The Student Room Group

Change to side bar widgets

Hi everyone,

This takes a little bit of explaining so please bare with me...

1) Widget ordering - putting Latest Discussion back up to the top
You know the 'widgets' (green boxes) on the right of the page in the side bar?

Over the last few months, their ordering has gone slightly wrong and that has affected the performance of TSR, primarily, the Latest discussions / Trending widget has been pushed down. We know that that widget drives forum engagement and is relied upon by members and guests heavily to navigate around the site.

As such, by it being pushed down, we've noticed a drop off in people being able to move around the site and people are clicking on it less. It used to always be the 3rd widget in the column.

We are going to reorder the widget default ordering to put Latest Discussions back into that place.

2) Fixed positions

At the same time, as I've mentioned in the past, we are making big technical improvements to TSR this year. One of these is to introduce personalisation into widgets and feeds, something I know you have been asking for for eons.

We're still at the early stage of this project and in April and May you will start to see the first bits of this appearing. E.g. the 'Today on TSR' widget will soon start displaying different content to different people based on their education level. For instance, GCSE students won't see quite the same level of promotion for A-level results day because it's not of interest to them yet.

What this means however, is that we have to make some of the side bar fixed for now. So you will find that the customisation you may gave made to the side bar is removed and the widgets will revert back to the default order.

For most members, this poses no problems as barely anyone uses the custom widget ordering. But I know for some of you do use this. So this is a heads up that this is coming. In the future we may be able to make a change to this for you, but for the next month or two, we will all have to use the default view.

I hope that makes sense and you can understand why we are doing this. There is likely to be a couple of months of changes as we change TSR a bit behind the scenes. Think of it like a very complicated Rubix Cube and the developers are having to shift some blocks to move others first (is my non-techy way of explaining it!)

Thanks,

Jack

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Original post by Captain Jack
For most members, this poses no problems as barely anyone uses the custom widget ordering. But I know for some of you do use this. So this is a heads up that this is coming. In the future we may be able to make a change to this for you, but for the next month or two, we will all have to use the default view.


:yy:

(in the meantime can someone please review all of the "Useful resources" - there's loads of out of date links and articles in there across all sorts of places and it's impossible to report articles now they're not wiki pages :frown:)
Original post by Captain Jack
Hi everyone,

This takes a little bit of explaining so please bare with me...

1) Widget ordering - putting Latest Discussion back up to the top
You know the 'widgets' (green boxes) on the right of the page in the side bar?

Over the last few months, their ordering has gone slightly wrong and that has affected the performance of TSR, primarily, the Latest discussions / Trending widget has been pushed down. We know that that widget drives forum engagement and is relied upon by members and guests heavily to navigate around the site.

As such, by it being pushed down, we've noticed a drop off in people being able to move around the site and people are clicking on it less. It used to always be the 3rd widget in the column.

We are going to reorder the widget default ordering to put Latest Discussions back into that place.

2) Fixed positions

At the same time, as I've mentioned in the past, we are making big technical improvements to TSR this year. One of these is to introduce personalisation into widgets and feeds, something I know you have been asking for for eons.

We're still at the early stage of this project and in April and May you will start to see the first bits of this appearing. E.g. the 'Today on TSR' widget will soon start displaying different content to different people based on their education level. For instance, GCSE students won't see quite the same level of promotion for A-level results day because it's not of interest to them yet.

What this means however, is that we have to make some of the side bar fixed for now. So you will find that the customisation you may gave made to the side bar is removed and the widgets will revert back to the default order.

For most members, this poses no problems as barely anyone uses the custom widget ordering. But I know for some of you do use this. So this is a heads up that this is coming. In the future we may be able to make a change to this for you, but for the next month or two, we will all have to use the default view.

I hope that makes sense and you can understand why we are doing this. There is likely to be a couple of months of changes as we change TSR a bit behind the scenes. Think of it like a very complicated Rubix Cube and the developers are having to shift some blocks to move others first (is my non-techy way of explaining it!)

Thanks,

Jack


Is there a reason that the option to customise MyTSR has disappeared and the layout reverted to default?

My understanding was that this would only affect the sidebars on other pages - not MyTSR. I've lost my watched forums from the main area on MyTSR which is the key way I navigate the site and keep track of threads I'm interested in....
Original post by PQ
Is there a reason that the option to customise MyTSR has disappeared and the layout reverted to default?

My understanding was that this would only affect the sidebars on other pages - not MyTSR. I've lost my watched forums from the main area on MyTSR which is the key way I navigate the site and keep track of threads I'm interested in....


I'd like to know about this too. It's very frustrating.
WHOAA TSR

All day I've been scrolling down the home page trying to find my watched threads. I thought they were missing but I have just located them at the top of my home page. Do you know how many brain connector things I'm going to have to rewire to get used to this if it's here to stay? LOTS.
Original post by mscaffrey
WHOAA TSR

All day I've been scrolling down the home page trying to find my watched threads. I thought they were missing but I have just located them at the top of my home page. Do you know how many brain connector things I'm going to have to rewire to get used to this if it's here to stay? LOTS.


Me = not happy :erm:
Quite annoying scrolling down, but as long as we're getting something better in the long run it's all good. :h:
So many strange things clogging up my side bar and home page! :yucky: But as long as the option to hide them is coming back, I'll keep my grumbling to a minimum. :grumble:
very weird
:frown:

how do people find anything with watched forums tucked away hiding all the useful stuff?
Hmm, my Watched Threads are still at the top of the My TSR homepage. What do you all have at the top?
Original post by Captain Jack
Hmm, my Watched Threads are still at the top of the My TSR homepage. What do you all have at the top?

I'm bothered by watched forums moving from below watched threads into the sidebar (where it's effectively useless because it defaults to unexpanded so is just a list of bookmarks instead of a quick view of the forums that I am interested in).

And it's replaced with the recent threads box central middle of mytsr - swallowing a huge amount of space with something I dislike and had minimised away in the sidebar.
Reply 12
@Captain Jack why is there two latest discussion widgets? one has more threads than the other.

EDIT: I think my rep widget is missing?
(edited 7 years ago)
I'm afraid that I'm going to have to agree with the general consensus here - regardless of whatever the ultimate end goal may be, this is a significant backwards step and makes the site much less usable and more convoluted to navigate.
(edited 7 years ago)
Can you change it back?

The mobile site is now even worse than before.

Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by G8D
How do I change it?

I don't give a toss about any widgets apart from watched threads, watched forums, rep and the small latest/popular discussion widget. Can I delete the carousel, poll, 'Today on TSR'?

Sadly, I think that the answer is "you don't". :frown:

Original post by G8D
Top tip: you can use Adblockers to hide the widgets you don't like.

Also there are two 'Latest discussions' widgets - good job to the admins. What a great addition to site functionality.


...but I think that I may have to resort to this, good suggestion - just a shame that it's needed.
Original post by mr tim
@Captain Jack why is there two latest discussion widgets? one has more threads than the other.

EDIT: I think my rep widget is missing?


I have had 2 latest discussions ones for months and months and months and idk why, the bottom one just has the first five threads in the top one.

It's very irritating.
Where are my watched forums? they don't seem to appear on 'my tsr' homepage anymore (but I've got who gave me rep there instead)

if this is the new look I'm rather irritated about it already.
Original post by PQ
I'm bothered by watched forums moving from below watched threads into the sidebar (where it's effectively useless because it defaults to unexpanded so is just a list of bookmarks instead of a quick view of the forums that I am interested in).

And it's replaced with the recent threads box central middle of mytsr - swallowing a huge amount of space with something I dislike and had minimised away in the sidebar.


Original post by mr tim
@Captain Jack why is there two latest discussion widgets? one has more threads than the other.

EDIT: I think my rep widget is missing?


Original post by Illusionary
I'm afraid that I'm going to have to agree with the general consensus here - regardless of whatever the ultimate end goal may be, this is a significant backwards step and makes the site much less usable and more convoluted to navigate.


Original post by DiddyDec
Can you change it back?

The mobile site is now even worse than before.

Posted from TSR Mobile


Original post by G8D
How do I change it?

I don't give a toss about any widgets apart from watched threads, watched forums, rep and the small latest/popular discussion widget. Can I delete the carousel, poll, 'Today on TSR'?


Original post by G8D
Top tip: you can use Adblockers to hide the widgets you don't like.

Also there are two 'Latest discussions' widgets - good job to the admins. What a great addition to site functionality.


Hiya,

Please can you send me screen grabs of what you are seeing, either uploaded here or emailed to me at [email protected] if you prefer private so I can see the exact structure of what you mean?

This will really help me in understanding what the issues are and for me to offer fixes where possible.

For example, the 2 latest discussions widgets have been like that for years... unless it turns out you have something else weird going on. So it's good to see the screen grab of it :smile:

Thanks everyone :smile:

Jack
Original post by Joinedup
Where are my watched forums? they don't seem to appear on 'my tsr' homepage anymore (but I've got who gave me rep there instead)

if this is the new look I'm rather irritated about it already.


Hiya,

Did Watched Forums appear beneath Watched Threads for you? Similar to what PQ is saying above?

Thanks,

Jack

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