Hi Paul,

We were also trying to adapt to the new Forums page yesterday. Due to the the previous setup, we ended up with duplicate forum channels. We want to delete those duplicates, but we can't. At this point we can't redesign our forums page until we figure out how to modify those forum channels.

With that being said, I do like lots of the new forum functionality. After we get our page redesigned, and our members get used to it, I think it will be worth it.

Hi DeAnne,

Yes, I agree that all of the Forum changes are great, with exception to the default Forums page layout/display.

How are you thinking that you will redesign your Forums page?  By creating a new one and using Forum Widgets (and hiding the default Forums page)? 

I thought about doing this, but the problem will be that the Forums page will not then dynamically show the forums to which you have access and hide the ones to which you don't.  Instead you will see forums that say "Insufficient access...", which is less than ideal.  I assume that if you don't limit access to specific forums, this would not be an issue.

IMO, the best option here would have been (or still may be) to provide the option to use the "New View" or "Classic View" of the forums page layout.

As for modifying your forum channels - you should be able to edit/delete them by selecting the Forum channel and then using the edit function (arrow).  Of course, you would want to move your forum topics out of one that you will delete (which is a very nice new feature) by editing the topic and changing the channel. Maybe you are experiencing an issue to which I am unaware that prevents your ability to modify/delete, but I thought I would mention it just in case.

Thanks for your reply!

Thanks Paul. You helped me out with the delete option. We were trying to delete using the site manager and hadn't considered your method yet. I should let you know that our community has only been live for two weeks so we are learning as we go. In one way that newness is helpful because there are not many forum topics yet. Thanks again for your help.

I like your idea of New View and Classic view. It would give administrators time to adapt to the changes, and it would give members a choice of how to view the discussions.

Glad I could help, DeAnne!  I do think that an administrative module for administering Forum Channels (and Labels - already suggested I believe) would be a great addition.

I also think that I have come up with a solution to my Forum Page Display woes.  I did something similar in a Group Space because there is no "Forums" page there.  The solution entails creating a new page and dropping Forum Widgets onto the page.  The problem with mimicking the "classic" forum page was that there was no ability within the widget to display "add a new topic" as well as "view all topics".  So, what I had to do was add an HTML widget above each Forum Widget and use it as my Forum title and insert images for these functions, using hyperlinks for adding and viewing all topics. 

As I have been looking at doing this for my main community Forums, I see now that there is a new option to "Add a New Topic" within the Forums widget, which is great.  However, selecting that just adds a plus sign at the bottom of the widget, and I'm not sure that will be intuitive enough for end users.  Furthermore, there is no "View All" option on the Forums widget, so looks like I will still have to use HTML Widgets as a header to each of the Forum Widgets.  Here's a screenshot to show what it looks like in my Group Space:

In my Group Space, Access to the various Forum categories is not really an issue, as Employees have access to all.  It's in my main community where I need to serve the forum categories based on Group Access Rights.

So, I tested this out and I think it will work for me.  The solution is to essentially create various "Forums" pages with unique URL's (/prospect forum, /employee forum, etc.), set Access on those pages (so that members will only see the Forums page with their forums), and then hide the default Forums page.  It's certainly a bit more work to do this, but it should meet my needs. 

On the bright side...Forum categories can then be displayed on the page in whatever order I want (not default alpha listing as it used to be in "classic" view).  I'll follow-up after I put in my work just to confirm if this works as I expect it to.

Completely agree with Paul. The absence of a forum structure due to the new design makes it not only difficult to post but also hard to navigate!

Any feedback from IGLOO is appreciated.

...at the end of the day, this idea I had of creating separate pages that are viewable by specific groups just ended up being too much work to implement, and furthermore I was concerned that I would have to re-engineer it in the future if things changed again.  I really hope that we can get the Forums Classic back as an option.  If it ain't broke...