New Boards Layout - Finding the Daily Forecast, Current Conditions & Contest

M.T. Cranium

The learning curve is steep if you're seeing the new format as I am today ... but more or less by accident, I found the sticky threads. You've perhaps noticed that they aren't in the menu. They are now found by clicking on "CHARTER and IMPORTANT" in a green box located at the upper right of the menu page. This is where to click to get into the current observations thread, the daily forecast thread and the April 2016 contest thread. Once any given thread is un-stickied (comes unstuck? perhaps not a good choice of words in a weather forum) then presumably it appears back in the menu but back where it was last commented upon.

Any mod, I would ask, please leave this thread up for at least a week until we have either a better solution or the appearance of full realization that this is where you go. Some may think this change was going to be easily understood but I don't think the words "CHARTER and IMPORTANT" really signify sticky threads, realizing this is a Boards-wide policy and nothing to do with our weather forum moderators. Maybe if they changed that to CHARTER and STUCK THREADS or whatever the right terminology is?

Lumi

Thanks MTC
As per this General Site Announcement, the new Beta site has now gone live for all contributors accessing the site from outside of Ireland. It will be rolled out to the rest of the user base over the coming weeks.
For anyone who hasn't already experienced the new, responsive Beta site you can 'turn Beta on' at the bottom of the page and have a look.

Under the new layout, Stickied threads and Sub Fora are now accessed via a drop-down menu located on the green 'Weather Forum' banner. That means that if we retain the Daily Forecast, Competitions etc as stickied threads you have to click on the drop-down menu to access them in future.

For users who have been automatically switched to Beta you can easily revert to the 'old site' layout by clicking on "Legacy site" on the top right of the page on PCs, or at the very end of the page on mobile and tablet devices.

This is only one of the many changes the new Beta site will bring to the Weather Forum - for instance, locations and signatures aren't visible so including where you are located in your post will be important etc.

I have already raised the issue of the stickied threads and the likelihood of a negative impact on traffic to, and visibility of these threads (and the forum in general) in the Mods forum and during initial testing of the new Beta site.
Development is on going so if you have any comments or suggestions to make, PLEASE post them in Feedback and/or Responsive Site Testing where your comments and suggestions will be seen by the Dev Team and Office Staff.

Feel free to have your say here in this thread but remember, the people who have the power to act on your suggestions and make changes are unlikely to see any Feedback posted here unfortunately, so use the above mentioned threads as well.

Dav will be posting regular updates here on bug fixes, feature updates etc so it's worth keeping an eye on this particular thread.

M.T. Cranium

Okay, wasn't aware that it was only rolled out for those out of the country, so anyway, just make a mental note that when this happens for the vast majority, your stickied threads will be in that drop down menu. As far as our forum goes, I think it might make sense to drop the sticky option as the threads in question are renewed often enough that they should stay in view on page one. I see that they are bringing features on line -- six hours ago there was no toolbar on the reply box, now there is one. Hopefully the edit function works too because I need it quite often on the contest threads to edit scoring tables.

(ah good, the edit does work -- I was going to mention that the legacy site option merely logged me out and informed me that the site was not available, so presumably that is another task on their fix list.)