Can somebody please tell me why since the site upgrade all I get is a 'daily digest' with just two or three so called 'Top Questions for you today'? Who decides what are the 'Top Questions' for me? What if I'm not very interested in the 'Top Questions' (after all, I didn't chose them) - do I then miss everything else that has been posted today? Or is nobody posting?
I used to get notifications with 20 or 30 questions to chose from and go back to, and answer and look at what other people had said, starting with those that looked most urgent or interesting, and there were still more once I got on to the site. I learned SO much, talked to so many lovely people, and hardly ever missed anything important or useful. But apparently not any more. Somebody else decides what are the 'Top Questions' for me, whether I like it or not. Which is in itself pretty annoying - why can't I chose for myself what I read?
Even when I chose one of the 'Top Questions' for me today, there is no longer a list of other posts down the side to chose from - I now have to 'Browse by Category' instead of seeing the beginnings of the actual posts. I don't want to browse by flipping category, I don't have the energy. How do you know what's going to be interesting or something you want to comment on if you have to waste hours trawling through categories to find it?
I know we all hate to moan (except when a rant is in order), but how I wish that 'they' hadn't seen fit to fix something that wasn't broken, just because they could. Was total destruction really necessary? Next question - will anybody see this, and how will I know if they have? This feels like talking into thin air - a bit like being at the GPs surgery actually. I feel old and invisible again. Sorry.
Edit: Good grief - I can't even add my own tags either - this is already done for me, AND they aren't what I would have chosen. I give up.
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Kangagirl
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when the site was upgraded the 'email preferences' were 'reset'
go to your preferences (click on top of the screen next to your photo where it has your name, the drop down menu will give you the option of 'email preferences' go in there and set your preferences again
Thank you for that. Some options were already chosen for me (GRRR), but I have clicked on everything except 'send me weekly digests'. I don't know if this now means I will get a deluge of individual emails instead of the digest with a question 'plus 20 other posts' like it used to be (and which I would much prefer), or if like shaws says below it won't make any difference. It would be useful if we could chose to have a digest each day, but also chose the number of posts to have in it. And I would still like to see the additional posts available down the side of the page instead of 'browse by category'. But, thank you anyway, I guess we have got what we've got whether we like it or not.
Rod, I do so agree with you, but I hate to sound like a moaner as this is supposed to be an improvement - I suppose. For our own good, and we'll get used to it and all that. Saying I hate it makes me feel guilty and like a miserable old bag. Blimey, talk about low self esteem!
But I have to admit that I am getting more and more annoyed with the whole thing, and close to not bothering at all. I don't want to sound like a wimp but I actually feel like crying at what feels almost like the loss of our wonderful community. I know you're all out there still, but it feels as though we're being kept apart for some reason -sounds daft I know. Or only those who can jump through the prescribed hoops will be allowed to join in. It was so easy before, and I really can't see the point of making it so convoluted and removing most of what was so very useful.
How would I go about feeding back to HU, and would I be the only one? I would feel happier doing it if others were doing the same - and if I thought it might do any good. I don't have the energy to bang my head against brick walls that are already decided upon and are not negotiable.
Any and all advice gratefully accepted - thanks.
Edit: I already said something on the green 'feedback' button, but I have no idea where it went or even if that was what it's for.
Have to say, on the positive side, the number of times an attempted post (question, response,comment) has failed is very much lower! Remember the ones where your posting attempt simply didn't do anything?
Leave Feedback using the Feedback green thing (bottom left at the moment)or follow the Help on the green bar at the top.
Rod, I must have been lucky, because I can't think of a time when my questions and replies didn't do anything. The worst thing that happened was that sometimes the reply would jump a few posts and appear further down the page. That still happens if there is more than one or two replies, and I used to get round it by starting a reply with the person's name so that it didn't look rdiculously out of context.
I have used the green thing at the bottom to feed back, and I see my 'idea' has got 16 votes, yay! hoping for a few more, and that it might do some good...
Thank you Louise, I suppose we must wait and see. A 'plastic' site...hmmm...
It's just when somebody complains about a 'new and improved' site, I can picture those who arbitrarily changed it just because they could, laughing at our confusion and saying oh, they'll get used to it, it's just because it's different and you know what these people are like (ie us) they always hate change.
THEN they start patronising us by chosing our tags, and chosing which posts are the 'top' ones for us to see...
I'm not suggesting it's meant maliciously, it's just the way of computer nerds - they need to change things just to prove they can. The people who depend on the site as a lifeline don't seem to matter. It's as if changing the site beyond recogniton is an exercise in how clever they are and the rest of us can go hang.
So even though some of us might hate it and be strugging to use it productively, complaining somehow makes us - me anyway - feel more old and useless and clueless than ever, and a moaner to boot.
Seriously, it isn't just that the new site is so user unfriendly, I really feel that it is perhaps having a bad effect on some of us psychologically or even physically, (we don't want to waste time and energy struggling with it, getting angry and frustrated). Given the way we feel already, it's something we definitely don't need. Especially as I have a feeling that we are stuck with it, like it or lump it.
Unfortunately it is gone. Perhaps they felt they were getting too much negative feedback. Use the 'Help' link on the green bar instead and then click the 'email us' link on the right hand side
That's quite funny really - they give us a feedback button, then panic when they get the feedback and take it away. Maybe they thought it was all going to be good.
I also really do not like the way the new site is, I find it hard to find things and the emails I do get inly has 1 or 2 posts I much preferred the old style ones where I could scan through & find posts I wanted to see or reply to.
It is very off-putting to have someone else make my mind up for me about what I do or do not want to read and really jars with me.
Absolutely agree with you zeberdee. If you hit the horrible green feedback button, my suggestion of 'give us our lovely website back' had 38 votes the last time I looked. If it's still there, you might like to vote for it...well, I just looked, and it had 39 votes and 'planned' against it, so not sure if you can still vote, but at least 39 people agreed! I wonder what 'planned' means - not getting the website back, I bet. I also said stop chosing my tags for me, and stop giving me two 'Top Posts' to read which I have not chosen. We can but hope...
Glad you were able to vote - we can only wait and see I suppose. It's a bit of a comfort to know I'm not the only one getting frustrated. Funny - we're usually saying how we're not alone with our thyroid woes on this site, but now we're saying it about the actual site!
Thanks Margo. I'm sorry if I miss commenting on something anybody has said to me, it's as I thought might happen, after I changed my email preferences from having two 'Top Posts' chosen for me, I'm now getting deluged with about a million individual emails (not all to me I hasten to add!), and it's easy to miss something. It used to be that I would get maybe one or two digests a day, but each with 20 or 30 posts to chose from, and more once you got onto the site, so it was much easier to keep it all organised and not miss anything that needed a reply or a comment. Doooohhh!!!
I joined only yesterday so I didn't know the old site, but (I'm sorry!) this one is awful. I've built forums myself and run them for years, and my husband writes extremely popular forum software and maintains a support forum to help people use it, but we are both rather puzzled by this one.
It's hard to navigate, it's non-intuitive, and non-user-friendly - and it's as slow as ditchwater! I called out to my husband that this site didn't seem to work very well, and he called back 'well, not everyone can afford to pay for daily site maintenance' which is a very good point. Then he came over and watched me try to load a question. He stood in silence for about twenty seconds waiting for it to load, with no 'working' status symbol anywhere to be seen, and then walked off saying 'Hmm'.
It appears to be built on a blog platform, which is fine (I run a greyhound adoption website on a blog platform) but it really isn't the best one for a forum. We're actually in the process of upgrading the greyhound site - still to a blog platform, but a better one - so that I can add a forum plug-in.
Brambleberry Greyhounds runs on WordPress, which I've always been very happy with, and it will be a WP plug-in. Their software is great; it's easy to use and maintain, free, and with a nice user-interface.
Could that be an option here? Is there a plug-in available which would give us a proper forum format? I'm sure everyone would be happier with that.
There were some problems yesterday and this morning that made it very, v e r y slow indeed. I couldn't use it at all at some points.
It is a new platform and they didn't test it very well before hand. They didn't even do beta testing. Even the games I like to play do beta testing. One has been in open beta for a couple of months now and had closed beta before that. Always a good idea!
Most of us are not happy about how this platform works compared to the old platform. Apparently they needed a new platform because the old one wasn't able to cope. Unfortunately it doesn't work on IE7 and older. I don't understand why. If it's because of html5, they can use a shim to translate the html5 tags for those browsers. If it's something else, I don't know. My knowledge doesn't extend beyond htlm5 and css (and that knowledge is fairly amateur). Also screen readers don't work on it: not very good for a 'health' forum platform. Do you know anything about this side of thing? Is there something that can be changed so that screen readers would work?
They are working on a lot of the problems and taking what we tell them into consideration, but it never hurts to provide more feedback to them especially when you have knowledge of the subject. If you follow the link below you can feed back to them what you have told us. Your feedback would be particularly valuable as you have knowledge and experience in this area. Please do consider it.
I'm afraid I am a 'user', not a programmer. I have no knowledge at all of HTML, only WordPress, and I'm a Mac user who gave up on Windows years ago, so I'm not sure how much I can help.
My husband is the one who builds these things, and then I can run them. If there's a problem, I yell for help! I just know that, from my point of view as someone who has built forums on existing frameworks (like BB and Invision) and maintains websites using WP, that it is fairly easy to provide a user-friendly interface that looks appealing and is remarkably 'plastic' as your techies describe it.
These days everyone wants to be 'mobile device' friendly and this means an awful lot of readjustments so that when you reduce the size of your page it is still readable, which may be one reason they changed things, and also there are many different browsers which have to be allowed for. As to IE, I do know that the older versions were very buggy and full of security holes and are no longer supported by Microsoft so it probably wouldn't be a good idea to work around that.
I have to ask: are you tied in with this host/provider, or would it be possible to move the whole thing somewhere else if - given the chance to do so - they can't sort it out to your satisfaction?
Anyway, I'll certainly follow your link and say pretty much what I've said here. It can't hurt!
I don't think we are tied in as such but, with so many members, it would be quite an upheaval to move. I don't know if a move might be considered if the hosts can't sort out the current problems. Hopefully it won't come to that but they do need to hurry up and sort out the more major issues!
Unfortunately some people are unable to upgrade from IE7 and those who are using a work computer are not able to download another browser. Hopefully issues will be sorted out soon!
I think it depends if the database can be downloaded in a format which can then be uploaded to a different place - but that's as far as my knowledge goes!
The posts from JudyS and Carolyn came through as 'replies to you' - presumably because they are on the thread that I started, not because they are relevant to me personally. That's OK, but I have to admit that I don't have a clue what most of the computer related terms mean, so I can't make any realistic or sensible comment.
It is interesting that somebody who has just joined (and has more extensive computer knowledge), is finding the new site less than perfect, and it is somewhat reassuring that it isn't just us 'old hands' having a moan about anything 'new and improved'. Thank you JudyS
I just wanted to say that it seems to be getting worse rather than better. I now not only get scores of individual emails, (sorry to say that most of them I just delete without even opening them, as it is such a slow and needlessly time consuming process even with a fast Broadband, that I could easily sit here all day long just opening emails, (never mind replying), which I don't have the time or energy for) - but I also intermitttently get the 'Two Top Posts chosen for you', AND also some of the individual emails are duplicated - ie I get two emails that are exactly the same! Sometimes even when I go through the palarver needed to actually see a post, the page either doesn't load at all or is painfully slow.
Many of the posts/questions I look at have either got no replies or only one or two - virtually unheard of in the past. I suspect other people are just deleting the shedloads of individual emails because it's impossible to keep hundreds to hand just in case you want to go back to them.
It's quite distressing to think of people posting questions or comments, possibly at the end of their tether or desperately in need of advice or support, and their pleas are just getting lost in the general email deluge, rather than each one being individually highlighted in heavy blue type as with the old system, and also being available down the side of the page on the main site. Hardly anything got lost and it was easy to pick up on something you wanted to return to.
This is not just me having yet another moan - I am really concerned that communication is now so difficult. The thing we used to hear over and over again was 'you are not alone, we are all here to support you, don't give up'. I have seen desperate posts from people who sounded as though they were close to suicide, and in no time there would be 30, 40, 50 replies and more, urging them to hang on, giving really useful advice or just support and hugs.
So what happens to these people now? Thankfully the forum wasn't always necessarily literally a lifeline, but to some it was. I know that personally I have been able to vent in a safe place when I had bad treatment from a very rude and aggressive GP, and was very upset. I received many messages of support which helped me put things into perspective. Would I write the same post now? I don't honestly think I would, it feels as though most things disappear into a void, get missed or only answered if one or two people happen to see it. Or if it's an established thread like this one.
This morning I opened one question that had no replies, and normally I would probably return to join in once one or two other people had answered or raised a point I felt I could help with or I could make a relevant comment. But what am I supposed to do now that I get hundreds of emails a week? (Also most people will be getting email from other places than this site). I'm afraid I deleted it. I really hate doing this, but it's just impossible to keep everything, rather than the very good digests we used to get.
The digests are something that we are not happy about. Having one question and one post is next to useless. Please do follow this link and report your dissatisfaction with this support.healthunlocked.com/...
I don't like the wording of some of the emails. Before, the email would say something like 'so-and-so commented on such-and-such post' which is so much more logical than saying 'so-and-so replied to you' when they clearly haven't responded directly to you.
Rest assured that the admins are all doing their best to try and make sure questions are not going unanswered but it isn't easy on this new platform! We also have all of you fantastic members who are also so supportive. If it wasn't for all the people on this forum, the upgrade could have been a complete disaster instead of a partial one.
Please do feedback your concerns using the link above. They are probably fed up of hearing from us admins all the time. Perhaps things will get done if people like yourself also outline your concerns so they can see exactly the sort of problems you are all having with this upgrade.
Thanks Carolyn, I know the admins do a fantastic job and we really appreciate your sterling efforts on our behalf. I will indeed do as you suggest and report back to the power that be. Only wish I felt that it wasn't a lost cause...
Gosh, you're right, Kangagirl - so sorry for the hijack. Happy to hear that what I said was useful for you, though.
I agree with everything you've said (as far as a new user can go, not being able to compare). It seems as if it would be all too easy for a question to get lost, and people to get discouraged and just not use this forum. I have days like that when I'll look at the screen and fail to understand and just click away and go play a mindless game or something.
I'm feeling a little more together today - perhaps because I didn't take this wretched new thyroxine generic this morning. Don't worry. I have an appt with the doc - it's just a small experiment; I'll take it tomorrow and make a comparison.
Firstly great to belong to a community with people aiding each other, working towards improved health and living and helping others. After having signed up here I am very disappointed in the functionality of the site. It seems it was built to extract statistics from but not for the end users. I agree, use BB or Invision. Sharepoint is a great platform to build a mobile/tablet/extranet/intranet/database/shop/ almost anything custom solution.
One reason I don't interact with the site builders is there's not any feeling that it will be replied to . The site seems to be in a permanent state of development and I don't want to make things worse by starting up a point before I'm really clued up on it.
Overall, the site seems to be as commented above and I mentioned before in a long buried comment [part of the problem] -it seems geared for data gathering, not interaction and once the days' business is done - move on. I wondered why this trend had happened tbh.
That's no help for ongoing in depth issues like we have here.
Content on HealthUnlocked does not replace the relationship between you and doctors or other healthcare professionals nor the advice you receive from them.
Never delay seeking advice or dialling emergency services because of something that you have read on HealthUnlocked.
all I get is a 'daily digest' with just two or three so called 'Top Questions for you today'? Who decides what are the 'Top Questions' for me? What if I'm not very interested in the 'Top Questions' (after all, I didn't chose them) - do I then miss everything else that has been posted today? Or is nobody posting? 
hoping for a few more, and that it might do some good...
Undermedicated, why?
Why should I pay for tests. 
Low calcium level... not sure why
Why I stopped losing weight?
Hashimoto's. But doctors say to not treat. Why?
