Full Website Update - Comments Here

Yay, this is awesome!

I still don't see where to post questions about countries that aren't listed individually on the "Travel Forum" list. Where do I ask questions about Bulgaria/Romania/Ukraine/Moldova/other Eastern European destinations,etc? Yes, these places ARE in Europe.

Where do I ask questions about 'transportation' - it seems to have disappeared?

edit: yeah, add Luxembourg to the list of 'forgotten' countries.

Well obviously I don't know anything about functionality yet, but boy does this look gorgeous! And the ability to watch all the shows? (I wonder if that's available even to us here in the old country. . A couple of shows now and then would be a great dose of home!!!)

Congratulations on all your hard work, going to go check it out now!

Congratulations. This is what you hinted at early on, and along the lines of what I was hoping you would do.
It is a job well done! Still not sure what happened to Luxembourg.

I really like the new search function that sorts the responses! I was hoping that in the list of countries and topics, you could add the date/time of the last entry but I don't see that happening with the drop down boxes.

somehow the comment below wound up on its own in a topic, repeated here:

I've failed navigating scrolling the drop down country list on the helpline, left column.
I'm using a Samsung NC10Plus under Windoze 7 Starter, using a track pad.
I can click on the countries which show up initially when the drop down is clicked but I can't scroll down. If I try to drag the scroll bar down the screen jumps to a random country like Greece or Italy without clicking.
I'd like to be able to scroll down to Switzerland and Transportation and Scotland and Wales, please.

I'm having trouble posting from my phone, but it looks nice. Thoroughly lost at the moment, but I will figure it out. Also, why are there such old threads on some of the country areas? There is one in the Ireland section that is from 2008 and no one has posted on it since then. It is not the same list of threads from the "new" Ireland list. Missing: Transportation. Also, wasn't there a money category before, or was it just Money Saving Stragies? Whatever it was, a money category would be good in the Tips section.

it looks nice which to many is important....but..

What about countries not listed? Are we only allowed to discuss European countries Rick has tours to or feels is worth visiting?

What about transportation questions? I don't see any category for that or can people only ask about transportation in one country?

What if people want to ask about multi countries, do they have to post the same question in multiple forums? Let's say someone wants to travel from Paris to Rome but can't decide if they should go via Switzerland and northern Italy or via the French Riviera. Should they post the question in the France, Switzerland and Italy boards?

Hotel/Restaurant reviews are only allowed in a handful of countries. Is that going to be expanded?

Choosing a country on the drop down menu is difficult. If you should stop for a second, you'll be taken to that country's board. I'm guessing this is really made for tablets and not those using a mouse.

I may still ask a question here or there, but I doubt I'll answer many outside of the "General Europe" section. Life is too short to be going through 20+ sections at a time.

As for the rest of the website, i like the way it's been organized and it offers a tremendous amount of information. Well done.

Is the travel store part of the new website now up and running yet?

I have a question. When I'm logged in and I'm on the Forum home page (or another of the RS pages), how do I get back to my profile to log out? Maybe I'm stupid but I'm lost here, finding the 'new' website very cumbersome and not as user friendly - sorry.

I think the inability to scroll in the list of countries is Google Chrome related (recent update). I've had the same issue on other websites, where the scroll bars don't work in Google, but work just fine in Internet Explorer. Alternative is to use your arrow key to scroll down the list, which works in Google browser.

Nancy, you log out??
In any event, just click on your name in the upper right, just like before. You will see the Sign Out link.
Google Chrome is working fine for me on desktop. I haven't checked the netbook yet, and the phone won't let me post (also Google Chrome).
Frank, I only mentioned the look of the site in a kind of "looks nice, but...." kind of way. It's not that important to me. Functionality much more so.

Webmaster, are you planning on adding more countries to the hotel/restaurant review section? I notice you have the big 4 on the continent but from what I've seen some of the most frequent requests for hotel/restaurant suggestions/reviews are for England (mostly London) and Switzerland. Just a suggestion.

Didn't the old site (as in yesterday) highlight the questions that you read? This seems to be gone...that was an easy way for
me to check back on the questions I either answered or wanted to see more answers....
I personally feel there are still way too many individual categories. Sometimes less is more, and the previous categories did make sense. I can see where a few of the larger or more popular countries might need their own category, but there are many that it seems like overkill. So, although I would peruse each category before (as I visited countries in all areas) it is way too time consuming to do that now... so I will stick to a few in the future.

Don't leave out Austria for the reviews section...no sense just having a few countries there.

@Nancy (Bloomington) - yes I log out.

"In any event, just click on your name in the upper right, just like before."

This only works if you are in a Forum or a Topic - if you're on any other page it's not there. I don't think you should have to go back into the Travel Forum section in order to log out - this is very cumbersome. Why can't there be a link to your profile (if you're logged in) on any page you go to?

I never log out, I just let it time out. Is there a good reason to log out that I'm not thinking of?

Wow, this is a really big overhaul. Congratulations. This must have taken and incredible amount of work to develop the changes let alone to implement them.

It will obviously take time to figure out where things are, but I've started my exploration. It would be interesting to know what your objectives were in the changes. Clearly, you had some!

I noticed that in the Explore Europe section that you are linking to Forum/Helpline posts. Are you just constantly skimming the forum looking for good post? :)

Again, congratulations on launching or relaunching, I guess, a wonderful website.

Pam

It looks nice, but its awful. Awful. The drop down menus are a horrible idea and make navigating much less efficient. I'm done here.

My apologies for the double post, but I was PM'd and the suggestion was to copy my post here:

I've been patiently monitoring the changes. I now have something to add to this discussion.

I too think that there are too many country-specific forums to check, yet too few really useful ones to post in. Dumping everything into "General Europe" is not the answer to that...

The Rick Steves Helpline was not - and should not ever, ever - be a Trip Advisor clone. Many long-time contributors like me are not just "one country" specialists - and don't want to be either!

One thing seriously missing is a regional set of forums. That would help gather the smaller countries, those will never generate the traffic for meaningful responses to questions, into each of their own isolated forums. Many of you have already addressed this issue in other posts. I can easily see the list of countries scaled wayyyy down. We need a logical set of regional forums, which would actually reflect the groupings of countries that travelers 'bundle' in multi-country itineraries. The obvious ones being stated in many other posts as well. Countries that generate a lot of threads (like Italy, France, Germany, etc.) can be sustained on their own.

Honestly, I will not be answering as many questions under the current format. I will not be checking the 20+ separate forums for the countries in Europe that I have actually traveled and spent time in (not cruised to). I just don't have the time. It was fairly easy for me to monitor 3-4 forums - and I really can't handle more than that. I believe that the strength of the "volunteer-posters" base to do so will be greatly challenged across the board - not just me.

I addition, here on the Helpline I am a person - not a pseudonym. I am a non-person, silly-named avatar on TA.
Because of this, here I was more inclined to trust my fellow posters - it was a bit easier to spot the shills. TA is plagued.

Here I came to see who was going where, learn from other posters, contribute if I could, and even dialogue with other travelers. On TA, I just 'hit-and-run', looking for a quick answer. Here, we have definitely developed a sense of community. On TA, so-called "country experts" tend to dominate and bash - very few destination forums are congenial - it's just not the nature of that beast.

Here, I would often stumble upon and read a "non-related-to-my-current-travel-interest-thread" and be inspired to add to my bucket list -- great experiences and places that hadn't been on my radar. The motivation to plan a Christmas markets trip came straight from reading these threads on the RS Helpline.

Finally, here, the Rick Steves "Back Door" philosophy of 'slow' and 'experiential' travel has been tangible. Coming here was like sitting around a neighbourhood cafe and shooting the breeze with other like-minded travel omnivores.

Now, I have to pop into a whole avenue lined with cafes and open each door before choosing the one to enter, in the limited time that I have available for my virtual (and real-time) travel-related coffee break.

Up to now, the Rick Steves Helpline has been reflective of a distinct travel philosophy and community. Rick Steves tours would never try to clone a Globus bus tour, Carnival cruise or Sol-rah-rah all-inclusive travel experience, right? So why aspire to emulate TA??

A more intuitive organization of the forums will better suit who we are, how we travel and how we can contribute. The Helpline did need to splinter off the high volume countries, such as France, and expand to offer an "Outside Europe" forum. I just think that this splintering went too far into the TA direction...

Oh - I also seriously miss the "Transportation" forum -- that one was very useful and well attended to.

Rick, are you reading this thread?

Many people have expressed the concerns I have, but let me take this opportunity of Diane's excellent analysis being the newest on the page to say -- me too. She has articulated all the (sorry to say the word, I think it's true) problems with the new organization of the former Helpline.

I can't say it as well as she can, but consider her voice amplified.

Thank you very much, Diane - well thought out and well said.

I can well understand the need and want of the RS organization, and I am sure, our hard working Webmaster and his staff, for a new, slick, 2014 website to attract the new generation of travelers and potential RS customers.

Rick has been through a lot of changes in his personal life and it is not unreasonable that the website and therefore the Helpline (I guess we can't call it that now that it has been TA'd into a Forum) would also have many changes.

It certainly looks sleek and modern and I'm sure it took an absolute coon's age (or ages) to create.

I actually don't really like it, because using a small screen and seeing 2 lines for each topic means I see very few threads; with Google Chrome the main browser in the world I would have liked to have seen the bugs with using it on that browser smoothed out before release, I would have preferred much less white space on the left of the page to allow less chopping off of people's author names - but I am sure that that will all come with time.

I'm sure that the navigation changes were aimed at better integration with the rest of the website and to allow quicker navigation - but I find it onerous and burdensome. Like Diane, I am well traveled and don't (well up to now I haven't) restrict myself to just one or two countries. When I get in my car for my annual driving holiday in Europe I visit (not just drive through) parts of at least 7 or 8 countries. My knowledge is therefor fairly comprehensive relative to first time travelers. I'm reluctant to restrict myself to only General Europe and one or two others (what happened to Transportation?) but I will have to.

I'll stand back and see how it pans out ....

What I can't figure out is how to consistently get all the subforums visible on one page. Sometimes when I click "General Europe" it sends me to the old layout, and I can see the lost "Transportation" section, but then when I try going back through the same back door (pardon the term), it sends me directly into the "General Europe" subforum, and Transportation disappears again.

It is now clear that the separation by country, and the separation of the UK is to fit in with the main website "Explore Europe" and not because of any intrinsic merit in doing this for the Helpline/forum purposes. This also attempts to match up with a guidebook although since there isn't always a one to one match, sometimes a guidebook to some neighbouring area is given, such as Croatia and Slovenia in the Montenegro section. Maybe there are plans for a full on-to-one in the future.

Regarding usability of the forum, when viewed on a tablet in portrait mode I get the username truncated and no date information. I can only get that in landscape mode.

Where is "transportation"? The suggestion given does not work.
Where are the Guidebook Updates and the Guidebook Feedback, which are two useful resources?
It's not too late to find a happy middle-ground between what this was and what this has become.
I have to say this -when you are on the main page, this looks like this is mainly advertising for Rick Steves' products. If he wants that, that is fine. But why did what was used by so many people for reference have to be ruined in the process?

Tom, Larry and everyone:

I cannot find “transportation” either. I query our webmaster whether this was intentional or an oversight. I trust it was an unintentional omission and “transportation” inadvertently fell through the cracks in the reorganization of the website. Getting to, from and around Europe is an essential matter and proper subject here. It is one area that keeps me coming back to visit Rick and the other contributors. I look forward to its speedy return.

I will become accustom to the new website. I certainly like its appearance. However, at the end of the day we need to get the information we seek. We also need to understand that the website is part of a commercial operation and needs to contribute to the RS bottom line. Know too that this website is one of the reasons I purchase RS books. Webmaster: Will “transportation” return? If so, when? Thanks.

Re the "log-out" issue.
I have always found that if I have not logged out of a website but quit my browser, I will be logged out (sat least I assume I am logged out because if I then reopen and go there I have to log in again). But this only works if you have your browser set to delete all cookies and history (a really good practice for security) when you quit the program. I also understand that this will not work for those of you using Google Chrome as your browser as that option does not exit in Chrome (at least in the versions I have seen)

Well said, Diane.

@Larry re "Log Out." I mainly use my iPad, and occasionally my iPhone. I did not log out last night, and this morning I didn't have to log in. My iPad was not shut down over night. That seems a long time to be logged in, as often during the day I will log in, and a couple of hours later I will find I have been automatically logged out. I guess I'm really wondering if there is a real need to log out. As far as clearing cookies, etc., I have no idea how to do that on an iPad.

I have to agree with Diane too. I had these same reservations in the earlier stages and it doesn't seem to have been addressed. To be clear, I do not object to revamping the website and making changes and updates. But I am very concerned that the functionality for CONTRIBUTORS has been significantly reduced. Which means the PRACTICALITY for those with questions will be significantly reduced. I'm sure the big country threads like France or Italy will get plenty of contributors to answer questions. But how many contributors are really going to regularly check threads for places like Belgium or Sweden? It seemed to be very rare that a question thread would not get answered here. Now I wonder if that will become common when it's not in one of the major country threads.

I also wonder about accuracy. While not overly common, it does happen on a regular basis that a contributor posts incorrect information to a question. With lots of contributors looking at threads, those are usually corrected quickly (and almost always considerately here). Heck, even I've had posts that had to be corrected due to something changing since I last visited a place (or a poor memory). But if few people are checking obscure country threads, these corrections may not happen. And it may be harder to monitor spam, guideline violations and abusive posts.

I'll keep trying and keeping an open mind about the changes. But if it's not convenient for me to review threads and post answers, I will reduce or eliminate my participation here.

@Andrea - I am guessing that since this is not a financial site with any kind of secure date involved that there was not a need to design in an automatic logout after a predetermined time of inactivity. I am old fashioned and only use a desktop computer (MAC, with a crummy small Windows notebook for travel) and can't help you with i-pad/phone etc. What George says is what you also have to do on a regular computer in order to clear Safari stuff, I forgot that it, like Chrome, does not have an option to clear all this automatically on every shutdown. This option is present on Firefox, and I suppose IE. As an aside, a huge pile of cookies and history of this stuff can also eventually slow the browser.

Meanwhile, I used to feel that Trip Advisor's Forum and Thorn Tree Forum were Rick Steves' Helpline and Feedback "Lite". I fear now this is the other way around. And that there is no longer any easy to use source for sharing information.

Is it no longer possible to see older posts? I don't see a page 2, 3 option on any of the pages I've quickly scanned. Sometimes it's helpful to go back a few pages, especially when you're planning a specific trip and want to see what others have asked and answered!

Ditto the concerns about the transportation topic -- please bring it back!

@ Ruth - There are no longer pages. You just have to keep scrolling down for threads with many answers.

I hope the loss of the Transportation category was an over site and will be brought back.

FYI - I am able to find the 'Transportation' topic by going to my profile page and clicking on 'go to the travel helpline'; that brings you to the old list of topics. Now, whether or not this will stay around, who knows. But hopefully if this display disappears then a topic for transportation will be included in the 'Tips and Trip Report' section.

"I have to say this -when you are on the main page, this looks like this is mainly advertising for Rick Steves' products."

Isn't that the point of the company operating this website in the first place? The Helpline always just seemed like a nice bone he tossed us Eurosluts. If I owned my a company that had a related website, I'm pretty sure I'd try to use that website to drum up more business for myself.

And yes, I can see the "Transportation" section by doing the following, starting from the main page: Click on "Travel Forums". Under the "Select Country" box, choose "General Europe". It takes you to the old layout of the Helpline and "Transportation" is there where it used to be. Once I log in and comment, however, I can't go back to this screen.

PS- I'm using Firefox, if that makes a difference.

Yep, you're still seeing "cached" content. Since the URL is still active for now, you get there. Clear your cache and see if your way still works, I'm curious.

I have found that work-around, too, but what good is that going to do a new person looking to ask about transportation? They won't know how to find it, or that it even exists.

Would the Webmaster please respond to Tom's instructions to get to "Transportation"? When I do this, all that happens by clicking on "General Europe" is I get to the "General Europe" main page. With no options other than the various threads. With Firefox.
And trying to get there from my profile does not give me any of the options cited by Corvallis Nancy. ----Edit - it went to the old list after signing out. Huh?

And in regard to my comment about this now being basically advertising for Rick Steves, the fact that this is so is not my issue. If one searches through the old threads one will find many instances where people came here and thought they were dealing directly with Rick Steves. My issue is that all of the useful information and sharing is lacking or hard or impossible to locate, and the community aspect is gone. Why did this community, arguably the best source of travel information from real people, have to be sacrificed?

Webmaster (and others),

It took me a while to find General Europe but I did. While I didn't click on it when I've seen it, I have seen something listed as "Transportation." Also couldn't tell you how to find it. Whether it has the kind of stuff that the old transportation forum had we will have to wait and see.

Since there are probably many of us who will want to visit more than just on the UK countries when we are able to visit for the first time maybe having United Kingdom with the other countries in it as sections of it might be a good idea.

I hope over time (coon's ages it will probably take) that the individual country threads will be moved to the country they are about from the old country groupings; which might still be helpful for those visiting many places on a trip. This might be a good thing to contract out with just someone in the Webmaster corps at Europe Through the Back Door supervising by being there to answer questions. I can picture someone not knowing the countries of Europe very well or which cities/towns are in which one needed that sort of consultation sometimes.

So far I've enjoyed the new site. Still have reservations but I think I'll give everything time to settle before saying anything more.

I agree with you Nancy. I also have no doubt that the work around will disappear in time; in my experience things that keep people hanging on to the old ways usually do.

Personally, my opinion is that the whole helpline as we knew it is gone forever, and the new travel forum is not user friendly - either for new posters or long-time contributors. It's way too much back and forth, bringing up drop-down lists and way more clicking. Also, very hard to find what you're looking for.

I fear that it's not just the layout that's different, the whole 'vibe' and community is not there anymore. I know it's early yet, but from reading others' comments that's the feeling I have. And lest you think I'm slamming the whole website change, I'm not. I actually like the new appearance and the new content on the Rick Steves pages. That part is way more comprehensive and quite easy to navigate. It's only the helpline that's changed for the worse.

I know things have to change, that nothing stays the same, and I'm not totally resistant to change when it's for the better. And maybe this is for the better for someone - just not for me. Maybe this whole change was designed to make it more functional on mobile devices - I don't have one so don't know, I just know that on my computer it's a drag. And I will definitely use it less, if at all.

Well, there goes the neighborhood (community) if posters make good on their statements to use this forum less or not at all. I am trying to keep an open mind here, but as I posted elsewhere, now participating in this form seems like work. And I hate that "No response has been posted to this question...why not post one?" or whatever the words are. I'm smart enough to figure out if I have something to say to an OP without prompting.

I don't go to TripAdvisor and if this form is now similar to that one, I don't know how much time I'll be willing to put in here, either posting or looking for information.

And where's Transportation?

Other than that, I appreciate Webmaster's hard work on this.

OK, that work-around seems to have died. Farewell, "Transportation".

Now that the forum is so much more pigeon-holed, I can probably also say good-bye to those posters whose responses I enjoy, but have different geographic interests than I do. Au revoir/Adios, Ed. Chiao, Roberto. Cheers, Nigel, please stop off in Germany or Belgium on your way to Italy every now and again... but we may meet at random in Switzerland. Jo, Martin, Chris, Sarah, Fred, Lee, Andre, Kathy, Jeff... looks like we'll be doing a lot of yelling in the same echo chamber.

I fear we shall never see the likes of the Legend of the Hula Hoop Lady or HeWhoShallNotBeNamed again.

"Transportation" is the 5th listing after "Beyond Europe".

Search function or disfunction.

I'm planning a trip to Sicily, so I put "Sicily" in the Search box, and finally figured out that I had to click 7 of 8 boxes to get only forum hits. 3 popped up with a final line to see more, which gave me another 5. The most recent one was from August 2012. The others were all from 2008 to 2010! Now I know I've seen several in the past few weeks - including one I authored.

I was hoping for something from the Trip Reports section (none), which apparently isn't going to be country-specific.

I'm definitely getting the impression that the website is trying to be more friendly to the travel shopper and the Travel Forum section is less important/prominent/useful in the new "improved" version. It's a shame, because I think the forum was a good marketing strategy - I took an RS tour and have bought several of his guide books, none of which I would have done if I hadn't used the Helpline.

Norma, there is nothing below "Beyond Europe" when I go there. Am I missing something?

Norma must be thinking of the previous iteration of the new format. Now, there is nothing under Beyond Europe. Transportation is hiding.

How Bizarre!! It still appears where I said it did, on my screen. Ooh! Lucky me ... for a little while. I expect it will be gone by morning.

So well said Diane, thank you. My sentiments exactly... except you said it so much better than I ever could.

Also Larry, well said... "Why did this community, arguably the best source of travel information from real people, have to be sacrificed? "
When these threads, discussing these changes, are long dead it will be even more evident that the sense of community is gone.
But as pointed out in another thread, RS bottom line is to make money. The Helpline was easily dispensable.

(Yet another endorsement of Diane's sentiments.)

And my question-do we no longer have the ability to edit or remove our own posts?

Karen, I'm able to.

Hi,
This is just a quick note to say we are paying attention and do hear your concerns. There are many tweaks and adjustments to be made, and we appreciate your patience. We're doing our best to handle issues throughout the new ricksteves.com, and the forums are no exception. I'll be able to make comments on specifics mentioned above at a later time.

Diane did a good job summarizing our frustrations. Could we possibly group some destinations? Similar to the old format- yet more 'defined'. For example- UK and Republic of Ireland, Germany, Austria and ???, Italy and Greece, Norway, Denmark and Sweden, ... see the pattern? Countries near each other that would likely be traveled together. That would reduce the number of categories and still expand the options.

And why not involve us?

Prepare a couple of short lists of forum categories/regional groupings that we can give feedback on?

Quite honestly, I think the only thing more messed-up-with must be Obamcare and all its problems....The same would apply to both...If it ain't broke don't fix it, but if you do try to fix it, be sure you improve....You have NOT!!!

I'm the web producer here at Rick Steves, and I have been leading up this website redesign. I want to first of all thank each and every one of you for your detailed, passionate, and extremely helpful feedback on this thread.

To clear some things up and hopefully add a bit of perspective:
The reason for Destination Q&A being separated out into individual countries is not to be "more like Trip Advisor." That is not our goal, that has never been our goal, and we are not striving to be that. We broke the forum into countries specifically because of the feedback from users, who wondered why, for instance, Italy got its own forum, but France didn't. The users we spoke with found weeding through a "to the West" section when all they wanted was information on Spain travel, for example, cumbersome, confusing, and difficult. The users we spoke with (over 300 of them) asked for this change, outlined the reasons for why we needed this change, and we decided to try it out and to mimic the overall new structure of the site as a whole, which is country (the countries covered by Rick)-specific.

That is not to say we can't adjust this going forward. We're always wanting to improve the way we do things around here, and we're "listening" to all of you (I put "listening" in quotes because... you know, we're really reading). But please sit with this for a bit and see if it works for you after you get used to the initial shock of the change. From what I've seen, almost every country forum has a good start to some conversation, and a lot of new users are finding the country-specific approach extremely helpful. We have "general Europe" specifically for discussions that span Europe (for example, "I'm going to Spain, France, and Germany...").

And for the record, "Transportation" is under Tips & Trip Reports now.

As many of you rightly and kindly noted, we have been working our tails off on this new website for a year and a half, and nothing has been done in a vacuum. It is truly a labor of love, collaboration, and listening to what our users want. As I mentioned, we spoke with over 300 people, all of whom volunteered to talk with us, about a new overall structure for the website, including feedback on the travel forum section. The whole reason we changed the name from "helpline" to "travel forum," for example, is because of this feedback.

We are not trying to sell you anything here on the forum, and we're not trying to be "Trip Advisor." We listened to our users, took our years of expertise in creating user-friendly and visually and functionally appealing websites, and took into consideration our own internal needs to create an overall web presence that is easier to navigate and easier to inspire, equip, and inform you for your trip to Europe. We really hope you'll venture out of the travel forum for a few minutes to explore the website as a whole, too, because we're all pretty proud of this big baby we just gave birth to.

So my plea is: please give this some time, settle in, and see how it works. And please believe me when I say that as always, we at Rick Steves listen and take into consideration everything our users say, even when some of them are a little painful to hear. Almost all of the comments on here are extremely constructive, and I appreciate that more than you know.

Thanks again, and I look forward to working with all of you to make this an awesome forum going forward.

Kate - Thank you for the explanation and for all your hard work. Could you please explain if the 300 people you interviewed were people who have participated and/or used the Helpline for a long time, or where they just random people who answered many website questions that happened to include what they would like in a travel forum? I checked the Tips & Trip Reports area and could not find Transportation. What am I doing wrong?

I know there are bugs to be worked out and I hope that the end result will make the new forum user friendly for both people seeking travel information and for the many of us who volunteer our time to help others have a great travel experience.

And for the record, "Transportation" is under Tips & Trip Reports now.

As of now, it is not, at least on Firefox and Safari OS X.

Glad to know it will still be around, though, once it's sorted.

Using Chrome, and no "Transportation" in the Tips and and Trip Reports drop-down.

I also have no "transportation" topic under Tips and Trip Reports - either on Chrome or IE. Possible that Kate has added it but it needs to cycle overnight or something before we see it.

@Karen, I can edit/delete my own posts - of course you must be logged in to do it.

Regarding the 'helpful' people who gave their opinions - are they still around? Or did they just add their 2 cents and then cut and run.

Kate,

Thank you for taking the time and care to respond. I fully understand why you took such a linear logic in deciding to organize the Q&A forums strictly along country lines. Splintering off a few countries that did need their own forum was needed - France being a perfect example of this. But you over-splintered - by a lot.

Understand that your users are well served by a solid core of contributors, willing and legitimately able to answer questions. Contributors, like me and others who are speaking now to this issue, are the strength and backbone of your websites' ability to answer your users' queries. Up to today, I had the highest level of trust in the Helpline answers I received as a user. I hope users have had the same level of trust in the answers I provided. Core contributors, individually, are responsible for hundreds and thousands of trusted answers - each! I need to be able to quickly and effectively find the queries to answer. You need the answers to keep coming in.

I started a thread about organizing the forums along intuitive lines, that would ultimately greatly improve the user-friendliness of the Q&A section.

What is the right thing to do here is really a kludge - no kidding.

As for "Transportation", it does not belong in "Tips & Trip Reports".

This is not where a user will naturally go to post a question. The old Transportation forum was driven by user questions, not by the sharing of tips. In addition it was highly CURRENT and active. It really does belong back in the Q&A section.

Agree that transportation needs to be on main site as don't think a new poster will find it under the "current" listing which I can't find. Would still like to have a way to be able to go down to the last posting instead of having to scroll down through numerous posting. That said, for all the travel sites, I find this the best and feel it has the most courteous posters. Hope to,someday have the graffiti site back,again but maybe in the future. Work in progress.

Hello Webmaster Andrew, Web Desginer Kate, and all Helpline/Forum Regulars,

First off , I want to thank Andrew and Kate (and their coworkers) for all the time and hard work that was put into the new site. I LOVE that each country has its' own page and includes all relevant information for that particular area (such as: Belgium: links to the related RS Tour, links to info from the guidebooks, audio/tv, and the appropriate forum questions, etc). I think that makes a LOT of sense.

Second, I love that the search function has options for allowing to search using 8 different categories! That was also a great improvement. However, I'm not sure if it's working up to par yet (I will get into that more in a minute since that might be an issue with just me...)

I generally like the look of the new site too, but I'm still getting used to that. :)

I, like many others, have some concerns about the new design. While I wasn't one of the 300 people polled about usability of the helpline, I am someone who has been a long-time member here [despite my somewhat limited post count, I've actually been reading the helpline almost daily since 2008 so I really do feel like I'm part of this community]. I am someone who thought that just 5 major categories (e.g., To the East/West, etc.) was not specific enough. However, I agree that now the approximately 50 forums is too many. This is for purely selfish reasons - I enjoy reading all the regulars answers, even if I'm not currently traveling to a certain country at a certain time. Reading Ken, Nigel, Lee, the Franks, Pamela, etc., etc., answers to whole varieties of questions was actually quite enjoyable. I can see how cumbersome it would be for the "Super-Regulars" (for lack of a better term) to have to check each and every forum. Perhaps keeping the sections entitled "To the....." and then have subsections "underneath" for each country? Then for those travelers who are visiting mutliple countries in that region they can post in the "To The..." section OR the specific country if they are just visiting one country.

Basically, I echo what Diane said above. :)

Now for a few technical glitches I want to make you aware of (in case others haven't mentioned yet):

1) On both Safari (Ios6) and Chrome, on the Sign In page, there is a link that says, "Head Straight to the RS Travel Forums..." When I click on this, it gives me the error message: "Directory Listing Denied; the Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed."

2) I also cannot find the "Transportation" forum on: IOs 6, Google Chrome, or Internet Explorer 11.

3) The Search function: I want to search some of my own posts from a year or two ago. Are there plans to make them available? In the Search bar I input my first name (there aren't too many 'Gretchen's' here so I thought that would be a quick way of searching) and I can find about 6 of my old posts (some from 2008; some more recently). However, there are others that don't come up at all. Is the Search function not fully functional or did you "archive" a variety of our posts and we've lost them or is it just that I don't know a better way of searching (which is very likely)?

4) I'm having the same problem as Nigel when trying to get the scroll bar to work on the far left menu when searching for different countries (under Explore Europe) on both IOs 6 and Chrome.

This was a long post so I apologize. I will enjoy exploring the new site even more. Thanks again for all your hard work. I do hope there can be a happy medium regarding the number of forums so we don't lose our Super-Regulars from answering all sorts of questions; not just one of two.

And to steal from Ken...
Take Care,
:) Gretchen

Kate,

You say you spoke to 300 users. I'm curious ... how was that sample chosen? Did you do any data analysis of the content of the actual posts on the old board? For example, there are few posts with question about travel to Finland, Denmark, Norway, or Sweden and most questions on those countries only get a couple of responses; a single board on the Nordics (or even Nordics, Baltics, and Russia) would still probably see few posts. On the other hand, a question about London can get dozens of responses. Your team might want to consider analyzing the historic data when considering how to organize.

As someone who enjoyed reading the board to learn from others, the new format no longer serves this purpose for me. I've been a regular reader of the helpline for about 6 years and I've searched the forum many times when planning trips and found lots of helpful info that doesn't appear in RS guides. I rarely had the need to post a question because I usually found the answer via a search. Like many of the regular users of this board, I answer a question when I think I have something useful to contribute.

I'm planning to just check back in later just to see how the dust settles. Right now, the usability is pretty low for my purposes. If I have to click on 30 different countries only to find a handful of posts, I might as well use TripAdvisor. And with the search no longer returning any of the old posts, I'm also missing great advice that was given in the past. I hope that as this site evolves, you will find a way to serve a diverse group of users.

Good Luck

Thanks for coming on, Kate.

Quick poll of readers of this thread - were any of you one of the 300 consulted about the changes?

Nigel was not.

Just checked under Tips and the other two dropdowns at about 11pm PST - no Transportation visible to me.

Also - it is disappointing that the colour of the thread name doesn't change any longer as a visual aid to which threads are new.

Andrew or Kate,

As many of the others have mentioned, I'm also unable to find "Transportation" anywhere, including in the Tips & Trip Reports section. It's simply not there.

Regarding the changes, the new site design sure looks good but hopefully the "new and improved" Travel Forum will prove to be as user-friendly as the previous version. As I mentioned before, I still feel that grouping of some countries would be helpful such as the U.K., the Balkans or the Scandinavian countries. It's possible that some of the least visited countries won't be checked often and therefore people posting questions may never get an answer.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out....

Let me test to see if this can work as a back door to the Transportation forum.

Wow, that actually worked, at least on my computer. You can also see the old regional forums, and it looks like as of yesterday, people were still adding to them.

Was that 300 person sample made of people who were familiar with this website or just a random consumer survey, like when they lasso together a marketing group at the mall? My feelings aren't crushed that I wasn't polled, because I'm mostly a contributor rather than a poster, and I assume the intention of the forum is mostly to help travel virgins find their way, not necessarily a platform for veterans to argue over the proper use of a moneybelt. But if the strength of the forum was its ability attract and maintain a large collective knowledge pool, making it harder for the veterans will probably weaken the site. With the new format, I can see this becoming merely a recapitulation of the Rick Steves Canon, at which point it would lose all interest to me.

That's good Tom. I can't work out how to get to the list within the current regime.

As a regular it would be easier than playing with the scripts all the time.

With a slow computer like mine the scripts really slow it down more.

Tom:

Thanks. I found "transportation" from your back door link. Perhaps we can get a link from the main page as I cannot find it there.

I wasn't polled.

I both ask and answer questions. I have found most people on this forum to be knowledgable and it's amazing the amount of time people volunteer to answer questions to help total strangers. It will be a real shame for many of those people to give up and leave.

Like others have mentioned, though I have a small post count, I have been using the Helpline since it switched from just the Graffiti Wall to the Helpline. I have PM's going back to January 2008 so I guess I've been around a long time. I did receive one of the emails asking if I would like to be part of the group that was looking at ways to improve the website. I am guessing it was about a year ago. It asked for a time commitment, I think it was about an hour but unfortunately, by the time I was able to try it, they said they already had enough volunteers. Sorry, I don't remember the details nor do I know why I was "chosen" but since it was sent to my email, I assumed it was because I was a contributor. Maybe this will jog some other memories.

Search function is totally worthless - won't retrieve any info on Channel Islands and I know there are several (including my OP) in the forum. Also doesn't locate any of the good responses to my questions about Wales. Maybe because those were in the "to the north" section and it no longer exists it can't find them?

This "new and improved" helpline BITES. Just my humble opinion.

I wasn't polled for this part, but I did get to sneak preview the very first changes late last fall, when we went to the new interface with the bold and the larger answer field. And I'm not getting the search to work at all.

Hi,
It looks like one of our little adjustments had temporarily broken the Search functionality if you tried to use it from within the forums. This should now be fixed.

any chance we could get a button at the bottom of threads to return to the top?

Does anyone know how to find the Guidebook Corrections in this new website? I found the form to submit a correction but not how to view the current corrections. I sent an e-mail requesting this information but have not gotten a response.

I'm not able to make paragraphs anymore. Is it just me? What about a "like" button that so many have asked for? And are you able to do anything to discourage avatars?

Just a thought as this is a work in progress as webmaster said. I think the general theme is to be that there are too many categories. Why not structure like Rick does in his guidebooks, he for example puts Spain and Portugal together, then I think UK and Ireland together. Maybe could have a Scandinavia section with a drop down for the three countries as well. Would that work?

The guidebook updates are under "Explore Europe" choose the country you want and then scroll down to "Read". They are in that section. Hope this helps.

It's not you Susan. I can't make paragraphs either.

Though I'm personally not looking forward to sign up for a RS Tour (I travel on my own), I find a loss for potential costumers the way tour reviews are not organized. One of the positives of the old review system was that good and also not so good aspects of the tours were published (like "what could be improved?", "other comments about the tour" and "was the pace appropriate").

I feel the reivews have been now "sugar coated" so only the "WOW moments" and a general comment are published.

Some notes for the end of the week.

For those saying you can't make a paragraph. I'm not sure what you mean by that. Are line breaks not working for you?

Andre, you mentioned Tour Reviews. We aren't actually filtering anything (unless there is the occasional profanity used). However, the questions we ask our tour members changed significantly in the middle of 2013. This is why it seems so different. If you scroll long enough, you'll see that there are less than perfect reviews out there. While we pride ourselves in the fact that most people really like our tours, you can't please everyone and we know fully well that reviews wouldn't ring true/genuine if they are all 5 stars. We really have no interest in filtering reviews.

Transportation... SORRY! Many of you are right. It got lost in the shuffle. I changed the setting to make it appear in Tips and Trip Reports, but for some reason, it hasn't shown up yet. It may be cached at the server level. I promise it will be back. Until then, you can use this link:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/transportation

There are many more comments and adjustments I would like to make. Hang tight and thanks to all of you for your patience.

Hi Andrew, Line breaks are not working for me and for Andrea, don't know about others. Thanks.

Line breaks not working for me either.

this is just my opinion.

Ive on several different boards of a different flavor and anytime the board is changed, there are unhappy and happy people. as the saying goes, you cant make everyone happy and its true here and will be in the future.

Im willing to give them the time to work out the bugs and beta test it for them. If the admin and owners are willing to accept and possible make the board better then im for it. Whos better will be the question, but im willing to give them a shot.

I can see many of the questions or arguments that have been raised here, but hopefully over time, they will be answered or fixed or changed for the better.

one last comment. Im sure the admins have a thankless job, but i will say "thank you" for the time/effort put in now and in the future. It may not be what others want, but it works for what it is and i have received help when i need it.

good luck and happy trails.

Webmaster wrote: It looks like one of our little adjustments had temporarily broken the Search functionality if you tried to use it from within the forums. This should now be fixed.

I just tried the search function again looking for Sicily and got the same 7 irrelevant ancient hits

I suspect the 300 people were chosen not just from the Helpline and asked not just about the Helpline. I wasn't among the chosen few either.

I just had a little play with search - after I realized (after nearly 5 minutes prodding at things which didn't give me a search - damn I hate these "modern" websites with no clues as to what is clickable and what isn't, weren't blue links wonderful?) that you have to click in no-man's-land to the right of the magnifying glass.

I don't have a dog in the search fight so I just used my imagination.

I first decided to look up the hula hoop girl - old timers will know of whom I speak - and got no results no matter how I spelled hula hoop. That was with just forums checked. When I hit it again I did get a result - an article about England written by ETBD showing a red phone box. I'm not clear on the relationship between hula hoop and phone box, but it certainly showed me nothing of what I wanted to see. As I remember the hula hoop saga it was quite long and protracted over many messages.

I then decided to look for Felicia, the woman who took all the Girl Scouts to Switzerland and Italy last year or the year before. I found one hit, when she was responding to another woman who wants to take girls in 2015. I clicked on her profile and saw she had something like 139 posts, none of the other 138 registered.

At the moment I wouldn't rely on the results of the search feature.

So all the site changes are not enough of an issue, now we have to have a merchant peddling illegal documents?

Pretty blatant, isn't it, Larry?

Even more so than the psychic who kept posting offers on the Graffiti Wall. Seriously, she didn't know there would be no response?

I share many of the concerns expressed on these boards and summarized so well by Diane, but I expect that most problems will be fixed over time. As Ray points out, a web redesign is incredibly complex and no rollout is perfect. Yet unlike print, you can go in and fix problems as they crop up. That seems to be what the webmaster and IT people are trying to do. This thread has a lot of good suggestions that I expect, or at least hope, they will put to good use, even it does take a few days or weeks to work out all the bugs incrementally. That is a huge advantage over print.

The Travel Forum, former Helpline is the most important section of the Rick Steves website for most regulars, but it is not the only section on the RS site. We may have been happy with the old Helpline, but I am not sure that newcomers felt the same way. Even if the Helpline had been perfect, the rest of the RS website was hard to navigate and none of the pieces seemed to fit together. I don’t see how the RS crew could redesign the rest of the site and leave Helpline untouched.

There are some similarities with Trip Advisor, but also with Fodor’s. They each have things that I don’t like – more on that later -- but they do a few things right, or the rest of us would not even know about them. But the RS site has a lot more going for it, especially the sense of community on the forum. I don’t think the RS crew would sacrifice that in this redesign. From what I have seen the webmaster and the IT crew are listening to the community and are working to address our concerns. It’s good to point out problems, but let’s give the RS team time to fix them.

All my Bookmarks of great info collected from past threads over the years is now gone!! All I get is the stupid 404 message. Great improvement.

The Transportation subforum is not appearing on the Tips section as the Webmaster wrote it should.

Is this a bug or some new adjustment?

Regarding the Transportation forum, they don't work on the weekend so I think Monday is the earliest we could see anything and it will probably take longer than that. I'm just not sure where they are going to put it. It's not a country so it doesn't fit there, it's not a tip/report type of forum - it has to show as a Q&A forum - so it could pose a dilemma for them.

I'm almost more concerned about the lack of a functioning SEARCH. Has anyone actually found anything useful through the search function? When I look for something it brings up garbage - articles, etc that have nothing to do with the search term and never any forum posts.

I know this is a WIP with lots of 'tweaking' to be done but I'm afraid if it takes too long to get these things fixed, more people will drop off and lessen the usefulness of the helpline.

@George - if you meant to post a link it didn't work. What are we supposed to read?

Nancy, this is what George is talking about from Andrew's post above...

Transportation... SORRY! Many of you are right. It got lost in the shuffle. I changed the setting to make it appear in Tips and Trip Reports, but for some reason, it hasn't shown up yet. It may be cached at the server level. I promise it will be back. Until then, you can use this link:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/transportation

Excuse my stupidity, thanks for clarifying that. Guess I never saw anybody refer to a post reply that way before.

It was easy to miss. So many posts here.

One problem could be solved quickly just by changing the name Tips and Trip Reports to Topics (or Travel Topics) and Trip Reports.
Then people would know right away where to go with questions about Transportation (when it eventually shows up), Money, etc. Tips could be covered in the same place, but I notice that in his initial comment, the webmaster mentioned FORUM TOPICS.

It really doesn't make sense to put the Transportation Forum, which is meant to be a community Q&A, with the Tips & Trip Reports section, which is desccribed thus: Discuss your latest trip and share your top travel tips. Pick a topic and dive right in. If it's meant to be a Q&A forum, it should be with all the other Q&A forums, otherwise how in the world will anyone know that it's a place to ask questions?

Chani, my thoughts exactly. Which is why I described it as a dilemma for the website staff in my previous post.

So, all that would take is a slight change to the message text. No coding involved in that.

May I just put in a good word for the Webmaster?
I alerted him to the dreadful post from fanidoc (?) about being able to purchase fake passports, driver's licenses, and so forth for almost any country. He replied immediately and took down that post. I think that he is doing his best, trying to reply and adjusting to all the criticism that has come his way since the change in the website.
After all, I have to think that Rick Steves approves of the changes, so let's all just take a little time to adjust to what is new and a bit unfamilar, and give credit to the webmaster who certainly cannot please all of the people all of the time.

The webmaster and everyone working hard with him are awesome. But this thread was started by the webmaster and he specifically asked for comments. That is what we are doing.

I am disappointed that the Tour Scrapbooks are now buried in the Tours section, under an "Enter our Scrapbook Contest" link. People who have never taken an RS tour before or even people who have, might never click on that link and find the wonderful scrapbooks. Even after clicking on the link, someone may not see the "tour scrapbook archives" link on that page. On the old site, the Tour Scrapbook link was clearly visible and easy to find on the Tours page, and the archives were also easy to spot. Not only do I think the scrapbooks are a good selling point for RS tours but are fun for anyone to look at. I wonder how many people will find them. Can the Tour Scrapbooks be made more visible and accessible on the Tours page?

Just in case you're keeping track of some of the comments: I agree with the others that some countries should be grouped. I agree that the "No response has been posted to this quesion...Why not post one?" should be dropped. I agree that buttons to go to the top or bottom of a thread would be useful. I liked the Helpline name better as it showed that it was a place for travelers to get help with their questions. Forum to me indicates a place for discussions.

I'm sure I'll get used to the new website. Just seems so much harder to navigate and it requires more clicks.

Okay, I actually got some replies to a query on a search. However the results that pulled up under FORUM matches were a total of 8 the newest of which was from 2009 (others were from 2007 & 2008), this on a subject that I know had about 20 threads in 2012 & 2013, namely CPAP machines in Europe. Give me a break. How can you suggest that someone do a search on this site before asking their question? That exercise in frustration alone would send most newbies flying out of here. Also, if the search doesn't work (and work well), you're going to start getting the same questions over and over again until the contributors are sick of answering them - how helpful is that?

Sorry to keep pressing this issue but it's an important one.

I am new to Rick Steves and brand new to the forum after booking my first RS tour. I am completely lost and can not navigate the new site. None of the links or pages works with the exception of the forum. Is this widespread or is this a problem with my firefox browser? I have been trying to log in to get details of our tour for over a week and can not access the tour pages. I am disappointed since one of the factors that weighed in our decision to go with RS tours was the level of information on the website- the question and answer sections, tour feedback, and scrapbooks. Since booking, I have told many friends to look into RS for travel this summer. Unfortunately, they can't seem to find out anything either.

Transportation has finally shown up under Tips & Trip Reports.

For bconrad,
For whatever reason, a handful of users' Firefox browsers have had difficulty with seeing the new site. While this is effectively a caching issue (web browsers cache/save info to make web pages easy to reload, but can cause issues when the website changes), the easiest thing for you may be to try a different browser like Chrome just temporarily until your system rights itself which it will do eventually. If your Internet Service Provider happens to be AOL, then the issue is likely a caching issue in their servers as they are notoriously slow (think days, weeks) in displaying changes for their customers when websites change. If you have AOL, the only option is to wait it out.

I also notice that the drag down bar is working on the country listing - at least on Chrome. Thanks guys.

As another note, no one is actually discouraging you to stop calling this the "Helpline." We needed to officially rename the entire area where people post so that people who are unfamiliar with this area of our site understand what this place is. Calling it a Travel Forum conveys meaning that you can come here and discuss travel topics (mission accomplished). We found that "Helpline" didn't always mean anything (and actually meant other things) to the uninitiated. So, with the ol' Graffiti Wall Topics and the new Reviews section, we dubbed it the Rick Steves Travel Forum officially speaking.
Please do still refer to it as the Helpline if you like that. I think it's great that we have our own name for it that is separate from what "the man" calls it...

...oh wait... I am "the man" in this case. Shoot. :p Well, don't do what I say. Call it what you want to call it. :)

Posted this elsewhere and it was suggested i post it here too:

As a relatively new "poster" planning my current trip to London, I was wondering where all of the helpful people who were invaluable in planning my trip to Paris went. Although I have gotten some very useful information from the replies I received, I don't see many of you in the "England" category (e.g. Nigel) After reading this board, I guess I now see why. I would agree that I came to this site to get helpful information from the more experienced travelers. By adding more categories, I am concerned the people who give such great advice will find it too cumbersome/time-consuming to hit on all the different sites and thus, by the time they get to the site I am looking for assistance in, they will have had enough posting and log out. Thus, I am unable to benefit from their expertise, which I thought was the purpose of the forums. Just my two cents....have a great day and head over to the "England" site if you have a moment!! Cici

You guys aren't the ones that fumbled the ObamaCare website are you? This needs a lot of work to be more user friendly and less cumbersome to navigate.

It's great to see that the Transportation section is back, as that's one I tend to check on a regular basis.

One other minor issue that I've found only applies when viewing the new website with a Smartphone. All of the thread titles are shown, however the Author, Replies and Last Post are not shown (as they are when viewing the same page on a regular computer). I tend to prefer a consistent appearance regardless of which platform I'm using, and it would be nice to have that information available.

Please, please, please add a "back to the top" button. This thread is an excellent example why this would be a nice addition. Wouldn't mind a "to the bottom" button either. Another thing, I have noticed on the tour reviews there is now a five star rating. This is a good addition, except there is no indication why the reviewer gave a particular number of stars. Any plan to include that information? Plus, I enjoyed reading more than just the "wow" moments. I would think someone planning to take their first tour, or their 100th tour, would want to know more about tour member experiences.

Or maybe show this in order of the newest posts first, descending? As the way the topic list does? Or offer the button to display by "most recent first" as do the web sites this is trying to emulate?
And while I am at it, how about a way to produce the entire list of "Choose a Message Board to Get Started" without having to first select a thread and log in, which then produces this? And at the same time logging out then sends you back to this list also?

There is a huge advantage to this list - one can right click for new tabs each topic of interest without being taken off thee page and having to continually bounce back and forth. The same way different threads can be selected before leaving the topic page.

Andrew, Still no line breaks.

A few formatting questions - can anyone help?: using IE8

1. Why does the verbiage of some replies display alongside the Name/Location/#Posts/datetimestamp headings, and some display directly below those headings?

2. Has the Preview functionality been deactivated? I've posted several replies and one PM....no preview appeared for any of them. What step am I overlooking?

3. We did have some functionality for text formatting, like underline, bold etc. I don't see that now. Gone?...or just a BDU (Brain-Dead User) issue?

EDITED - Browser is IE8 on a Windows 7 OS Lenova desktop.
Just noticed that the numbers in my post should be at the beginning of the sentence, not imbedded in the second line...what's up with that I wonder? Also as I type this, my Preview box is now auto filling, spellcheck is back...............but still no bold/italics/formatting options available. Maybe just some system stability issues??? Or, Maybe I should treat myself to a new laptop??

Hmm.....bold still works for me. So does italics. And Preview is just below the box where I am typing. I think the issue with whether the words are beside or under the poster's name is due to whether the post can fit on the line next to the name. If it's short enough, it can go to the side. If it is longer, it goes underneath. Could you be having a browser issue?

Elaine, it all works fine for me (except line breaks for paragraphs). What browser are you using? Webmaster says there are some problems with Firefox and maybe some others. I would send the Webmaster a PM and ask them specifically about this.

Looks like if your country's name begins with "L" (Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg), you're no longer wanted. You've been banished to Trip Advisor. Or maybe Lonely Planet.

OK I have not contributed any input into this new design.. I wanted to wait and use it a bit.

Do not like it.

Do not like that when a poster posts a thread it does not say where they are from .. then the question is " what is best airline for me to use ".. duh.. we don't know where you are from... why is place of origin posted anywhere but on thread start post.

Do not like that I hate to scroll down through last 100 plus posts to post a reply.. reply button on top or a button to send us from top to bottom of thread would be helpful.

Finding this board a lot less easy to use.. and resent being told people were polled when it seems not one of the regular users was polled.. seems like stuff just happens to this website on the whims of the web designers and they simply do not listen to feedback .

I don't think RS website cares what any of us says.. they will do what they think is best.. which is one reason I personally find myself spending less time here.. its just not user friendly.

Seriously ,, web designers.. suggest you spend some time on other travel forums just to see how they are set up.. tripadvisor has some great features I love, pages on posts so I can skip over stuff, clicking on names to see what posters have posted, last post name so you can easily see whos added onto a post.. etc etc..

By the way, there seems to be a problem where the display removes white space. For example, 2 line breaks don't result in a blank line between paragraphs. I also can't get the italics and bold to work.

My browser is Safari on an Ipad.

I'm also finding that my posts are somewhat "jumbled together", with paragraph breaks that I've used being removed. It would be nice to able to group different thoughts by paragraph, rather than having an entire reply appearing as one large block of text. Hopefully that will eventually be corrected with some "fine tuning" of the new website.

Many of us are asking to please, please let us go to the last posting instead of scrolling down through a hundred postings. I wonder if Rick himself is looking at all these comments. It is a shame that this site is not as friendly as it was as many of us have bought his books, recommended them to others, taken his tours,etc. and to not feel that what we say matters. Just my opinion.

A few day's ago I said please don't throw tomatoes because I do not like the changes.
Today I'm saying go ahead throw tomatoes because I don't like the changes.
I'm very disappointed . Found this sight to be easy to navigate before. I'm considering joining others and saying I'm done with this. In my opinion you've went from simple to a 2nd generation
Trip Advisor. The more difficult you make this to use the less folks are going to want to use it.
It's not quick and enjoyable anymore. I thought part of Rick's philosophy was to keep it simple.
Like i said go ahead and throw them at me, i hate it. :(:(:(

Please make posters register with a location. It helps make meaningful replies.

I can work with the new changes, but I really miss the search function where I could type in a few words and do a customized search. Or is it still here somewhere?

I'm sorry, I tried, I really did. I just really, really dislike the majority of the changes. If I were new to this website, I don't think I would be on it too long. It is just too cumbersome digging through layers to find what you really want. It is not very user friendly. And, my gosh, there is absolutely nothing intuitive about looking for Transportation under Tips and Travel Report. Who on earth would think to look there?!!

It is not fun anymore. It is too quiet, too few responses, takes to much time to find something worth responding to. Too many regulars have left or are scattered over theplace. I will probably still check "General Europe" and Italy, but that's about it.

I agree its quieter and more work,, not as fun.

Old school. New School. The kids are running the asylum now. The Helpline is suffering the consequences. Farewell old friend.

Well, all I ever posted in was (to the West) Germany, General Europe, Transportation and Trip Reports. So, that is no problem, though the website is cumbersome, where as I find Fodors and Trip Advisor to be very easy to use.

What is with the Search function though? I typed in Frankfurt, and got nothing but a collection of random posts that had nothing to do with Germany at all, Belgium, France, etc. The other day, even though I knew I had just posted a rather long post about Frankfurt, when I did a Search to see what would come up, I got posts from 2008, 2009, and 2010.

It would really be nice to be able to click on a name and see their post history, including my own. Sometimes I want to find one of my posts, as it had links and information in it that would be useful to someone, and re-typing the whole thing is less than fun.

Jo, if it helps, I just started a new thread on how to recover old Helpline questions. I'll slowly be rebuilding my RS bookmarks over time, but not as extensively as I had them before.

The re-design has a clean look which is pleasing to the eye. Also, I seem to notice more videos available for viewing. Good. For newbies, the general organization may be OK, especially with a question about a single country. The quality of replies by a goodly number of regulars spending enormous amounts of time is most impressive. This is especially so as they answer the same old questions about money, pickpockets, etc. Given the re-design, my interest has declined dramatically as others have mentioned. Likely fewer replies helpful to newbies will result. Can statistics on traffic before and after be revealed? Finally, in my opinion, don't hold up the Trip Advisor website as the gold standard. As part of planning an upcoming trip to Europe, I looked up a city under the forum feature to learn more and discover tidbits. The default sort was "relevance" and spat forth thousands of posts. The first one dated early 2009 and the fourth post indicating lack of interest and closing it. Great.

Bruce, I don't hold TA as a gold standard either.

I've long thought that the quality of the information shared here, on the RS website, has always been better and much more reliable.

TA is plagued by shills and "one-post-wonders" - some destinations are worse than others for this (like Turkey). Some of these guys are really adept at posing as "so-and-so-from-Sweden", who had a glowing experience with a car rental, or hotel, or guide, etc.. Some are clumsier. It can be really hard to sift through and try to second-guess who is legit and who is not. This one is a current example right here (RS):

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/day-tours/lailatour-is-an-absolute-best-way-to-explore-tangier-and-casablanca

I guess what is motivating so many of us to speak up about our concerns is the profound desire to keep this new Q&A forum as useful and reliable as it used to be.

The Helpline was my gold standard.

I'm using a PC and Chrome. I can easily get to the end of a page or back to the top using the keyboard "Home" and "End" keys.

I am not a web designer or IT person, but I have had to deal with so many technology and design makeovers, print, web and otherwise, in my career, nothing about this one seems unusual to me. I think the webmaster and the RSIT crew have done a good job of getting the framework in place for the overall Rick Steves site. There is still a lot of work to be done to get the details right, though, especially but not only with the Forum/Helpline. That’s always the case when rebuilding a site. These things can be done incrementally but not so slowly that people lose faith in the site and move on to others.

As for newcomers, most will come, as now, from English-speaking countries, and, despite marketing efforts to stir interest in the old Iron Curtain countries and Eastern Mediterranean, most questions will continue to be about Western Europe, because that is the part of Europe that interests most travelers from the U.S., Canada, Australia, NZ, to say nothing of English speakers from China, Japan, India and other Asian nations. Don’t abandon your largest market in the effort to expand others -- and, even if unintentional, don't give that impression.

FWIW, here are my thoughts and suggestions:

1: Take steps soon to fix the country listings. 1a, immediately add the missing countries, especially Luxembourg, smack in the middle of Western Europe. 1b, I would immediately combine the smaller and/or less touristed countries with busier neighbors (Benelux, United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Czech Republic/Slovakia, Baltic States, Balkans, etc.) 1c. If you must have research first, monitor each country for a month, then combine those with less than 10 posts a month, as mentioned above.

2: Change the wording on the Tips and Trip Reports section of the Forum/Helpline to let users know that is the place to go for answers to questions about transportation, money, etc. Look at other areas where a simple change in titles or text can reduce confusion for new users and regulars.

3: Now that the framework is in place, ease up on the quest for consistency. For instance, there is no reason that Travel Forum’s list of countries has to be identical to Explore Europe. Let the Forum/Helpline have its own personality. There’s more, but this is getting far too long. For that, I apologize to all.

Dear Kate and Webmaster: Hang in there. If you need some bismuth subsalicylate, just let us know.

I hope that formatting for replies is on your punch list and will be fixed soon.

[return]

There is a lot of markup available in the window where you compose a reply (such as quotation) that is not reflected at all in the final result, though it appears to be working in the Preview window.

[return]

It's probably just a question of tweaking the css for the site. But it will make a big difference!

When I speak of Trip Advisor, I mean the forums, where you can post a question and people answer it. Many of the people answering are Destination Experts and really know what they are talking about. They have proved invaluable when I have been planning trips. I think some of you would be surprised by how many of the regular posters on here are also DE on Trip Advisor.

Though I often hear people talk about all the schills and fake reviews on Trip Advisor, this hasn't been my experience at all. Frankly, I would rather read 50 reviews from the past 3 months, where maybe one or two are fake reviews, about a hotel or tour or restaurant, than rely on a 2-5 year old (or older) review from the Rick Steves books. Anyone that thinks that Rick sleeps in every single one of the hotels in every single one of his books, every single year, is living in some kind of a fantasy world. Add that to the fact that the publishing date is so much later than the possible visit might have been, they just can't be that accurate. The Graffiti Wall and now the Trip Reports offer some up to date reviews, but let's see how many of you have added to those. Have you reported how your hotel, tour or restaurant were? I know I have read a goodly number of complaints about hotels.

I am one of the rare ones I guess, that likes being able to scroll to the bottom of the page, without needing to click and open each individual page. Maybe it is because I have a magic mouse and it goes so easily and quickly?

I also like all of the replies on one page, with the newest on the bottom Like Chani, I just use the End and Home keys. It doesn't make sense to have the newest at the top and to have to read back in time.

While I CAN use Home and End keys at a desktop, most often I am logged in on my netbook, which has no such keys. A Back to Top link (and a corresponding on at the top to get to the end) would be great for those of us with netbooks or on mobile devices like my phone.

Here's a reason we may see less activity on the "helpline". Since posters no longer receive an email that someone has responded to a questions with the link back to the post, one has to remember in which country the question was posted. Then on needs to scroll through the list looking for the question with now clues as to how many responses and where in the timeline the question is. Where have the automated notification gone? When will they come back.

I'm only planning England and Scotland where there are only a few posts every week. But for people posting questions in multiple countries, general Europe, or Italy, it's probable the original posters may never see the responses.

When I first joined many years ago, I too got emails with each post that I had made on a thread. I stopped that right away, as my inbox was packed with notices. If I am interested in a thread, I go look at it, I don't need to have an email telling me someone has posted on it. For those that liked this feature, perhaps they can tweak the preferences on your profile to have this happen again?

Personally, the OP should be the only one getting an e-mail notice of thread posts - and they really should get one.

Why should they get an email? If I have posted a question on any other travel forum, I don't get an email, and I have my preferences on this forum turned off, so I don't get any emails.

If you are interested enough to post your question, you should be interested enough to come back and read the answers, perhaps sign in, and also say thanks.

I do not like the "new" set up at all. The old one was so simple....easy to navigate and see many questions and answers for a certain region.

Sorry I will not be back as often.

Hi Jo,

It's because very often these questions are posed by newbies. It also may take several days before a reply comes, and the OP may have given up. That's the sense I get sometimes when the OP doesn't seem to come back.

Ultimately, you can't please every person with interface upgrades. This happens to every single user-generated content-based platform.

I think couple years ago some Helpliners were protesting they divided posts into categories instead of having a single page with all posting activity. Some were bitter they had to click on different forums.

This happens all the time with any website that goes through an upgrade. Some users are naturally resistant to any change. The thing is: if "don't change it because it works" feelings or user experience inertia guided tech developments, we'd be all still using Windows 95 and Netscape to access this page, for instance, and it would have just clumsy frames where all links would have a blue underline that turned magenta when clicked.

I agree with Dianne that en email notification back to OP is helpful. Last Friday I started to reply to a thread that hadn't had any action for a week. Knowing that the OP was new to the site, that he wouldn't get an email notification of my response, and not knowing if he was still "checking" I didn't bother to finish the reply to the Helpline (uh...Forum); I did end up sending him a PM though..

I also agree with Diane. It's very helpful.

I also agree that it's better when the OP receives an email notifying them of a reply. Sometimes those replies come weeks, or even longer, after the question is initially asked. It's not realistic to expect posters to remember each category they may have asked a question and then check back every couple of days. Especially since there are so many categories now.

I also do not want to get an email if I post a question... just too many emails. I don't know how I stopped it, but thankfully I don't get them, or it would drive me crazy. I agree with Jo... if you post a question just check back. What I do miss however is the questions that I have read are no longer highlighted, so I can't remember if I have read them or not.

On the old Helpline you had the choice of whether you wanted to receive the emails or not. I think it would be nice to have the option. I am only referring to emails if you are the OP, not if you just replied to a question.

I prefer to receive the email notifications that someone's responded to my question. It would be nice to have the option to choose, but in its absence, I wish the notifications would be reinstated. If you posted a question and aren't interested in reading any more answers (and that usually happens when you either post a question that begs for a discussion - like "how many countries have you traveled to" or your question gets hijacked), you just click on the notification in your email and, poof, it's gone. But a lot of times, responses trickle in over a week or two, sometimes more. Who is going to slog through pages of posts, in the hopes that someone has just responded. Not everyone who posts a question checks back diligently every day.

I now wonder if it's even worthwhile to respond to a question that's been inactive for several days. How do I know if the OP will check back? I know that if s/he doesn't, s/he won't know that I've posted. Sending PM's defeats the purpose of having general information available to all readers.

On another note, I am currently planning a trip to Italy, so I am reading that forum daily, along with the General forum. I also scan the Beyond Europe one, in case there are any Israel-related questions. Aside from that, I find that now I don't venture into the other countries unless I'm at my desk and really bored. While I can add my experiences and perceptions of a city or two in a country, I don't feel that I am knowledgeable enough about the whole nation. There are just too many countries like that for me, so I don't dip into them. While there are some folks here who are very country-specific in their experience, I think there are several (many?) regulars here who, like me, have traveled to a lot of places once or twice and can offer lots of advice, but like me, aren't going to take the extra time and effort to go to all the forums regularly.

My big complaint is that the navigation between forums is beyond clumsy. I am not sure if the people that designed this have ever used any other forums, but the go back and start over every time is PAIN and has cut down dramatically on what I bother to read and respond to. It's just too much work to navigate the forums for too little return. I will probably start using places like Trip Advisor and Fodors which have easier navigation.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum

Not sure if the above link will work but I have this bookmarked. It is a screen which lists all the forums. I just click on a country and when done use the back arrow on the computer menu bar (I think that's what it's called) and it takes me back to the list of countries. True, if you're interested in a lot of different countries, as we are, it is a lot of back and forth but not really too much trouble. When researching a smaller country this new format is better because we can look at the country and quickly see if there's been any new activity instead of scrolling down through lots of posts looking for that particular country.

Aside from the issues with the Forum / HelpLine, other parts of the "new" website could also use some serious fine-tuning. I've found that information is often buried inside several levels of menus so it's not easy to find. For example, I was trying to locate Guidebook feedback and updates last night, and it took some time to find the information. Another example was trying to find information on Railpasses. I haven't tried to find tour feedback information yet, but I'm sure that's also going to take awhile to locate.

It occurred to me that if I'm having this much trouble finding things, newcomers to the site may be totally frustrated and may just give up and go elsewhere for their travel information. I realize that the Webmasters are working diligently to get all the issues sorted, but at this point I'm finding that many parts of the website are nowhere near as intuitive or easy to use as the "old" version was. While it certainly looks nice, it's not as functional as it might be. I believe some significant restructuring is in order, rather than just a few "tweaks".

What Ken said. Click-o-palooza. (And of course, uncertainty about where to click, since the choices are hidden until you do.)

Might I suggest a flatter hierarchy all around? The old Helpline, for instance and for all its many faults, showed all the options on a single page.

Usability should trump aesthetic formalism, and anyway a savvy designer can make anything look nice.

Can anybody tell me how to find the photo album contest winners from the 2012 tours.
I viewed it last fall but now I can't find it.

Hi Dee - Click on Our Tours, then Enter Our Scrapbook Contest, then scroll down a little and click on tour scrapbook archives.

Yay for the Jump to Bottom and Jump to Top buttons!!

agreed nice having the To Top and To Bottom buttons!

As others noted, it harms readability that we cannot insert a blank line between composed paragraphs. Pressing [Return] twice does not do the job. The subject is not discussed on the page covering font effects and bulleted lists.

Can you provide a colored or flashing flag for OPs that are, say, more than 365 days old? A tinted overlay would be even better.

Yep, still patiently waiting for the line breaks to return....

I have been a follower of the helpline for years. I used to read each post from the day but that was stopped a while ago(I miss it)I dont like the new format but will keep using it and maybe Ill change my mind.

Someone mentioned this earlier about the login issue. That option only appears when I click on a specific Travel Forum topic such as General Europe. As soon as I leave the topic, the login option disappears. It would be nice to have the login option appear on every page so that when we're ready to log out, we can be anywhere on the website and our name ("signed in as Sarah") will be there too.

These new forums are useless for searching for topic-specific information. I'm wondering if the people who agreed to changing the forums have ever used an actual internet forums system. There are hundreds of thousands of east to use forums on the internet. I always thought the RS Traveler's helpline was basic, but when I needed it, I knew where to look for information. I don't even know where to start here. Is everything country-specific now? What happened to regional information for topical information, like transportation?

Something such as VBulletin or PHPBB would be much easier for people who actually have used forums to navigate. Why use something that nobody is familiar with, that's actually worse than the simple design used previously, and then call it "better?"

I hate to say it but the new forum doesn't work for me. The underlying problem is just too many clicks to get anywhere. I've been to lots of countries and may be able to help on a bunch of topics. Before, I could scan down a handful of general areas to see if there were questions I could help with. I would always peruse the first page of general Europe, north, and west. If I had time, I'd look at transportation, the boot, or east. But I don't really feel like looking at dozens of forums to see what people are asking. The new format has made it just too difficult for me to use easily. Easy use was the number one reason I came here as opposed to other travel forums.

Steve, Brad,
Have you tried the All Topics forum? It seems to solve at least some of the problems you mention.

@Brad... have to agree.... after using the site since all the changes there are just too many categories... So, I have decided to ignore all the categories except General, France, Italy, Germany, England and an occasional stop on Turkey. I always read all the categories before as I have traveled to 90% of the countries listed.... just not working for me as well as it did before. I also learned so much from the other posters... Just not user friendly for people who have a limited amount of time to spend playing on a website.... Do like the 'jump' buttons. Hopefully the other changes might include putting those countries back the way they were.

I am using the "All topics" section now almost exclusively.

Terry Kathryn, have you tried it yet? It's here:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/all-topics

Same with me - I am mostly checking the All Topics section, even though I never used the Classic View before.

I see the "all topics" link in Dianne's post, two above, but can not find it listed on the main page....where is it? And sometimes I see Transportation, To The West, etc, and sometimes not. Sometimes is not enough.....PLEASE PLEASE Return to the life on this site BEFORE these changes were imposed!!!! Much easier and it made sense then. hjt

I was going to ask how to find the Classics View... I'll try it. Thanks
Edit
Ok.. so I found it by clicking on the link but how do I get there directly from the website??? Can't find it.
While it does give all the recent posts it still made so much more sense to me before...

Go to the main Forums page (the Destination Q & A one).

The drop-down Forums menus are in the middle and to the right are two blue boxes. The top box is darker blue ("Create an account"). The box right below it is in a lighter blue and is titled "Using the Travel Forums".

In that box, you will see:

"Tip: See all forum topics in one place, sorted by most recent, in our new All Topics section!"

That's where the link is... just click on "All topics".

Terry Kathryn, you should be seeing 5 columns in the "All topics" section:

The thread title (question) / the forum / the OP / post count / the date & time of the last post

It's actually quite helpful for tracking the site's recent activity in one go.

Ok... thanks... now I have found it.

I am once again enjoying the website. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the All Topics view. I'm even reading (and responding) to stuff I never went into before.

The only thing missing for me is the font color change (currently non-change) for threads I've clicked on. If it's an easy fix, please, please.

Totally agree with Chani....would really like highlighted threads that I have read,
but otherwise thanks everyone for showing me the way to make it easier to find my way around:))))

Fantastic! As far as I am concerned, all topics is actually an improvement over the old style, as you can quickly scan for anything new without having to open all the topics of interest to you.

So- why not have that button on the Home Page?

Some excellent improvements here; thanks for listening. All Topics and jump to top/bottom are great. One thing I have hoped for, sort of an extension of those jump to top/bottom links, would be to have the full navigation "Home / Travel Forum /General Europe / Full Website" at the bottom, too. That way you could jump to bottom to review the latest answers on a post and then go right back to "General Europe" [or All Topics or whatever thread you were in] with one click. Hope this makes sense. Thanks for all your hard work, webteam!

I think the All Topics section is great! Before I would just read "To the West" and "General Europe", now I'm seeing a lot more topics - I didn't know what I was missing!

Hopefully these are two areas you're working on:

1. Changing the color of a topic once it's read.

2. Getting the Search working again. I just searched on "Normandy" and came up with only 8 forum topics. When planning trips, I use the Search function all the time, and unfortunately right now it's of no use. Is it just me, or are others having problems? I'm using Google Chrome.

I think you've done a really nice job; rolling out such a huge change is a brave undertaking.

I am finding one bug with my iPhone 5. For some posts, the right edge of the text is cutoff and there's no way to resize the to get that text. It's always hidden under the margin. Within a chain of responses to a single item, one response will display appropriately, the next one is cut off, and the one below that displays appropriately. I'm guessing it's a function of various input devices.

Dawn - I've gone back to using Google's advanced search to find stuff here. All you need to do is put the forum in the forum in the "Site or domain" box - https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/

Thanks Chani!

I liked an old feature, where after I clicked on the title of a thread, it stayed highlighted. Yes, I know I should be able to remember what I have already read. But, alas, sometimes when I am browsing I have to pause to think, and thinking is tiring. Another small assistance would be a button on a forum page that returns to the index for that forum. In the current setup I click on my browser's return button twice. No big deal, but inconvenient.

Yes, Southam, I've sadly noticed that the highlighting was gone :-( It's aggravating, as hard as it is to navigate the new forum the way it is, to click on a thread only to realize that I've already 'been there, done that, didn't need to return just yet'.

And yes, sometimes thinking is tiring, LOL!

The only problem I am having with the changes is that the search option in the tour section does not display properly on my phone. If I want to use the search features I have a half second to hit a selection before the site automatically goes the the browse section. I cant search by date or price.
I use google chrome with motorola smartphone.
The rest of the site displays fine.

While it is true that I posted very little on this site, I used to check it out pretty regularly in the last 7 years.You could get a lot of info by just hitting the main topics. Not anymore. I don't have the kind of time this format requires. Why can't you just put it back, at least somewhat, so it is once again easily used? I thought it was beautifully laid out. Except for the Helpline, I rarely use the rest of the site. Good thing I'm only traveling to one country next time. Otherwise I'd give up!

Lisa, try using the "All topics" view - it's even better than the old format! Every question is listed on the same page. I use it now almost exclusively.

I do not think All Topics is better than before, not at all. It's better than nothing but I liked the Old Format much, much better.. I agree with Lisa.

And we STILL can't make line breaks when replying to a thread...

I think it would be convenient if we could navigate from one country to another in the Travel Forum without having to backtrack. If would be nice to have the same "Countries" window to choose another country.

Re "All Topics". If you don't like it, then don't use it! It's OPTIONAL.
Personally, I like that this now works like other forums I visit for information (my specific cars, AV, etc), wherein either directly or by logging in I can see what new posts there have been since I was last there - without having to do it topic by topic.
This is a great plus for the long-time users. New people or those searching for something specific by topic have the list of forums, as before.
Now whether it's better to have 3 subdivisions with a total of 62 (if I counted correctly) forums, where there used to be only 8 divisions plus the Graffiti wall divisions, that's another issue, which I am not adding my opinion to the lengthy debate above (as "All Topics" solved my complaint!)

The current problem seems to be the spambots. Today's attack threatens to take down the whole network when they can post replies on every thread with this garbage.

Thanks for your hard work trying to keep up with the persistent spammers.

.

As for All Topics, just like anything else, if you don't like it, don't use it! I'm using it almost exclusively now that there are so many topics to choose from. I'm not going to post on every one individually, but I do like reading about things that I have no knowledge of. That is how we learn.

I wonder which is worse -to be going through by picking the various the country topics you like and finding the SPAM, or seeing it in one block of 45 consecutive topics on the All Topics list?
Especially as it now stands where 45 or so topics in Italy (and Germany and a couple others) all appear to have comments added at 12:25 PM today, which reflects the posting time for the now-removed SPAM ad (posted as a response here, rather than a new Topic), and now you don't know when each of these was last commented on.
Good thing e-mail notifications are not working, every one of those OPs would have gotten an e-mail directing them to this post.