Just came on to the forum chat for the first time since the new system was set up; totally lost. Where have all my old mates gone? Where’s the spell check? What was the problem with the old set up? It was simple logged in, click on discussion forum and away you went. Now I haven’t a clue where to go, who I’m talking to or if I’m on the right forum. As for the information about other members i.e. interests, where they live etc it’s more like Face book then IOSH.

It is a chat forum........

I must agree though, its not the same, and I for one dont come on much nowadays for the simple reason of it being too difficult/messy to sign in. You look at the posts, then decide to post only to have to log in then find the post again to answer.....There has to be an easier way.......

Well I for one disagree. I'm not a big user of this sort of thing, but I think it looks and feels alot more modern. It's probably just us old folk who'd prefer to use a pen and piece of paper. But just like Health and Safety, everything must move with the times. We all just need to find time to adjust to the new feel.
I for one support IOSH and have just spent 15 minutes on the phone to the website support desk giving them my feedback. We also need to consider that what we as users see is just a front end. It's the back room stuff, the database e.t.c. that also will need to have been updated to comply with new technologies.

So please just give it a chance, don't just knock progress, or we'd all still be living in caves and killing 2000 people in the workforce each year.

GP

i agree why change what works, is this IOSH listening to its members again, i think not

I feel that the old system was more user friendly.
This system has a clinical feel about it.
As a earlier contributor implied
"Why fix something thats not broken"

Hi Taylor,

We ran a 'new website survey' in March 2008 to find out what members wanted on the site and forums. We used the feedback when building the site and forums. Members told us they wanted new forum features such as private messaging, quote a post, the ability to watch forums and topics, and avatars (which we're launching soon).

Thanks,

Tom

Hi Wardy,

We've tried to make the forums as easy to use as possible - at the top of each topic there's a 'post reply' button. Alternatively, at the bottom of the page there's a 'quick reply' button. The structure of the forums is the same as the old website, so you still have 3 public forums - OSH discussion, Careers and Study support - and the IOSH members' forum.

If you need any help using the forums, please feel free to send me a PM or email webteam@iosh.co.uk

Thanks,

Tom

You can tell it to email you and then click on the link (but you then have to log in).

And it forgets that you are 'watching' after a while...

I think this is an order of magnitude better than the previous forums - and I use a LOT of different internet forums. I admit to being one of the people who've whined in the past about the old-fashioned look and feel of the forum and so I'm very please to see the new version.

To be fair, most of the things that the OP and others have mentioned in this thread are simply because they have not got used to the different style of the forums yet. Give it time - you will eventually see that it is better. I suspect that anyone coming new to this version will not see what all the fuss is about!

In response to the comment above that "On this system, by the time you reply you have forgotten what you are replying to" I would suggest that since you can now see the rest of the thread while you are writing your reply (not a feature of the old forums!) this is incorrect. In fact you can see exactly who and what you are replying to - I know it was something I for one was keen to see this time round.

The suggestion that IOSH haven't listened to the members in re-making the forums is just not true. There has been an absolute ton of "it's refreshing" publicity for goodness knows how long. if people didn't take the trouble (as I did) to let IOSH know what they wanted in their new forums then it's not a lot of use complaining that you don't like the result! Of course it won't please everyone - I was a forum tester in October and not everything we asked for during testing has been implemented but an awful lot of it has.

I do agree with Badger's post above about logging in to reply to a post and then having to find the thread again. I'm sure it's possible to change this as I am aware of many forums where it works exactly this way.

Spookily Tom's answer appeared as I was writing this so the thread actually refreshes while you are writing a reply which is very cool!

Tom - I think what Badger was after is that when you log in, the page should refresh back to where you were before you logged in - i.e. already in the thread - rather than taking you to the forum front page. So if you are browsing while not logged in and see a thread you want to reply to, you simply log in and can then reply straight away. Does that make sense?

It's trying to - via the returnUrl variable - but the encoding's broken so the redirection fails.

Hi,
I also could not log on, don't know why, sent an email, got an answer "et voila"!
Do miss the spell chek tho! ;-))
Paul