TOPIC: New "BLUE" Topic Feature

What's with the new BLUE box coloration of topics some of you may be wondering? It's meant to help identify posts containing attachments like Before & After photos for those with Premium Membership.

I've received complaints and confusion in the past about how a newly acquired Premium Membership were to go about finding authentic patient photos amidst thousands of posts, so I considered this the optimal solution.

As for why I don't take all the photo attachments and put them into one giant PhalloBoards Gallery is simple: it doesn't provide context nor is it fair to members who've been willing to tell their story and share their pictures voluntarily.

Galleries on Doctor's site makes sense, because it's performed using the same materials, and performed by the same physician.

On the PhalloBoards, however, without context you'll never know how to discern between filler, surgery type, physician, time between photos, initial and final measurements, etc, and that would not do the material content justice.

On a side note, YELLOW boxes are "pinned" topics, implying they are PSA's or Guidelines.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the new blue feature. The layout looks way more cluttered and confused. There was already a paper clip icon indicating photo attachments...

Also recently it seems like the "new post" indicator hasn't been working properly. I'll read all the posts in a topic yet the next day there's an indicator for "x new posts" when there haven't been any.

A worthwhile feature (I think): on users profiles show a list of their recent posts instead of a list of threads that they've posted to recently. It was like this in v2.0 and made it much easier to navigate one particular user's progress. I also preferred the v2.0 layout and found it much cleaner, though I know this is a matter of taste.

Cacx

I appreciate the feedback.

The reason behind the blue-coded posts were that newcomers would often subscribe for Premium Membership and then assume they would be directed to a Gallery of all our Before & After's. It lead to a lot of confusion. Also, the Paperclip icon isn't nearly as obvious as you might think, especially to those who don't frequent message boards. If it weren't for the frequency of these aforementioned issues, I would have likely kept the situation as is.

I think any significant change to template or design, even if it were an improvement, is easy to dissociate with (example: I don't use Facebook much any more, but I remember years ago how frustrating it would be when they'd change their entire layout every couple years for unknown reasons, but eventually got acclimated to it in the long run). Then again this blue-coding could prove to be a bad design choice, time will tell. The blue is a bit solid, I may look into outlining the boxes instead?

As for the "New Post" indicator, I'll look into that.