change from time to time.

Charlie

@charmingHemlock1141

Hahaha!! I sooo feel your pain there. A roadmap would be great!

All the sidebars and extra fluffy stuff is like having a gazillion billboards popping up.

I'm very new here, but it seems to me there's a huge difference between the web site and the app. I know that personally I was in a one on one chat with a listener, and I had to leave abruptly. One of the (MANY) suggestions I was given by the app was to utilize some of my tool options. Tool options? What tool options?

The suggestion stated they were in the top right hand corner of my chat window.

WRONG!

There was absolutely NOTHING there except the three vertical dots that are on every web page, but I was on the app, so I assumed clicking on those would give me the available tools.

WRONG AGAIN!

The optional "tools" are non-existent in the app, or at least in my app they are.

The site also allows you to enter forums that are for categories which don't apply to you, or you're not part of. For example, I commented on a forum today titled Something something "for content creators". I'm not a content creator! But I was allowed to post anyway.

Then a verified listener told me were all are welcome on any forum and any discussion, so why they specify certain subjects or responsibilities are in their titles has me stumped.

Yet some titles aren't specific enough. Like today I found out the community for 50+ isn't for people 50 and over, but for people who have issues that face people 50+. If that confuses you, take the following example: consider a 53 year old wants to discuss depression. Depression isn't specific to people over 50, so that wouldn't be the appropriate forum for that 53 year old to make a post, because it's specifically for ISSUES that face people over 50, correct? But if the forum was for PEOPLE 50+, it WOULD be appropriate, do you see the difference? (Reminds me of an old commercial for Start Kist tuna years ago but WARNING ️ I'm using EXTREME poetic license with this, except for the final line):

"Friend of Charlie the Tuna (who's wearing a smoking jacket and holding a sniffter of Courvoisier Cognac): Charlie, why the get up?

Charlie the Tuna: To show Start Kist I have good taste so they'll want me!

Friend of Charlie the Tuna: But Charlie! Star Kist doesn't want tunas with good taste! They want tunas that taste good!"

That last line confused the living HECK outta me at seven years old. I didn't figure it out until I was well into my twenties! 😳

But my whole purpose for replying was to tell you there's hope! I'm fairly savvy with computers, I love to read, and I love to write (betcha couldn't tell, regarding that last, couldja? 😁😇) Anyway, I joined a membership site for new books where I could write reviews in exchange for free, new books. That website was the single most confusing site I'd ever encountered!!! Talk about computer UNfriendly, WOW!! And I'm pretty good at figuring technology out fairly fast, but this one took me a while...

Turns out, once I learned the site, it all made sense, almost magically! It's one of the most advanced websites ever created, as there are many, many different paths with which you could choose from every page on the site, and most were interactive with a huge number of most all the other pages, but for different reasons. It was crazy to try and follow all the possibilities, but amazing logic is what held them all together. Logic was basically the key to unlocking how to navigate that particular website.

So maybe this site is the other site's sister-site, or something! (Hey, at least there's hope!) 😉

Sorry it took me so long to get that small point across...🥴

But have your efforts gotten better since your first post? Keeping my fingers crossed! 🤞

🐻

@JustJacki I agree. It's bad enough that the app and the website have been designed to be incompatible, but in places the app tells you about things that don't exist in the app, and you have to somehow know to go to the website to find the thing the app told you about.

At one time forum activity either seemed to be growing, or it was hoped that it might be growing, so it seemed to make sense to subdivide the forum, first into communities, and then to subdivide the communities into many separate forums. Instead of seeing the entire forum, with maybe (it was perhaps hoped) a thousand new threads a day, you would join one community and see a manageable number.

Now that it's obvious forum activity is static or declining, all this subdivision no longer makes sense. So there was a plan to merge all the separate forums within each community. But people objected to the plan, and the resulting compromise is communities with optional topics. As you've noticed, the communities aren't real, and you can post in a community without joining it.

I also agree that in some ways all this isn't specific enough, yet I think in some ways it's too specific.

Charlie

@RarelyCharlie thanks for the validation. And actually, after investigating the site a little more thoroughly, it's making more sense to me, as did the other site I referenced in my last post.

And I think it's wonderful that anyone can post in any forum. Too many restrictions turn people off. But since it's allowed for anyone to post to any topic, why do people join? Is it so that they'll be notified of different types of posts? I can understand that. Perhaps if there was a mention about that in that guidelines post (which in my opinion should be pinned at the top of the notifications thread, or suggested to read when someone first joins.) Something to explain it before a person gets confused.

May I make another suggestion?

I already told you what I think of the policy of allowing anyone to post on any forum. But I also think certain forums SHOULD be "special", or a members only if you will. So maybe there could be a way to have both, perhaps only for the most popular forums? Another idea would be that certain forums anyone can get in the forum and read what's been written, but not be able to post unless they're "members".

I did say too many restrictions can turn a person off, but conversely, the unattainable evokes stronger desire. "Forbidden fruit" as it were.

Just a few ideas to mull over or entertain. Sorry for sounding like an expert, or a know-it-all. But I do have a lot of experience 😉.

And it certainly would be conducive to have the web and the app in sync.

To all those who've read this comment thus far, thanks for reading my humble opinions at all!

Please enjoy the rest of your week, everyone! 🌹

🐻

New too

Hi everyone in this thread …

I hope you are finding your way figuring out how to navigate 7cups. I returned in January 2023.

It is a vast community. Agreed.

There are differences in the app and website so I tend to use both depending on my activity.

The menu listing just look at each section

✅ Home

✅ Path

✅ Chat

✅ Community

✅ Training

Let these be your guide as you discover all the areas.

I used to get lost in the subcommunities or rather how to get back to the listing in the app. I am getting much better.

i hope with time you all are doing much better navigating 7cups. If you need help let me know please reach out anytime. 💕

Cheri