British Expat Forum

The old forum had al topics clearly visible.
This one (and I've only started using it for an hour or so) has a poor layout consisting of standard type fonts and symbols found on the most cheapjack websites possible. The 'header' at the top of the page seems to have a mind all of it's own and jumps and scrolls for no apparent reason. Why it needs to mention forums for other countries I've no idea. Some items, like Resources for example are randomly highlighted for no apparrent reason. My general impression is that everything seems to be rather deeply buried.
Shall I go on?
So what was it exactly that was wrong with the old Forum?

Ouch, Keith, but thanks for your honest feedback. There are a few points to answer here so I'll do my best to go through them. I'll take them in smallish chunks, though, in case my 'puter crashes in the middle.

OK, so I'm starting with your last question, but I feel it's the one to be answered first.

What was wrong with the old forum (actually fora, because we have ten of 'em) is that there was a real disconnect between each individual forum and the rest of the site.

People would join up and hang out on their own little patch, such as the Malta forum or the Canada forum and have no idea that the rest of the site even existed.

The revamp was intended to unify the whole site, make it easier for people to find things, and to encourage people to move around the site rather than staying in their own country forum. We wanted to create a portal so that all our information was easy to access.

It would be easier for me to defend the changes if the new version was working as it should, but we still have quite a long snagging list to get through.

Meanwhile, I can only apologise for the inconvenience. Our supporters are very important to us and I would very much like to see everyone being happy with the new system.

There's a lot of additional functionality available to you, as a supporter, that you may not be aware of. I'm afraid that I've not got to grips with it all either. We need to rewrite the FAQs when it's all functioning as it should.

I'm disappointed that you think some of it looks cheap. It wasn't a cheap project! And Kev, our Project Manager, has put in a heck of a lot of extra time on BE.

I think the underlying functionality will be excellent once it's all fixed. There's loads of really good extra things that I might never even have thought of. That said, the appearance is a bit "tabloid" for my taste and I've said so. We're not terribly worried about the look of the place right now, we just want to get it working and we'll tweak the look of it later.

I'm not sure what else to say, other than we welcome feedback even when it's not what we want to hear. It's just a pity that we get such feedback now, after we've nearly completed the project rather than when we asked for input before we started.

(That's me done for now.)

I appreciate that you appreciate that there are problems. A question I have is : 'Why would you want to encourage people to move around between forums for different countries?'. Why is it now mixed up with other countries? Surely people normally have no need to surf between forums. The old Malta forum was fine as far as I was concerned. Different topics were clearly listed and could easily be accessed. Now that is not the case. Things keep dithering about, overwriting is commonplace.
I've been spending a bit more time trying to familiarise myself with the new forum, but I'm afraid I have to agree with what another person noted: that this is truly the worst website I have ever come accross.
I hope no-one takes any personal offence, but there we are.

KB

Thanks, Keith. You may have hit the nail right on the head by asking this question:



No, no, no. That's not what we were trying to do at all. I perfectly understand that if you live in Malta, then info about how to emigrate to Canada and the like would be of no interest to you.

However, please don't forget our General Forum - ie where we are discussing things now. I believe that the General Forum is of relevance to people regardless of what country they're in.

This is where we centralise information and socialising for people regardless of what country they're in. Subjects include, forex, repatriation, UK legislation, as well as a whole swathe of topics for general 'chat' and discussion - Chinwags, House of Fun, etc, etc.

Re the informational subjects, it simply doesn't make sense for us to repeat, say, changes in UK legislation on each of the ten fora. It's much better to have all the info in the one place and available for anyone.

Same with the more chatty topics. We have a community here where people all over the world discuss films, books, cars, art, sport, food, and all sorts of things.

Much of our aim was to get people to realise that BE consists of much more than just the country forum they tend to hang out on.

More coming...

... and that leads me to my second point. Not only is BE not just the Malta forum, or any of our other fora, there's a whole big website there.

We were trying to showcase some of our content that several people didn't even seem to know we had. We have articles about all sorts of things - some for information and some just for entertainment.

Unlike some expat sites, we have a lot more than a place where would-be emigrants can ask questions. Our forum originally started as an add-on to our "main site", and yet before the revamp it seemed as though many people just thought of BE as being a forum (or a collection of fora).

Have you ever looked at the main site? - perhaps browsed our collection of photos from around the world, read about people's trials and tribulations where they live (many of them very amusing), found recipes, book reviews, etc. Please just even have a glance at our home page to see the depth of what the site offers.

There's a lot on there, so it seems a shame if people don't even know it's there. It's a shame too if people only want to use the place to ask questions on their own country forum - but, as a paying member, of course that's your right.



All the old topics are still there and clearly listed on the Malta forum. None of our Malta forum content has changed (excluding new postings). What can't you access that you could access before?

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean about things dithering about and being overwritten. Please can you tell me what and where?

Hope this helps, we do want to resolve these issues and keep our visitors happy.

PS, Keith. Re the dithering things, are you referring to the At A Glance (AAG) box with scrolling contents? In which case, as a paying member, you can turn it off. (Supporters and Premium members have more functionality than the free members. )

Go to the button marked "Menu" on the left below the AAG, click on that and turn it off.

Don't give up on us yet. We're still working on things.

I take some of your points. But I still don't see why other forums seem to be so connected, shall we say, with (in this case) the Malta forum. Why not just run a simple 'advert' mentioning the 'main site', which I wasn't aware existed before, but am not particularly interested in.
I can see some of the old topics but they are certainly not as clearly listed. It's as if everything is working but behind some sort a 'digital fog' - if I can use that expression. Its like comparing something from the Fifties, say with the 21st century (NO not better, very often rubbish by comparison).
I don't know about your computer but on mine (a University machine), as I mentioned, some auto horizontal scrolling (presumably to catch someone's eye) is present at the top of the page and also bits of fonts appear in strange places. On the first page it mentions as some sort of a heading 'Announcements' which doesn't tell me anything useful so far as I can see when I click on it. Then you've got 'Topics', 'Posts' and 'Last Post', which don't do anything. Underneath these are some funny boxes, one of which says is locked so one can't do anything with it. Then you've got 'private Boards' none of which seems to produce anything at all when clicked upon.
In fact the whole site (to be kind) looks as if it's 'under developement'. To me it looks just like the product of 'an under developed mind' - or more likely computer.

Rgards,

KB

Yes I've clicked on the menu box and a minute minus sign has appeared. The'Expat at a glance thing still continues to scroll horizontally.

kb

Keith, much of what you're describing from "On the first page..." onwards is very similar to how the forum used to work before the facelift.

The "Announcements" heading is the category heading for the four boards listed below it. Clicking on it collapses the listings for the other categories on the index page - "Private boards", "Expat/Repat: The Practicalities", and so on. That function is exactly the same as it was before the facelift. If you click on the "British Expat Forum" link in the page header, the hidden categories are expanded again. (However, I see that the link immediately above "Announcements" doesn't do that - I've fixed it so that in future it will work as it should.)

The "Topics", "Posts" and "Last Post" headers never have done anything - they're headers for the columns that appear beneath and show the number of topics, the number of posts, and the time and poster of the most recent post in that board. That's all as it was before the facelift; only the appearance has changed.

The "funny boxes" are icons which perform the same function as the ones pre-facelift; they show whether a board is locked or not, or whether there are new posts on the board.

The private boards on the general forum won't appear for you, because you don't have access to those particular boards.

The same will apply on the Malta forum - the basic functioning of the board has changed very little if you look beyond the cosmetic changes.

That said, it sounds as if the site isn't appearing in anything like the way it should for your browser/operating system combination - the "bits of fonts in strange places" in particular. What OS and browser are you using?

For comparison purposes, here's a screenshot of the general forum index page as it appears on my machine:



It'd help understand the problems if you were also able to send me a screenshot of what you're seeing - if you can, then please send it to tech (AT) britishexpat.com.

Thanks for persevering - obviously we're keen to resolve these issues as best we can.

Hi, I've managed to do a screenshot with a little help - it's easy, but its saved in Word so if you can send me your e-mail address then I'll send it to you.

k

Thanks, Keith - tech (AT) britishexpatDOTcom is the address.