Community Updates March 31st

[Scott]

Hi Everyone,

Starting today we'll be slowly making series of adjustments to the user interface (UI) of this Community site to bring it in line with our plans for the future. Today's update brings mostly visual updates to how posts and discussions are presented, but we've also added a short description at the top of each board page to clarify its preferred usage.

An example is the Technical board (aka Technical forum). The idea is to provide a bit of guidance on how a new user can easily make use of the tools on the page. While best practices are observed by most, it's our goal to ensure that users can easily find the information that they're looking - https://community.zazzle.com/t5/technical-issues/bd-p/ctech

Also, the Feedback forum will also be renamed to "Ideas & Suggestions" to clarify its role within the community. This board is a slightly different style than the rest, with the major advantage being that we can easily generate reports of the ideas that are submitted to us. The drawback is that the conversation features are pared back (can't reply to other comments, and can't give kudos to another comment). If there's a topic that you'd like to have a conversation about then we'd suggest using the General Discussion board instead.

Finally, we were finally able to sort through an issue that was only showing 5 discussions per page. That's been increased to 15. We do plan to add pagination in a future update.

In the coming weeks we'll be updating the home page and adding a few new features. Pro-level forums are still in the works, but they're not quite ready just yet. We're very sorry about the hold-up here.

[Scott]

Also, separately: on the Creator Hub page (https://community.zazzle.com/t5/creators/ct-p/ssell) I added a Bookmarks module near the bottom of the page.

I personally use bookmarks in a few of the communities I visit. It's a super handy way of keeping track of conversations with important tidbits of information. I'm curious how many of you use Bookmarks here, and whether this module will be useful in the long term.

I've added it at the bottom of the page for now so that it's out of the way, yet still easy to find. If you don't see it there then it's because you dont have any Bookmarks.

- To bookmark a post go to the upper right corner of the post and click on the down arrow, then click Bookmark

- To bookmark a discussion go to the upper right area of the page and click on the Options button, then click Bookmark

Feel free to reply back to this comment and let me know what your thoughts are here. 

[Jessica_K]

Thanks. And once we've made a few bookmarks from within the community, what's the best way to view them again?

[PAZP]

A welcome change.

"we've also added a short description at the top of each board page to clarify its preferred usage."
I just noticed this on the "ideas and Suggestions". 
THANK YOU for the continued improvements.

[waterart]

The forum description takes up too much space at the top, maybe it should have fewer paragraphs

[BKMuir]

Also, the Feedback forum will also be renamed to "Ideas & Suggestions" to clarify its role within the community.

It seems that this would have been an opportune time to make the access to new posts/replies more user friendly. Hunting through 10 pages for the 1 elusive reply is not too unbearable, but when it gets to 100 pages (or even 20) is anyone going to bother?

[Scott]

Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to sort by the most recent comment. It's possible that we may add this in the future, but I haven't looked too deeply into it just yet. If you're interested in a conversation happening in the comments of a particular idea submission then I'd use the Subscribe feature to be notified when people leave comments.

[BKMuir]

Scott - It seems that all threads are sorted except the "Ideas and Suggestions"

I can zip through all of the new posts quite quickly by sorting NEWEST and reading the latest posts (since my last visit) then clicking the NEXT TOPIC button which will show me BOLDED titles until I get to a topic with no NEW comments.

It is only the IDEAS board that is not sorted. As noted in several other threads - people are giving up on keeping up-to-date on the new posts.

[BKMuir]

The information at the top of the various boards are nice (perhaps they could have the possibility to shrink/grow ... Less/more)

Suggestion: on the Show Me board especially, could there be a "suggestion" that the originator of the board limit their images to 1 or two? As this post is repeated on every page going forward, those people who post 10 or more images are taking up a lot of space and causing readers to page-down repeatedly.  If the original poster wants to show a collection, that is fine, as these only use one image.

Thanks for considering this suggestion.