Beyond Blue’s new Forums are now live!

[Sophie_M]

It’s here! 🎉

Following some great feedback from our community, we’re excited to announce that Beyond Blue’s new Forums are now live.

Some new things you might like to explore:

• The new and improved search functionality that helps you easily find what you’re looking for
• Receive notifications on discussions you follow or posts you’ve made – update your preferences by clicking on Profile then Settings
• Try out the new mobile experience for when you’d rather access the Forums on your phone or tablet.

You may notice changes to some of the display names of people whose posts you read. This is because our new Forums technology has different rules around display names. Some of the characters (emojis, spaces and other special characters) that people have used previously in their display names are no longer supported in the new system.

We’ve been working hard to build a better experience for our community. We hope you enjoy the changes and can’t wait to hear what you think.

As always our Community Champions are here to support you. You can watch this video to learn how to use the Forums and check our FAQs on the left of the screen.

Have a look around and let us know what you think!

[demonblaster]

Hi Romantic and everyone ☺

Re replying. If I remember correctly we use to click onto a thread and "reply" was always at the bottom of every post. 

I tapped "view more" thinking that'd be how to find reply but it isn't. 

The thread title needs to be opened. 

I can't atm remember how I saw part of the original post (op) without needing to opened the discussion. 

Thanks always for your help and good communication ☺

[Hanna3]

Thank you Croix, I will try that - I find some threads are newest to oldest, but others stay oldest first no matter that I have clicked to change the order - so I'll try your solution and see how it goes.  It's annoying as I have to keep checking the date on the post at the top to see if I am reading something that is current, or is years old.  

[Hanna3]

Hi mmMekitty, I am having the same trouble with the emojis, sometimes it appears at top and often it's nowhere to be seen.

I find the original post at the top disorientating and confusing, I'd like to be able to permanently remove it too,  I also agree that I'd like newest to oldest to be permanent.

I find the forums now seem unfriendly, as if everyone is encased in a separate " room" and I can't log on and get an overall view of the landscape so to speak.  I am on another forum, for over fifties, and it's more like BB was before - I can log on and see each discussion overall, and see who is there, and go to the people I often talk with - it's easy to negotiate and user friendly.  I don't like these new forums at all, it's time consuming checking dates on posts to check I'm not reading something old, changing the old to new order, finding threads I can't find anymore... it's quite stressful and I tend to get fed up.  I'm also tired of getting notifications when anyone hits support on a post of mine, but no notifications when someone has posted a comment.  I also can't hit "support" on a comment any more, I don't know why. 

I find the whole setup disorientating and confusing, I used to see all the new people posting in one place, now I can't see them all at a glance but have to wade through each one.  

I think the old BB was better I'm sorry. I really don't like the new look.

[Paw Prints]

Hello Hanna,

One thing I can help with... clicking the support button...  you have to click directly on the heart in the button... anywhere else in the link & it won't work.... I found that one out by accident.

BB support are working on fixing why we don't get notification when someone posts...

It is a bit clumsy (well a lot clumsy)... I've found if you go to the three dots at the top of a thread & click on "mark topic as read"  before you leave that thread, then when you look at the threads you are following under your profile it will have reset the counter next to that thread to zero... you can then see if a new post is made to that thread when you check under your profile...  of course it doesn't help if you are looking for new posts.

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi mmMekitty,

Just a couple of things to try and help you out-  (Going to break this down into two posts so it's easier).

With the notifications, the whole system bugs me too but like you just trying to be patient while the BB team fixes this on the back end.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with how to get to the notifications settings so I'm going to try and break it down and let me know if it's not clear/doesn't make sense.

At the top of your screen is your profile, and if you click down to settings you'll have all the discussions you follow.  You'll hopefully see where it says 1. Discussions you follow and 2. Notification Settings 

If you click on number 2, the second option is to turn off all email notifications.  So make sure that one is clicked, scroll down to the bottom of your page and click save.

rt

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi mmMekitty,

This is for the second part of your question about permalinks 😊

So a permalink is a hyperlink (or website) that goes directly to the post.  If I click on one, up the top of the screen it's going to have a website that links straight to that reply.

Currently, this website shows all of the posts, but the permalink will jump down to the part of the screen.

If you accidentally click on it, you can just go back.  

rt

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi Paw Prints,

Thank you for clarifying the support button.

It's a bit clumsy, but the reason why is because if you could click the support button it would show all of the members on Beyond Blue who clicked it.  So they've decided to do it so people can remain anonymous except to the user of the post.

rt

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi mmMekitty,

One more thing!  I might be spamming this thread with replies at this stage, apologies!

Can I ask what text-to-speech reader you use?  There might be a way to 'hide' it.

rt

[mmMekitty]

Hi rt,

My apologies for not returning sooner. 

I'm using NVDA. 

I ought to have thought to check the settings NVDA offers. Although some of these confuse me too

Thank you for your tips; they have been helpful😺.

Warmly,

mmMekitty

[P12]

I found difficult with the new forum where posts are limited to 2500 characters. I have measured my posts to be less than this limit but I receive a message that the limit is exceeded. I didn't have this problem with the previous forum. I also believe I splitting posts into two is against the forum guidelines.