Hi community!
Recently, our members noticed a large change in the way that discussions appear on the forum. In one conversation, some community members mentioned the possibility that our forum platform provider may have rolled out changes to the look and feel, and that the SOLIDWORKS forum team updated to the new version. This is very close to what happened.
Three years ago, Jive deployed an update focused on the redesign of content pages and the rich text editor. Platform administrators were given the option to roll the redesign out to their communities or keep them with the older format. The SOLIDWORKS administrators at that time picked the latter option. After the initial redesign, Jive went through a pair of ownership changes, and eventually become part of a larger engagement company named Khoros.
On April 1st, the Khoros team posted a blog announcing the old user experience was no longer to be available on the platform, and all Jive communities would move to the new experience with the forthcoming release. Unfortunately, we were unaware of the release's deployment until after the new experience had been pushed out to the SOLIDWORKS community, and it is not possible to revert to the old format.
We value your feedback, I will consolidate the community's comments and relay them to the Jive/Khoros team towards the goal of guiding improvements to the overall content presentation. I am also working on reconnecting lines of communication to prevent this situation from repeating itself, as well as keeping the community better informed of platform news and updates.
So, let's hear what you have to say!
Regards,
Charles Dane
Community Manager, SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE
Hey Charles,
I honestly don't mind the new layout all that much, I actually find it to be more lean with a more professional look. What I do mind though is the share of bugs it brought.
For instance, threads do not get split in pages anymore except for The Kitty Dump, which seems to be bugged anyway as you can't really access the last page except by clicking the ''Last reply'' button at the top. Having threads not be split in pages makes it become a bigger loading for the web page. It also consumes more cached memory I believe, as huge threads can freeze certain browsers for a certain period of time until they finish their loading.
I find it a shame also that the whole ''Question'' part of the forum has been brushed aside. You can't even create questions anymore, you have to convert your discussion to a question, within the first 15 minutes of creating it. Not only that, when you convert your discussion into a question, the questions do not pop-up for some reason in the ''All content'' section.
My SolidWorks forum login is still in spanish for some reason that I can't explain also, it doesn't really bother me that much but that should be fixed to fit with the user's region language or whatever.
I'll try to report more things as I fall upon them.