Forum Restructuring Timeline and Updates! (Community Version)
Hello everyone.
As you may already know, the site and the forums have been undergoing changes for the last few months to make it easier to use. Throughout the next 6 weeks, we will be providing updates to the community to ensure that everyone is well informed about the next phase of changes.
The goal of all this work is to make navigation and usage of the forum easier for everyone. And, in particular, make it easier for newbies to get involved. How many times do we see someone start a post with “I’m not sure if this is the right place but…”!
The good news is that the changes are working and as a community, we’ve nearly doubled the number of posts we make and hearts/upvotes we give in the last 10 months!
Truthfully, change is always uncomfortable. Even when the change is something positive, adjusting to something new takes time and requires adaptation. We hope the changes benefit as many of you as possible. But it’s inevitable that some will not like these changes.
When you haven’t experienced a specific change, like the forum restructuring, there’s no way to predict what will happen. This is something new that we’re taking on as individuals and as a community, so this is a learning process for us all. There will be bugs, delays, and other issues as we progress through this, but we will continue to work on them to improve and not revert back to the old changes.
Main changes
The layout (template) of each (sub) community homepage (e.g. 35+ community) will be upgraded to fit with the structure and style you see today on the dashboard (7cups.com/dashboard) and the main community page (7cups.com/home).
The sub-forum layer to each community will be removed so that you go straight into posts and threads when you go into a community. This happens today when you go to a (sub) community and sort by “New” or “Popular” and see posts rather than sub-forums.
Many popular sub-forums will be elevated into becoming their own communities. This is to balance out the problem created by removing the sub-forum layer - that the top level communities are too broad and general (e.g. “Hobbies”).
When we checked earlier this year we had 30+ communities and over 600+ sub-forums! Finding the right sub-forum to post in is tricky for newer users because the topic you want could be hidden in any of the 30+ communities. One of the many areas where we need your help is to finalise the names of the new communities.
The timeline we’re working towards is to gradually release and test these changes over the coming 6 weeks. If we encounter technical issues, it could take longer.
A similar post was sent out to the community leaders. This one is meant for the community.
@CheeryMango Thanks for all that you do to make 7cups, a better place for everyone.
Your a true gem and your an amazing leader.
