Updates to the members page! 🎉

We want to share with you some exciting changes we’ve made to the member’s page, so here’s an overview but as always, take a look and let us know what you think!

1. MORE INFORMATION ON THE PROFILE CARD 📝

The profile card that appears on the member's page is a summary of the information already available on your profile page, and visible only by HealthUnlocked members. The profile cards will also include health interest tags, as displayed on the public profile.

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2. THE ABILITY TO SEARCH FOR MEMBERS 🔍

It’s back! You will be able to search for members in your communities by:

- their username (as before)

- information members have chosen to display on their profile: bio, condition, treatments and health interests.

- badges such as ‘Administrator’ or ‘Moderator’.

Because the search results now consider more than just usernames it will be harder to get an exact match, but we are working on some tweaks here. The plan is to make search bigger and better, so we will be improving the results based on what you’re searching for.

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3. ‘SIMILAR TO ME’ FILTER 👯

One of the things people look for when they join HealthUnlocked is finding others who are going through a very similar health situation (stage in life, diagnosis, treatment, healthcare system etc).

Now, you will have the option to find others by using the filter ‘Similar to me’ available on each community. By selecting this new filter you will see a list of the members that match with you based on the the information you have in common displayed on your profiles and the communities you follow.

[Image above] Example:

If ‘Tamoxifen’ and ‘31 years’ are both visible on my public profile, when I select ‘Similar to me’ I should see other ladies from the community who are also taking Tamoxifen and around my age - this would be extremely valuable to me because it’s difficult to find other women my age that are taking this treatment. When I first joined the community I couldn’t spot anyone in my age group by scanning recent post and visiting profiles.

Results

You may notice that there are a limited number of matches at first, this is because only about 10% of active members and 30% of new members have information visible on their profiles.

Many more members have added information to their profile that is not visible to others. Anything that is not public on the profile page (e.g. healthunlocked.com/user/simonehu ) will not be seen on the profile cards and therefore on ‘Similar to me’. We expect many members will update their profile in order to use ‘Similar to me’ or to be removed from ‘Similar to me’. - So keep an eye on your matches!

Profiles that are 100% complete will have the best matches.

Order

For this first version, the profiles with the most number of matches (similar information) will appear first, ordered by the date last active on HealthUnlocked. And if you have your age visible on the profile (only 2.6% of members do), you will only see people who are 5 years younger or older than you.

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As always, the plan is to make it bigger and better over time, so we will be tweaking it over the next few months based on how people are using it (metrics and feedback).

That’s it! Why not have a look at the new additions and let us know what you think by replying below or getting in touch: support.healthunlocked.com/...

[LouiseRoberts]

Thanks Laura - this all sounds interesting. I am a tad disappointed that, whilst updating the page, you didn't take the opportunity to consider removing the 'most active' category as raised previously by some admin.

The other three options for finding members could be helpful for both members and admin.

Thanks

Louise

[SimoneHU HealthUnlocked in reply to LouiseRoberts]

Thanks Louise, we will review soon!

[LouiseRoberts in reply to SimoneHU]

Thanks Simone xx

[Hidden in reply to LouiseRoberts]

Hi yeah considering that the most active are no longer active on here for a long time some last post two years ago!

[kohai]

Laura,

I saw you wrote how Admin and Moderators now have badges, I guess Ambassador doesn't count?

Unless I'm looking at the wrong page, I don't really see a whole loaf of difference

And at the bottom where it shows

Program: new

neither is is hyperlinked, so isn't this part active yet?

[SimoneHU HealthUnlocked in reply to kohai]

Hi kohai, here healthunlocked.com/oa-actio...

We only have filters for Admin and Moderators on the members page because, for now, those are the only two badges that are the same across all communities on HealthUnlocked.

Some communities say 'Volunteers', others 'Pioneer' and many variation like 'OA Ambassador' - so we have a technical challenge making it work the same for all our 300+ different communities. But, badges are included in search! So if someone searches for 'OA Ambassador' on Osteoarthritis Action they should be able to quickly find you.

[Patsy164]

Thanks Laura all sounds good to me x

[Whitechinchilla]

Thank you Laura.

Just when I thought HU couldn’t get any better.😉

Good wishes to the whole team responsible.

[ostiad]

Thank you, sounds good to me 😁

[Bingo88]

Thanks LauraHu. All new to me at present. So still finding my way around. But enjoy all the chat and support. BRIAN

[Stefano1]

Hello Laura, recently when I open Health Unlocked I have had to log in every time with user name and password. I joined a few years ago so don’t know why this is happening? Thanks.

[SimoneHU HealthUnlocked in reply to Stefano1]

Thanks for letting us know! Please contact support with the browser that you use to access the site so we can investigate support.healthunlocked.com/... - sometimes people start using private browsing without realising and that browsing type never saves your login info.

[Floralqueens in reply to Stefano1]

That’s happening to me too!!! So annoying!!

[SimoneHU HealthUnlocked in reply to Floralqueens]

Please contact our support team with the browser you use to access the site so we can investigate support.healthunlocked.com/... - please make sure you are not using private browsing

[Cat00]

Profile update isn't working, you don't have my main condition even though the community is based around it and it won't save the treatments. I've filled it in 4 times and saved it only to see I apparently have had "no treatments".

[SimoneHU HealthUnlocked in reply to Cat00]

Thanks for letting us know! Please contact support with the browser that you use to access the site so we can investigate support.healthunlocked.com/...

[lcd8]

Thanks very much for letting us know Laura. I'm sure this will be really useful. I am a little disappointed that AVM (Arteriovenious Malformation) has still not been added to the list of conditions that are recognised by this site. I have had a Brain AVM since birth and it caused hydrocephalus in 1987. Yet the latter condition is the only one I can register on this site. It would be incredibly helpful if I could identify other AVM-ers (I know there are some here!) Is there any chance this site could recognise AVM as a condition please?

[SimoneHU HealthUnlocked in reply to lcd8]

Yes! We are now reviewing search terms that had no results to improve our list, I can see AVM is already there.

[Mirlo]

Thank you, sounds very good.

[lcd8]

Lovely, thanks so much.

[lcd8]

Sorry if I'm being really thick. But I still seem unable to add 'AVM' to my profile as a medical condition. What am I doing wrong please?

[Hidden in reply to lcd8]

We haven't added AVM into our list just yet, we are still reviewing some terms at the moment.

In the mean time, you could consider adding it to your bio section as that is still included in the member's search criteria.

[lcd8 in reply to Hidden]

Thanks, I have taken your advice.

[carnvellan]

Laura - great work and many thanks to you and all who helped do this. I really appreciate it.

[LAHs]

I have three comments:

1) Why is Seaside Susie on page 208 of the "most active" list, I would have expected to see her on page 1 (maybe 2)? Is the "most active" counted by questions or answers? With the exception of Helvella I do not recognize any names on page 1 of the most active list (and I know/remember many, many names)

2) Why don't you include an alphabetical list. It's still very difficult to look up someone you might be interested in.

3) Not wanting to sound pushy or entitled or anything like that but why am I not on any of the lists!

[Hidden in reply to LAHs]

Thanks for sharing your questions, I hope I can answer them for you.

1. Can you tell me which community you are referring to? Most active is dependent on the member's activity (both posts and replies) within that community only. So there may be disparities between communities depending on how active the member is in the respective communities.

2. We don't include an alphabetic list at the moment, as we have a members search which we thought would be easier to find a member rather than scanning a list. Whilst the username search needs some tweaks, if you search by the member's username, you should be able to find them easily.

3. Where you position in the list is dependent on how active all member's in the community are and the size of the community etc.

I hope this helps, but let me know if I need to expand on anything!

[crabapple in reply to Hidden]

Sorry, but that doesn't hold water. LAHs has made a good point. Following on from her post I went and had look. Yesterday I was on page 3. Today I am on page 7. There is no way, on this or any other planet, that I am more active than e.g. SeasideSusie.

[Hidden in reply to crabapple]

Hi Crabapple,

As far as I can see on Thyroid UK you are on page 5 and SeasideSusie is on page 1. The results are live (ish), so they will update depending on whether contributions increase on a community. If a community is particularly active, like Thyroid UK, the positioning of members could change daily.

[crabapple in reply to Hidden]

Bit useless then really.

[S11m in reply to Hidden]

I am the most active member on a new forum - but is that because I have made more posts and replies, in total since the start of the forum, than anyone else - or because I have made more posts/replies this week... or month?

It is great to be able to find members with a particular condition or interest - I think HU used this to find members who had mentioned IF - so they could send out invitations to "potential founder members".

If I search for "cancer" in members on "Weight loss NHS", I get over 1,000 hits - is this anyone who has mentioned cancer in any post or reply?

I want to find members who have (an interest in) conditions that might be improved by IF... or to which IF might make one less susceptible.

It would help me if I could receive notifications of all posts on a small community, but not the large community of which I am a member.

[crabapple in reply to Hidden]

BTW community referred to is Thyroid UK.

[LAHs in reply to crabapple]

Brilliant!

[Sara_2611]

Hi Laura -do you have to pay to be able to access this . Looking at the screenshots it looks quite good

[Hidden in reply to Sara_2611]

Glad you like the look of it! You don't need to pay a thing for HealthUnlocked.

To find it just click on one of the communities you follow and select the 'members' tab. You'll see the 'similar to me' filter just beside 'admins and moderators'.

Let me know what you think!

[bloodyveinpoke]

Only for Women????? Where are men's profiles??

[helvella in reply to bloodyveinpoke]

I don't understand your comment. Would you please explain?

[Hidden in reply to bloodyveinpoke]

Are you able to share some more details bloodyveinpoke ?

[bloodyveinpoke in reply to Hidden]

Poorly done.If you don't get it, I can't help.

[Hidden in reply to bloodyveinpoke]

Sorry if there has been a misunderstanding here, the image attached to this post is an example of some results.

The results will differ for everyone as they are specific to your profile, you can find yours here by clicking this link if you'd like to take a look: healthunlocked.com/advanced....

[Hidden]

I preferred this site the way it was run before. Too many changes bring about confusion, both from our side, and yours. I hardly recognise this site anymore, and am quite disappointed about the changes.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

I'm sorry to hear that!

Is there anything specific you feel has caused confusion or have some feedback on anything in particular? We really appreciate knowing where we can improve or if we need to make our communications clearer, so do let us know!

If you'd prefer to share it via email with screenshots/examples etc, you can email the team on [e-mail].

[akanari]

Hi Laura, I appreciate your efforts to make the page easier to use. It has been a lifesaver for me thanks to the kind advice of dedicated members of the Pernicious Anemia Society. This feedback is not at all a criticism. I notice that every week newly diagnosed members are messaging desperately, often with very similar questions. I have submitted answers a few times with specific things I learned from my experience, but I don't have time to answer each person .

I wonder if it would be possible to have some way of grouping some of the often repeated discussions so that people could access them. I am thinking of topics (for Pernicious anemia) such as ' B12 injections versus sublingual tablets' or 'Exercising with Pernicious Anemia.' Nothing can replace the the personal support and kindness of people on this site who generously share their knowledge one to one. On the other hand, it would be helpful to group comments on certain themes so that they are easily accessible. I know that there is information and advice available in the form of documents, but those documents have to be limited to well verified information. They cannot reflect the diversity of empirical experience, and usually do not include more specific advice such as where to access needed supplies in specific countries.

If this is already available and I have somehow missed it, I apologize for my question/suggestion!

[S11m in reply to akanari]

Hi, akanari

The wonderful theory is that people should search for an answer to a question before they ask it ...but many members are not very up-to-speed on using internet forums - and HU is not very up-to-speed in updating data for searches - so a search might not find a post made in the last few days ...weeks ...months.

I think that what you require is a sub-forum system, but if members filled in the "topic" field it would help you to search.

HU probably have the ability to broadcast messages to members that fit specified criteria - and this functionality might be available to forum admins... If everyone could do it, I think the result would be chaos.

The pinned posts are for "frequently asked questions" - is it the admins who decide which posts get "pinned"?

[glo42]

Seems very interesting Laura. Thank you

[Eternity78]

Hello Laura ! Thank you for the efforts to improve the site ..I have been asked previously by email survey to suggest any ideas that can upgrade the website..I have given my idea but I haven't seen it in action yet !

my suggestion is to have an extra ( Likes ) menu bar in our profile page , where we can go back to the posts that

we've liked easily and quickly because they consist of valuable info to us ( e.g food / medicine recommendations + names of doctors / books / clinics or medical tests and procedures that other patients like me have recommended in their posts or replies and are related to my condition ..you might say just screen capture it to save these posts , but they are too many and my gallery will be filled, then my mobile starts asking me to delete some images / files to have more memory space !! That is why it's best to collect these " Liked informative posts in one bar named (( Likes )) just like Twitter for a quick reference if I needed to go back and check on specific details mentioned in these posts that I have " Liked " .

I hope this feature will exist soon in our profile page because It will definitely make a huge difference in reaching relevant information easily and quickly without screen capture 🤗

Thank you for your understanding 👍

[AussieNeil in reply to Eternity78]

Why not use your browser bookmark feature to record those special posts? Alternatively, if you specifically want to see those posts listed on your HealthUnlocked view, just follow the posts of interest and they will appear under Saved on your Newsfeed page:

support.healthunlocked.com/...

Neil

[helvella in reply to AussieNeil]

One reason, if you do that and the original poster then leaves (becomes Hidden), you lose the option to Unsave that post!

[Hidden in reply to helvella]

If the author has decided to leave HealthUnlocked, the saved post will remain saved but it will appear with 'Hidden' in place of the username.

To remove the post from your saved posts, simply click into the post and click 'unsave' next to 'like' and it will be removed from your list of saved posts. I've just checked this works for me to be sure, does this work for you Helvella?

[helvella in reply to Hidden]

It appears Hidden, but I simply do not have an Unsave option!

Specific post:

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

[Hidden in reply to helvella]

Ahh this will be because the replies to the post have been turned off. Once this happens, no post actions are available until the replies have been turned on again.

I'll check if we can find a way around this!

[Eternity78 in reply to AussieNeil]

Thank you for pointing out that there is a ( save post ) button ..as it has been a long time since I visited the community and at that time this choice was not available !

Good to know the updates you've linked ..Thanks 👍

[Hidden in reply to Eternity78]

Thanks for your suggestion Eternity78.

Just as Neil has said above, you can save a post to refer back to later by clicking the button 'Save' just next to 'Like'. This will automatically set up email notifications that you'll receive each time the saved post receives a reply (you can turn this off in your settings, if you'd like).

Then you just need to click on 'Home' in the top left-hand corner of every page and you'll see your 'Saved posts' stored together on your newsfeed.

[helvella in reply to Hidden]

Have to say, I personally would really appreciate splitting "follow" in two -

V1 - more or less, as at present

V2 - adds to saved posts but does not add alerts, does not alert poster, etc.

There have been many posts which I might have wanted to save but have not done so as I don't want the alerts. (As you will know, we regularly get 100+ posts in a thread.)

[Hidden in reply to helvella]

Thanks Helvella, we completely agree!

As mentioned previously in our post on News-Updates 'We also think that the email notification should be optional after saving the post, but we cannot do that now for technical reasons'.

We will try our hardest to get to it as soon as possible! 🤞

[Eternity78 in reply to Hidden]

Thank you for your reply ..yess I've just realised the new features as I have been away for a long time ..and when I decided to check my email , your post was the first thing in my feed and I just get caught with the content and haven't noticed the ( Save post ) option !

This is a useful addition and best of luck with improving the HU site 🌹

[Eternity78 in reply to Hidden]

Ohh ...by the way , just noticed that there is no ( save reply ) choice if we wanted only to save a specific reply under the original post ..hope this can be possible too ..

[S11m in reply to Hidden]

I do not recall ever having saved a post - but I have some saved posts ...from months ago. Does the system work if you have email notifications turned off?

[Hidden]

Does all this new updating coincide with the HU push to outside companies etc

As find HU offering the members as tame guinea pigs!

[Sixty4]

Thankyou Laura x

[Zest]

Thanks for this information Hidden

Zest

[karen2978]

Thank you LauraHU for the information

[cllady01]

Laura, how do I delete a saved post from my Newsfeed? Sorry, I tried out the saved feature and saved a post I did not mean to and was hoping I can delete it--or do they just go away sometime?

[Nathalie99 in reply to cllady01]

Hi Clllady,

You do this the same way you save the post - underneath that post you can click on "save" button and it "unsaves" it.

[levina]

Hallo Laura could you give me some help on how to start writing to writing about cop[d I don't know where to start I could do this before but everything must have been changed I cannot even write a messages to somebody anymore Thanks a lot

Levina

[S11m in reply to levina]

Click on nine circles at the top of the screen.

Scroll down to "Find communities"

Key in "COPD"

Join any or all of the listed communities.

I think we can only search for members within one community, but you can key in COPD into the "Search members on...community" box.

[S11m]

Hi, Hidden

How can we narrow the list of members produced by a search?

Seraching the NHS weight-loss membership with "cancer" gives 1,048 hits... does this include anyone who has ever mentioned "cancer" in any post or reply?

Can we list only members who have a condition specified in "Conditions" or "interests" in their profile?

Is there any Boolean logic for searching Health Unlocked?

[Hidden in reply to S11m]

Hi S11m,

Sorry I'm only now replying - it's been a busy few weeks!

The members search only takes into account the following;

- Username

- Bio

- Public tags (conditions, treatments & interests)

So posts and replies made by that members are not included in the results.

This version of members search is not the final version. At the moment, searching for the word 'Cancer' will also return any users with usernames that contain or are similar to the word, which is why it's returning 1,400+ results. We like the idea of filtering the results by 'conditions only' or 'treatments only', so we'll explore this a little further - thanks for sharing!