The Student Room Group

Updates to Forum Designs

Hello everyone,

Last year we added The Student Room’s new look design to the top and bottom of the site but the look of the forum pages and discussions still use the old look. On Tuesday, we will be updating the forum pages to have the new look too. It’s a relatively minor update with no functionality changed but we love it and we’ve had great feedback from our member testing team too. It looks a little something like this:

TSR News, Help and Feedback - The Student Room.png

The Student Room.png

It’s been rigorously tested by our own teams, our mod team and other members of the community. Feedback was really good and anything that was a particular issue, we changed based on that feedback. We’ve also addressed a few problems left over from the design changes made at the end of last summer based on your feedback at the time, like icons we missed.

On Tuesday, when it goes live, please do let us know what you think in here. A number of the Community Team will be on hand all day to listen to your thoughts, feedback and to record any issues you have. If you spot any bugs or problems, let us know here and we’ll make a list of fixes that we will make super quickly.

In addition to the new look, we’re also adding a few cool new widgets to the homepage for guests and members. Members can switch them off. They are:

1.

Community widget I love this one personally, there is a new box that shows the last 15 members online with an avatar, plus it shows you the official reps in a second tab too. Making it easier to find the most active experts across the site.

2.

Featured stories a new bar underneath the Latest Discussions box for our editorial team to highlight community activity and content. A bit like the pods at the top of the page but static, so they’ll be there a bit longer

3.

Editors picks on top of Latest and Popular discussions, we’re introducing ‘Editor’s Picks’. A handpicked selection of the most entertaining or useful threads by Shooks our editor and Milostar our community manager. If there’s anything you’d like to add in here, please just let them know.



And that’s it from me :smile: All quite exciting and I look forward to hearing what you think.

For a sneak preview of this and all future updates, please join our Testing Team here to see our testing site.

Bye for now!

Jack

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Whoever signed off the use of drop shadows on all your buttons should be shot.
Reply 2
not just me then...
This is looking more and more like a CBeebies home page with every site amendment that takes place.
Reply 4
Yeah, I agree with the drop shadow thing, modern website design is really moving away from that towards simple flat colours... It makes it look quite dated.

Also, is it me or is the font very narrow?
I appreciate that change is good for TSR, but I don't think there was any need to change the font, you should have left that as it was.

The thumbs up/down icons stand out a little less, which is TSR's way of preventing people getting negged hardcore for no reason.
Reply 6
Looks great. :biggrin: Exciting to see it's gone live.
Original post by Vikki1805
This is looking more and more like a CBeebies home page with every site amendment that takes place.


My thoughts exactly.
Reply 8
I don't mind the new buttons and things but please change the default font of posts etc. back to the old one, it looked a lot nicer.
Reply 9
I preferred the last design... more professional.

This one looks like we are in a cartoon movie. :/
Original post by Captain Jack
Hello everyone,

Last year we added The Student Room’s new look design to the top and bottom of the site but the look of the forum pages and discussions still use the old look. On Tuesday, we will be updating the forum pages to have the new look too. It’s a relatively minor update with no functionality changed but we love it and we’ve had great feedback from our member testing team too. It looks a little something like this:

TSR News, Help and Feedback - The Student Room.png

The Student Room.png

It’s been rigorously tested by our own teams, our mod team and other members of the community. Feedback was really good and anything that was a particular issue, we changed based on that feedback. We’ve also addressed a few problems left over from the design changes made at the end of last summer based on your feedback at the time, like icons we missed.

On Tuesday, when it goes live, please do let us know what you think in here. A number of the Community Team will be on hand all day to listen to your thoughts, feedback and to record any issues you have. If you spot any bugs or problems, let us know here and we’ll make a list of fixes that we will make super quickly.

In addition to the new look, we’re also adding a few cool new widgets to the homepage for guests and members. Members can switch them off. They are:

1.

Community widget I love this one personally, there is a new box that shows the last 15 members online with an avatar, plus it shows you the official reps in a second tab too. Making it easier to find the most active experts across the site.

2.

Featured stories a new bar underneath the Latest Discussions box for our editorial team to highlight community activity and content. A bit like the pods at the top of the page but static, so they’ll be there a bit longer

3.

Editors picks on top of Latest and Popular discussions, we’re introducing ‘Editor’s Picks’. A handpicked selection of the most entertaining or useful threads by Shooks our editor and Milostar our community manager. If there’s anything you’d like to add in here, please just let them know.



And that’s it from me :smile: All quite exciting and I look forward to hearing what you think.

For a sneak preview of this and all future updates, please join our Testing Team here to see our testing site.

Bye for now!

Jack


The change of the graphics - the ticks on the who-quoted-me box, and the up-and-down thumbs in the rep box - look really childish to me, which I think is also to do with the size of the font?
Also, change the avatar's for the people who haven't uploaded their own avatar back to the original shape of the upper body.
Original post by Hanvyj
Yeah, I agree with the drop shadow thing, modern website design is really moving away from that towards simple flat colours... It makes it look quite dated.

Also, is it me or is the font very narrow?


Yeah, which is really odd considering the extra width of the rep buttons.
God! This is ****ing childish! We're not children for gods sake!
It looks awful :lolwut:
Change it back! :facepalm2:

If it ain't broke why change it!
It looks ****ing **** mate.
Original post by James A
I appreciate that change is good for TSR, but I don't think there was any need to change the font, you should have left that as it was.

The thumbs up/down icons stand out a little less, which is TSR's way of preventing people getting negged hardcore for no reason.


I personally think that the red hand looks a bit brighter than the green hand, making it look like every single person has had at least one neg rep, when they reply

EDIT: The orange colour and the fonts are hard to see - this is not "just getting used to it", because they really are hurting my eyes. Use verdana and stick with it!

This is somewhat relevant I feel (The first couple of minutes)

[video="youtube;t6Fpj-tmRiE"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Fpj-tmRiE[/video]
(edited 10 years ago)
Think this new layout has been designed with finger friendly devices in mind?

Edit: The rep bars look fantastic now. They either should also have drop shadows or the buttons should lose them. I'm not one for design inconsistency!
(edited 10 years ago)

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