Updates to our Forum

Thank you! I'm looking forward to this new functionality. Thank you all for the work you do!

This will be fun to check out! Thanks for all you do.

Oh, thank you! I've been hoping for a bookmarks feature. What a welcome addition!

We've been made aware of a bug that will affect very few of you (probably close to 1/1000 chance).

If you find that your My Travel Forum page is not showing any of your account info, please contact me directly. We'll be able to fix it.

Hi Andrew and team,

I immediately noticed the minor changes to the Travel Forum intro page (it no longer says to 'sign in') but somehow missed the whole 'My Account' changes. Thanks for your hard work. I can't wait to try out the new Bookmarks features.

Thanks for all your hard work!

:) Gretchen

Thanks for all you do. I’m certain that managing such a varied and robust forum is quite the chore. Looking forward to using the new bookmark feature.

I'm really liking the travel forum page. It's nice and easy to see my history and it will be wonderful to have bookmarked pages together. Thank you for updating the website!

I love the new features! I've already added some bookmarks. The new My Travel Forum page is terrific.

When I first saw the new features, none of them was working. I sent a note to our webmaster, and we soon discovered that there was a problem with my account. He got it fixed quickly.

Always great to get a reminder what a good resource this forum is! Kudos to the webmaster and the team at Rick Steves' Europe!

I, too, would like to add my thanks. This should make the site more user friendly. I can't wait to implement the bookmark feature.

Oh so happy with these changes. Finally we can see our 'sent' PMs, what so many of us have been asking for.

Thanks Webmaster and the whole team for your hard work. This is great!

Thanks for the new "My Account" and the features that go with it. Very handy to use!

I like the idea but I sure don't see the "My Accounts" button. I can't access my account at all.

Darcy, did you read the 4th post down from the top? You should contact the webmaster directly per his/her instructions.

Yes, thanks, Nancy, I have. It's after hours so I wouldn't expect an answer till tomorrow.

EDIT: 15 July: Found the "My Account" button on my desktop--Yay! but it's still not on my mini iPad. I suspect it'll show up eventually. The new set up is terrific, thanks Andrew and IT department!

BAZINGA! The geeks have done a beautiful upgrade. Sheldon would be proud.

Thanks Andrew and IT Team. Appreciate all your work updating the forum. Looking forward to utilizing the new features, especially bookmarks. Very user friendly!

Nice work! I especially like that I can look at my sent messages and the cleaner approach, overall. I expect the bookmark feature will be very handy as I have created so many over the years in my Chrome bookmarks. It will be much easier to reference them here on the site, especially when wanting to share that info again. Thanks!

Have you checked any of this on an IPAD? Nothing you say works for me. How can I get the list of my participation on past posts that used to pop up when I clicked on my name?

Stephen, you may have some glitches as indicated above. I do see the information on my iPhone and iPad Mini as well as my laptop. I was not able to see this info on my laptop yesterday evening so I'm guessing they are working on correcting glitches.

My thanks as well for the change. I LOVE that you have the Tour link above. It was such a hassle to try and find the link to sign in and view the tour information.

How can I get the list of my participation on past posts that used to pop up when I clicked on my name?

Stephen, are you not able to see the section My History? If not, contact the webmaster. If you do see it, click on 'view all'.

Thanks Webmaster and IT Team!

I think it's great that we can now keep track of our "sent" PM's, as I often wondered if I'd answered someone or not.

I also look forward to the "Add a Bookmark" feature.

I'm not able to see my own profile anymore though, is anyone having this problem?

Hmmm... Am I missing something?

I'm not able to see my own profile anymore though, is anyone having
this problem?

I'm long-winded sometimes (sorry everyone), so I'm not surprised if you missed this from my post:

While the way you view others' profiles remains unchanged, the My
Travel Forum account page replaces the view into your own profile.

So, said differently, you can't see your own profile page anymore. We hope you and others will find that the new My Travel Forum pages serves your needs better.

Thanks to everyone for their comments!

Responding to what Stephen was referring to, we changed the long-winded moniker of "View Topics I've Participated In" to "My History" (or "...Posting History" in certain places where the extra context is very needed). Changing monikers will always cause some confusion, and I apologize for that. Here's hoping this makes sense and that this is a good change for the long run.

...and Stephen, we believe we addressed the "1/1000" bug this morning which sounds like what you may have encountered, but let me know if you still aren't seeing anything under My History.

It doesn’t look like the ‘contact me’ works for me either. clicking on ‘my account’ gives 3 choices. clicking on them does nothing

I like this change a lot. Thanks so much.

I also want to take this opportunity to say this forum has a really nice design and is easy to use. Recently, I’ve been on a couple of other forums since my next trip is to Australia and New Zealand. It made me realize how great this forum is. The contrast is amazing. Some other forums have so much crap all over them and some are just plain ugly. I’ve always liked this forum, but now I appreciate it even more. Great job!!!

p.s. I would still like a like button.

Dear Webmaster and TI team,

I can’t thank you enough for letting us have access to the PMs we’ve sent.

I’ve spent quite some time re-reading many of my sent messages, especially the ones to/from our dear friend Zoe!

I have over 200 pages of sent messages, how can I delete the ones I don’t want to keep?

Thanks again!

Priscilla

P.S.
Is it possible to get folders in order to organize our bookmarks? 😉

Great additions...definitely makes the site much more user-friendly. Thank you!!!

Does the "My Tours" function work retroactively at all? I went on a Berlin, Prague and Vienna Tour a number of years ago. I'm still in touch with our guide and with at least one fellow tourer.

Beautiful! Now I can check whether I actually DID send that message rather than sending it twice.

Andrew, I hope you are following this thread.

I'm still liking the changes a lot!

Just one thing: there's an inconsistency on links opening in the same tab or in a new tab.

Generally, links from the "My Travel Forum" page open in a new tab, but buttons open in the same tab. For instance, if I click "View All" under My History, it opens in the same tab, but if I click any of the individual links in that section, they open in a new tab. And under My Travel Forum, if I click "Browse the Forum," it opens in the same tab. But if I click "Browse the travel forum" under Forum Links at the right, it opens in a new tab.

Links within forum posts, on the other hand, always open in the same tab, whether they are links within the forum (such as links to user profiles), or external links (to sites posted in the forum body).

Is it possible to make this consistent one way or the other?

Thanks!

Does the "My Tours" function work retroactively at all? I went on a Berlin, Prague and Vienna Tour a number of years ago.

Yes! When viewing your Tour Account, below any upcoming tours you may have, you should see a My Tour History section. The feature is currently limited to showing the names and dates of past tours, but you should see your BPV tour there. If you don't, it may be associated with a different email address. You can contact our Tour Department and they can merge account info from different email addresses to the account you prefer.

Is it possible to make this consistent one way or the other?

We'll work to fix that.

Hey Andrew !! Great Job. Kudos.

Bet you had help - Kudos to them too.... awaiting the credits page.

Do you remember (how could you and most of our regulars forget) how it went the last time there was such a major change - when the Helpline was replaced by the Forums?

How much smoother, and how graceful it is now. Surely there must be some lumps here and there, but your time at the blender and conch has gone well, with an exceptionally smooth product.

Well done.

ps.... maybe put a "read only" on the old "To The (insert geographical area here)" forums. Occasionally new posters wind up writing from there only either to be ignored or get a "good idea to move it" message from me and others.

Andrew and IT Team, ya'll ROCK. 🥇
Being able to reference 'sent' PMs is HUGE!!!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Just wondering if topics can be sorted chronologically by last post, not last activity. I’m interested in reading new posts only, not other activity (edits, deletes).

Bet you had help - Kudos to them too.... awaiting the credits page.

The credit here really goes to the IT team as the coding was all on them. I'll let the IT team reveal themselves if they want to be seen in the public sphere. :) One of them does post here on occasion.

Do you remember ... when the Helpline was replaced by the Forums? ...How much smoother, and how graceful it is now.

That's very kind. We are always working to make transitions easier on you... though I'd note that the Helpline changeover was a complete website replacement. That might still be rough if we had to do that today. :) No need to replace the forum for years to come, so no worries there.

Just wondering if topics can be sorted chronologically by last post,
not last activity. I’m interested in reading new posts only, not other
activity (edits, deletes).

Speaking of rough transitions when we replaced the Helpline, some of you may recall that the "new" forum was buggy for a while when a post was edited or deleted. It really messed with the sorting and it would take many hours to sort it out. Those bugs are fixed, but I'm hesitant to mess with the sorting. Also, a topic shouldn't be re-sorting anymore due to a deleted post, but edits will still do it. If I recall correctly, some forum members asked to have a thread move to the top when an edit was made. That's not ideal if someone fixes a misspelled word, but it is wanted if the edit is a significant change to the content. I'm hoping that a re-sort to the top of the list due to a post being edited is much less common than a re-sort due to a new post... but do speak more to this if you find it to be really common (or annoying).

Right now the country forums are sortable by Title, Author, Number of Comments, and Date of Most Recent Comment. I'd say the only one of those that is useful is Date. But it would be nice to be able to sort on either Original Post Date or Date of Most Recent Comment.

The All Topics view is not sortable at all. How about making that sortable by the same fields as the country forums?

I can see why people might want to sort by most recent edit, but it does get to be overkill when the edit is correcting a typo. I'd be fine if Most Recent Post date got updated when there's an edit, but I think it's better if it doesn't. Now that we have bookmarks, we can easily refer back to any topics we are interested in following.

Thank you for your detailed explanation on how to better use the forum!

Andrew, any chance of a one-click-and-done spam report button, for those of us too lazy to click report and then write a witty 50 character comment?

Any chance of stopping those who start threads from being able to delete them on their own? Just wasted 15 minutes giving an extensive reply to a topic which apparently had already been deleted by the OP before I submitted it (had several replies when I started). Maybe give a few minutes grace for people who realise they have posted in the wrong place, or duplicated etc.

Any chance of stopping those who start threads from being able to
delete them on their own?

Webmaster, please don't do this. It's called the concept of "free will" and should be respected. Everyone should have the ability to control their own authored threads, as there are many legitimate (and even illegitimate, to some folks) reasons to delete a thread that shouldn't have to go through any bureaucratic process to make it more difficult. This is a free forum. So anyone should be able to delete a thread just as anyone should be allowed to freely respond, edit their responses, or delete their responses entirely without any expectations whatsoever for making someone else either happy or unhappy. If you want to put up some kind of oddball warning asking the person "are you sure you want to delete this entire thread? ... the other folks won't be able to benefit from the replies posted here, or other repercussions....", that's a different story. Or you could give the person the option to simply "close the thread" to further comments because they don't wish to receive further replies in their inbox, or they feel like their original question was fully answered. But ultimately the person should be able to decide without being forced to keep their thread up.

I personally see nothing wrong in the OP editing their own original post to nothing if they wish (*) but I consider it really the height of rudeness for ordinary contributors to eliminate other people's work in a volunteer community forum and this is one of the few that I know that operates like this.

(*) on another forum where I am regular even this is frowned upon by many and if anyone does it, someone will repost it into the thread under their own user name

I understand what you're saying Marco, but let's take it a step further and imagine that someone just doesn't want to be on the forum anymore and wants their profile/user content entirely deleted from the site. This will impact every thread they've contributed to or authored. But should they not be allowed to make that choice? There's no crime without ill intentions, and I doubt folks who delete their threads are doing it to spite anyone.

I'm hoping the Webmaster can chime in and offer his opinions here. Surely there have been folks who have vacated the site, bringing all their posts (and those of others) with them.

Forum software can be designed to have a facility to void contributions from a single user without affecting anyone else (I don't know how easy or difficult it may be here). As it stands the originator of discussion topics are in effect being treated as the owner of everyone else's post in it which violates the 'free will' of the other contributors.

was it the one about flying from Edinburgh? If so you had a lucky escape

It happened that it was (and I could tell things didn't seem to be going well on it), although I am getting tired in general of things of mine disappearing. This was the first case where I didn't even get to post it.

The OP changed their username while the thread was live (I didn’t know you could do that) then the thread was deleted. An earlier thread by the OP ended in tears and this seemed to be heading the same way.