An update on Connect

[_peter]

In the spirit of openness that a community site like this is built on I want to take a minute to address a few things related to the launch of Connect. Specifically, I want to talk about two things:

1. Status of bug fixes
2. What the future holds

STATUS OF BUG FIXES

In the first few hours and days of the launch we (and you) identified a number of bugs with the site.  It would be disingenuous to ignore that they happened or to downplay how they have affected what you do in the community.  Rather than come up with excuses as to why they happened, I’d like to give you a quick update on where we are with fixing them.

SEARCH RESULTS: We multiplied the indexing speed by 5X and I am pleased to report that the entire site is now indexed.

REDIRECTS FROM OLD POSTS: There was a major issue with redirecting from old forum posts to new forum posts. This bug has also been addressed. If you use a bookmark to an old STN or Juice forum post you should be taken directly to that forum post on Connect.

FORUM FILTERS: There have been some bugs related to the display of products on the forum listing page. This has been fixed. If you go to the Forums area in “All Connect” and click on a product you will be taken to the Forum landing page for the community where that product belongs with the product filter correctly set.

FORUM DISPLAY ORDER: Forum posts are now sorted by most recent comment (with an option to sort by latest post if you wish).

SUBSCRIPTIONS AND NOTIFICATIONS: We added “My Content,” to the user menu in the top right of the site.  This will give you quick access to any content you have submitted with the number of replies.  In addition, we're working on adding “My Activity,” and “My Subscriptions” These should help you find content that you have subscribed to and adjust your subscriptions settings.  Much of this can be done today in the "profile" area, but it wasn't clear to many of you.

CREATE A NEW FORUM BUTTON: For some users the button to create a new forum post was not displaying. This bug has been fixed.

RSS FEEDS: RSS feeds are now available for every community and product. We still need to work on displaying this prominently on the page. In the meantime, click this link to find the RSS feed for your particular product.

NEW COMMENTS: Forum posts with new comments since your last visit now show up in bold.

TEXT SIZE: We’ve reduced the text size in the forum listing page. As I mentioned above, there are many additional bugs we are working on, this was just a status update on the bigger ones.

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

In addition to bug fixes there are a lot of requests for additional functionality. We have 1.1 and 2.0 releases scheduled for the near future. Here are a few things we’re working on for the immediate future:

REPLY BEHAVIOR: As several of you have pointed out, replies to forum comments are not getting displayed properly. We are working to address this.

DESIGN: We’ve had several comments on font sizes, and page width. Our design team will be looking at all of these comments carefully and we will make adjustments to these based on your feedback.

RECENTLY VIEWED: We also plan to add a list of “recently viewed” threads and pages that will help you navigate around the site.

FASTER ACCESS TO CONTENT YOU SUBMITTED: While you can get to content you’ve submitted (and content you are tracking) through your profile page today, We are working to elevate that to make it easier to find.

SPEED: We're currently optimizing several pieces of code to speed up forum listing pages and other areas of the site.

Thanks again for your patience. I’ll keep you updated on our progress.

.peter