Why log off anyway? There are none of your bank account numbers or material connections here.
I typed into discussion.fool.com and the macro-trends etc for the board to have the URL bring me here directly. Then adding “discus…” fills in the URL automatically.
I am learning quickly I love editing my stuff.
Another way I’d describe it is ALL NOISE, no FIDELITY.
This is similar to every other technology I’ve seen deployed where designers forgot the K.I.S.S. principle and simple deployed everything. Less is more.
Adding to what UMassHoops has said.
I think this system is flexible, feature-full. But that doesn’t imply practical; because practicality is always tied to what your users want to do and how they want to do it.
It is possible for a platform & transition to it, to be a highly competent, technological tour de force, yet drive away customers because it just isn’t especially pleasant to use for common tasks.
I have the feeling many of the posts here are about ‘surviving’ this interface. That is not a great place to be at, in terms of user experience.
I like the new editing functions. Yay!
What I miss is the ability to scan a board for posts, look at subject, author, and number of recs, and see what I wanted to read. It was faster and I didn’t have to read every post, as it seems now.
I have 7 unread posts for the threads I am in. It is in blue next to the “macro economics trend… 7 un…” under Categories. If I click on Macro Economic Trends…I think I get to the full board for other threads. Or at the top if i click on the category I get the full board.
Correct. One of my frustrations with new cars is everything is run through a single, central screen. Things that I can do on my 8 year old car with a push of a single, physical, button, now required stepping through two or three menus on a touch screen.
That’s what I’ve been doing : old boards (from My Fool) Favorite Boards > “go to new site”
So long as the old board listings remain…
There is a second way as well. Click “reply” and then it the text box you’ll see a cartoon balloon bubble in the upper left corner to the left of the “B”
When you click this you get the entire post you are replying to; which you can go edit.
You can click it again and you get a second copy (which I just did, but then partially deleted
Mike
I see you can also add boards to the sidebar “Categories”, through navigation and clicks. It would help if it said “add” rather than “save changes”, which could mean many things. But, okay, now it’s tolerable.
The main issue isn’t screen versus buttons per se but rather there used to be 20 or 30 things you could “do” and now there are 200 or 300 things you can “do”. So it’s impossible to represent all 200 or 300 things on buttons anymore, so a screen has to be used instead.
I think overall, the conversion / migration went well - except that it took 64 hours instead of the projected 16 hours. Congratulations to the team that made this happen! Thank you!
I would say that I’m not sure why our favorite boards were not automatically created as categories and tags with default notifications set so that the new platform could more or less resemble the old platform. I’d say that is probably the biggest miss. If the folks at HQ could have done this, I think a lot of angst would never come up.
Just my 2 cents -
'38Packard
– I’ll learn the new interface and adjust accordingly - hope others do as well
Yeah, the timing was annoying for us as well…some posts hiccuped and just stopped things until they could be found, fixed and restarted…and naturally it happened in the early morning hours…things that didn’t happen in the trial migration. We did consider aborting and trying agin the next weekend but then it would have just been two weekends down.
So, we converted your old favorites to categories and tag and in tracking mode so you receive notifications using the standard functionality but the sidebar? That’s still in beta with the platform provider - they released it last week and we activated it immediately because we recognize the value of it (we’ve been pushing for it for months). If it had been possible to change the migration to make put those on the sidebar instead of tracking, we would have but it’s so new, it just wasn’t possible.
It’s not an either/or situation. A half dozen (or so) buttons for the most common things you do would be far more efficient than having to navigate a menu for everything. And that’s even more important in something like a car, where looking at a screen instead of driving is really bad. But it could apply pretty much anywhere.
Take a computer. Your tablet computer has only a touch screen. Except for the power button. And two volume buttons (at least on my iPad - can’t speak to Androids on that). And what’s a really common add on to a tablet? A key board. More buttons.
–Peter
Just thinking aloud here and trying to learn without blaming, could you have maybe shut down the old boards for an hour or two in the middle of the night, made a backup, and then done a stress test on the conversion using that backup, maybe converting all the posts from 2021?
Problems could have been discovered and dealt with and the added stresses of needing to get it done would have vanished. Plus, if it were successful, you’d have another year of posts available on the new platform. 
Of course, there’s probably a cost to that, to which I’m not privy. But would it be less than the cost of the added overtime for the highly stressful conversion? To say nothing of the human cost in ulcers and excess coffee consumption.
–Peter
We actually did a trial migration with the real data (without maybe the last weeks worth) but something still hiccuped. Did a dry run for each migration over the course of months. I’m debating between blaming sunspots or tidal effects.
@CMFMints Gremlins. Definitely gremlins. I’ve seen the movie about them. They’re troublemakers. 
–Peter
Sounds like a decision to go ahead even though the platform wasn’t ready yet. Seems like you recognized the value of the sidebar as a proxy for how the boards were used but chose to proceed anyway without it.
Now if only we could get rid of the wasted space on the sides.
And show the posts as a list showing the poster name. Clicking on the list item would open that post to the full text.
@CMFMints - Are you at liberty to share, and do you know which cloud platform is hosting the new boards now? Did TMF go with Amazon Web Services or some other cloud infrastructure provider? Just wondering!! Thanks!
It looks like TMF is paying for a hosted instance with Discourse. No infrastructure, power, or physical maintenance.
tracert discussion.fool.com
Tracing route to motleyfoolfree.hosted-by-discourse.com [184.105.176.43]
No, the platform was ready and stable. In fact, we’ve had a pilot program on it for about a year, moved all the subscription services before this one, and there are 3,000 plus other companies using it.
The sidebar, which includes the tracking link to follow all your favorited boards, is the new feature. Before there was a tracking button but this is more versatile.