Parenting: 6 - 9 Months Community

• It is hard to navigate. There are three (3) 6 - 9 month exchanges, clearly because people couldn't figure out how to find boards that were already created. The drop down at the top of the page under Parenting & Pregnancy, instead of taking people to the Parenting or Baby's First Year exchange, it should take users to a list of the parenting exchanges, like it did before.
  

• Users seem confused about how to make new posts. Among the pregnancy and parenting exchanges, there are multiple exchanges which were clearly an attempt to make a post. There are 3 "Am I Pregnant" exchanges, 2 that were obviously member's attempts to post a question. I don't have a suggestion for that, but I am sure there is a way to make posting a question in the proper forum less confusing.
  

• The pages are too cluttered. I like the My Exchanges section, only because it keeps all my most frequented boards right at hand, because they are too hard to find without it.
  

• I don't necessarily think the boards move too fast, considering the majority of people have gone to other websites, the boards are actually kind of boring.
  

• We understand that you can't bring the exactly the old boards back, but maybe there is a way that you can at least make the format similar to the old one. I liked that beside discussions that had a recent post, it said NEW, I could go on and clearly see which posts were new and which ones weren't. It's a little bit harder to tell with this format.
  

• Obviously we want our old signatures back.
  

We understand that the old system wasn't working, but rather than making an improvement, you went and changed the entire set-up and format when you could have made, still a new format, but a similar one to the old one, still add your new experts, your polls and what not, but keep the basic parenting and pregnancy boards (1st, 2nd, 3rd tri, Am I prego, etc as well as BFing Support, 0-3 months, 3-6 months and so on) you knew we were going to create those anyway, but we ended up with a few multiples (which should probably be deleted) because the new format is hard to navigate.

Being able to create new exchanges is a good idea, which people have taken advantage of, but not leaving the main categories in place was a mistake, it left us scrambling to find our old friends and now on the main pregnancy page, there are girls posting "am I pregnant" questions among ladies who are having trouble TTC and there are also ladies relishing there newly found ideas of motherhood as they enter their first trimester, it is, for lack of a better word, a clusterf**k.

You wanted to make the boards better, great. But with all due respect, it sucks. You keep saying "stick with us, you'll get the hang of it". Well, many of us, especially on the parenting boards, have LO's, trying to juggle that, work and even regular classes or online classes and the last thing we have time to do is sit around and try to figure out the ins and outs of of a completely new website, which is why many moms (including myself) went elsewhere, to places that had similar (easy to navigate) boards similar to your old boards. I still hang around, because I know there are ladies that are stuck because they can't access other sites at work, but I spend the majority of my time elsewhere.

I've been on these boards for nearly 2 years, religiously! My husband would make fun of me because of how addicted I was when I was pregnant (which followed me into parenthood) and then suddenly, you changed it and I'm just not so addicted anymore. The upside? My husband is happy. Me, however? Not so much.

Thanks for listening.

One more thing.... what the heck is up with it taking so long for our posts to well, post? I mean, I know whats up, I read the thing about it, but it just gets annoying thats all. Maybe you could fix that. :)

could u also make it easier for mobile users to use this site

Thank You all I'm sending these in! Have a good night! :)

I would also like for discussions to show if we have read them or not once we are logged in. Trying to remember what time I last was on is a pain. I do want the signatures, like the My exchanges on the side and the watchlists...

Thanks for asking. Here are the main things I care about:

• Signatures
• Clean up the redundant created exchanges
• Add a link under the top drop down tool bar for parenting/pregnancy that goes to a list of exchanges, not just the 'babies first year' exchange
• show the first few lines and picture of the original poster since the most recent post doesn't make any sense if you haven't read the original post
• Do not show the tips/resources on the main page for each exchange. Frankly I don't find them too useful so it seems like the side bar on the right is sufficient. Since a lot of use use these boards for community those don't add anything. And it seems like they aren't added very often so they are just taking up space that could be used for more discussion post.
  

I agree with everything Stephanie said. I haven't been on these boards very much since the change. A good bulk of us moved over to cafe mom where another webmder made our own board (called former webmd mommas) and we have 94 members and are the 84th most popular board on cafe mom now. And i know MOST of those women aren't checking back here. That's a big chunk of members to lose!

I also wanted to add that i definitely feel like the pages are way too cluttered. The left navigation bar is fine.. but i think you need to do away with the right navigation bar so that the message boards themselves are longer. There is too much on the screen and it makes my eyes hurt. I've said it before, i'll say it again.. MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE BOARDS AGAIN! It just looks like a series of comments instead of a message board. And yes, even when you go to 'dicussions' instead of 'whats happening now' it still just looks like a series of comments. Where you have the list of exchanges.. put the freaking exchanges in order! They are so small and you have to squint your eyes to read them because its just in alphabetical order... because on the parenting boards for example it will say 3-6 months then 3 year old exchange then 6-9 months then 6 year exchange.. kwim? Before they were nice and in order and easy to get to. And i liked how each subcatagory was still under the main exchange. Like... you could go to parenting then go to your 6-9 months... but then up top to navigate it would show you "Message boards: Parenting: 6-9 Months" so if you wanted to browse on the 9-12 months or another parenting board.. you just went up top and clicked 'parenting' and it took you straight to the list of parenting exchanges.

I am not one to complain about change. I know that when you make a big change like this.. you probably expected you would lose some people simply because some don't like change. You probably figured 'oh well, lose a few, but gain more' thinking the change would be inticing to other people. But it really is confusing. I was looking forward to many of the new features and interested in how it was going to look.. but i have to say i was really disapointed. I was the first one back on the this board when they went live because i was excited.

I like the member exchange and how you can upload pictures, i like that you can actually vote in polls, but they just need to look more like boards again mostly. Have a little color in the background.. since it gets hard to read white on black after awhile. Siggies need to come back, definitely, the 'new' needs to come back so we can see what we haven't read.

i just farted ooooppppsss!!!!!

My husband just did that...... he's a dork.

I totally agree it is waaaaay too clustered! Why can't we just have a list of posts instead of reading the last comment? I never understood why you can read the last few lines of the last comment left? I think that we need to be more user friendly. And why are people responding to posts that are over a year old!!!! Why are those still on here. I was lurking around and saw that someone asked a question a year ago, and it had a ton of new responses. My suggestion: CLEAN IT UP!

I think that it's a shame that so many people have left this board and/or just barely lurk anymore. I have 2 kids but have found myself posting a lot more this time around and really don't want to move to Cafe Mom to get advice. I get that the old boards weren't working but think that there has to be a way to format this new system to look similar to the old one.

I liked how all you saw on the old board was the subject. You could see if it was replied to based off of whether or not it was bold or not. It was easy to cruise and scroll thru. There is just so much stuff on the sides of the page it's obnoxious.

I just don't think these changes were worth losing so much information from really great posters.

It seems like the majority of responses would like to see the basic old format back with whatever new changes you have to make.

I agree Bailey98029..... before, the only real "dead time" was on the weekends, but even then, you could usually get one or two responses. Now, its like its the weekend around the clock!

I agree with the others. I hardly ever check here anymore because its so hard to navigate. I would LOVE something close to the old style to come back. I too have been a user since my first pregnancy trimester but I just hate this now and its really sad that everyone has gone seperate ways now. I'll check in now and then to see if and hope maybe its fixed.