Does the Online Community site work as well as it should?

YvonneH

We have just received a comment by a new member

Is it me or is this site hard to navigate around ?

and it has prompted me to ask for your help in our period of user testing.

We have been looking at the registration form, accessibility and generally using the site. Please let us know

• How you are accessing the community from a mobile/tablet/laptop/pc
• What the issue/s you have had and how you resolved it or not.
• Do also let us know if there is anything that works well for you so we don't get rid of the good bits!

We will be making changes to the accessibility and ease of use within the next 3 months. Help us to make it work for you.'

Lilymary

I access from PC and ipad, and sometimes on iphone.

I always use the Recent Posts link, which I find works best as it takes me into all the different forums. I can understand why it might feel more complicated if you go through each individual forum.

Apart from that I find the site easy to navigate as far as the forum is concerned.

frogmorton

All sites are slightly different Yvonne. I find it easy enough to be fair, but of course I've been around a long time🙄😁

I use my laptop and sometimes my mobile phone if that helps.

I am not an apple user so no ipad for me.

Mike1

I think it is fine,  I only access from my laptop and only go to "Recent Posts" rather than the separate sections, that way I can see everything that was posted since my last visit (which is normally a couple of times a day); if there is any post title that I am not particularly interested in I simply click the "mark all read" button.

stickywicket

I access it from a desktop usually but a tablet on an evening.

I dislike the fact that we can no longer go automatically to the latest post on a thread. (At least, I think we can't.)

I've yet to fathom out how to look up some info on the main VA site while remaining on the post I'm currently typing.

I preferred the old system of knowing who had started a thread rather than who had posted last on it. I'm heartily sick of reading, on the archive thread, that my leg is giving way just because I was the last person to post on it. It is now which makes it worse😁

I still dislike the huge pictures which take up so much of each page.

I'm starting to get cross with all the sticky threads / announcements which mean we have to scroll down even further to get to the actual posts.

Just call me Victoria Meldrew 😉

Brynmor

Just to clarify...

Clicking on a conversation that has some new posts in it (Val's Cafe being a prime example) will not take you to the latest (end of) post but to where you were last time you visited the conversation. If you have been away for a few days, then you can end up with a couple of pages to read in catching up to the latest post. 😀

@stickywicket has raised some great points that I will "add to the list" - we are looking at what updates and changes we need to make, especially where the mobile view of the Online Community is not helpful.