We Want Your Feedback! What Do You Want in the New Website?

Hey everyone. I've been kind of a silent member here. I typically browse through the forum once a week to read what's going on and occasionally post and follow up with people privately.

At any rate, I'm working with Shannon on the revamp of the new afibbers.org website. Shannon and I will be actively working on this in the coming weeks but we'd love to get your feedback on what you'd like the new site to have.

Anything you want to share please reply to this post and we'll keep a running tab of what you hope the new website will have! For example, maybe you want more video content. Maybe you want a dedicated library of indepth research studies. Maybe you want an entire section dedicated to natural supplements. Whatever comes to mind, let us know!

Thanks,

Travis

P.S. While we value everyone's feedback we can't promise we'll implement everything. We just want to get a sense of what is most important to everyone. Thanks.

Travis,

Wishing you and Shannon the best as you bring together the new site. I am 72 years of age, and after having been told five years ago by my primary care doctor that I was in A-fib, then told by the cardiologist and staff EP that I was already in permanent A-fib, I have since been a site follower. Contributors to the site are great, and I am thankful for the wealth of information available here. I am blessed that I have not yet faced the challenges which many site participants have, and to date remain with a healthy heart controlling my A-fib through diet, exercise and supplements. Which leads me to request that a dedicated section to natural supplements be incorporated into the new site. Supplementation is often the theme for new Afibbers to the site, and is important to a first level approach in addressing the challenges which come with A-fib.

Thanks for reaching out to your audience.

Larry

Please keep it simple enough so an old computer ignoramus like myself can still use it.

PeggyM

Hi Travis,

Thanks for all your work!!!

My request would be to retain access to all the old content and posts in some fashion.

George

I would ask that I do not have to sign in every time with the password 2seseame and user name afibbers. Every time I come to this forum I have to go through this firewall to get to the forum. I do not have to actually sign in at the Forum.

Maybe I am doing something wrong but this is the only forum that requires this. It is a small issue but just my input. I love this forum; It has and continues to be such a asset to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2016 01:25PM by smackman.

So far, all requests mentioned above are part of the new website redesign plan :-) ... And many thanks to Travis who is a integral part of our Afibbers team and is overseeing much of the redesign realization.

And Smackman, the log-in just to access the forum via 'afibbers' username and '2sesame' password is necessary as the current old bulletin board/forum platform called 'Phorum' has not be updated since 2009 and does not have good security to keep out spammers ... thus the added log-in which is a bit of a nuisance. The good news is that it should go the way of the Dodo Bird, but not until we do the full forum migration to a new more modern and secure forum platform which we plan on doing right after the website update. One big step at a time to make the transition as easy for everyone.

Cheers!
Shannon

PS I have no earthly idea how my username which is normally 'Shannon' somehow appeared as 'afibbers' at the top of this post .. hopefully such glitches with also go tthe way of the Dodo bird as well once we migrate all the past years of the forum to the new Forum platform.

Shannon



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2016 02:40AM by Shannon.

I was just given my suggestion as the original poster ask. It is not a priority for me.

Smackman...we'll definitely be getting rid of that nuisance login. As Shannon mentioned, we'll be moving the current forum to a new forum platform AFTER the new site launches. When we're on the new forum platform there won't be a login required.

This was the first thing I told Shannon we had to get rid of so we're on the same page. It's not only a nuisance for users but it also blocks Google from being able to index any of the forum content...which severely limits our reach on Google.

Our goal with the new website and forum is to expand our footprint online so we can reach more afibbers and help more people...while retaining our core group here

Travis

Thanks for asking about input...I love the say it is "thread centered" and you get to hear/read from other afibbers.
1. Perhaps is there a better way to organize and maintain files on research studies and the most commonly used meds and combinations
2. Perhaps a better way to list medical centers and Doctors across US who do a lot of afib work or research.


Thanks.....

Joe

My only suggestion would be to have the most recent activity be listed first....in other words if there is a recent comment to an older topic have it move to the top of the lists..

s

I totally agree with George that we must have an Archive section should make available the past posts, Conference Room topics and the Afib Resources … all to be used as reference material as new situations crop up. There is an abundance of useful, foundational information for new readers not typically found easily or elsewhere on the Internet that has this specific detail and focus. The Search feature should locate topics easily and quickly.

I’d also like to see a section or “tab” for Nutritional Supplements with tips for using the proper forms of various nutrients… such as --- it's preferable to use folate (methyltetrahydrofolate) rather than folic acid… and why.

I think it would be useful to have a section identifying common, useful Testing and includes links to Exatest/Intracellular Diagnostics, Meridian Valley, Metametrix, etc.

Perhaps a Glossary of common AF terms and those relating to the useful diagnostics, ablation procedure terms and useful monitors such as AlivCor, Cardymeter, etc.

I'm certainly looking forward to the new format.

Jackie

No pictures, No video. If there's something to be seen put a link up for it. Tired of all this stupid flash video, slowing down the net.

Please keep the "show all posts" functionality, which currently brings up a 1-liner of all the posts a user has made (along with links to the actual threads).

This is an extremely useful feature, which yields much better information than trying to do a generic search to obtain the same detail.

It's quite useful to see a user's past posts, as that helps the reader gauge the perspective from which that user is posting.

I would also like to add a "+1" to the Anti-Fib's comment regarding avoiding flash, videos, and other heavyweight features popping up by default and bogging down one's browser.

It would also be nice if there were a section of the forum sorted by EP name, where people could (voluntarily!) fill out a form, giving any details they feel comfortable with regarding the nature of their ablation and in particular their happiness (or lack thereof) with the results. Standard disclaimers apply re: HIPPA, non-statistical validity, blanking period, etc.

Great suggestions, apache!

Regarding comments about video...the new site will definitely have video but they likely won't be part of the forum and they definitely won't be those annoying videos that automatically start playing once you go to the page. I HATE those videos. These will be the type of videos where you see an image of the video and IF you want to watch it you hit the play button.

Like it or not, the majority of internet users today are consumers of video. YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google. We want to tap into this trend by offering more video. Again, I assure you any videos we post won't be annoying nor will they drag down your internet experience in any way shape or form. It will all make sense once you see it rolled out. I should also point out that by no means will everything be video. The videos will only compliment everything else we're doing here. One example of such videos will be Shannon interviewing some of the top EP's in the country and other experts in the industry.

Travis

Travis,
Just a suggestion to keep it simple for those of us who are not overly computer literate. I don't want to get lost in the software!
Thanks.

Thanks to you and Shannon for doing all the work!

I have not found the Search feature very helpful since the site was updated several years ago. I do hope the new site will have a better Search function.

Marg

Quote

Like it or not, the majority of internet users today are consumers of video. YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google.

True, but does that actually matter? Getting this discussion forum indexed (and well ranked) by Google would accomplish the stated goal of increasing the reach of this afibbers.net forum. I'm not sure how videos would do that, if at all. Besides, indexing video is not really viable - what is there to index other than the title of the video? It's not like google parses the audio stream for keywords.

Also, as I'm sure you know, Google owns YouTube, so they probably have some proprietary method of ensuring YouTube videos rank high when one is searching for video items. Which is probably why (for all intents and purposes) there is no competitor for youtube.

Arguably the most successful discussion forum on the net today is reddit.com, which is entirely text based (with provisions for links to video and graphics). I think it would be much more beneficial to the afib community to stick to a reddit style forum: a text focused design. That much more readily lends itself to discussion than video sound bites. It is also much more likely to be indexed by google.

Speaking of reddit, one feature which would be nice is if people could self-sort the value of responses (similar to reddit) by doing a +1 or -1 on any particular discussion thread. Of course that can be abused, but when it isn't... it is an extremely efficient way of surfacing the most useful answers to the question posed by the thread. Right now there is no way to tell how many people agree (or disagree) with any of the replies posted here, because there is no thumb's up/down voting system.

Im not sure where the idea of us having a lot of videos on the forum got going? Perhaps I didn't make it clear that adding some video content will mainly be for educational purposes on the website itself ... not the forum per se ... though I can certainly see the reason for links to some specific topic-related videos at times that are hosted by other resources.

And we hope to totally avoid the dreaded automatic flash video format as much as is possible.

While a voting system for ranking 'thread' or 'posts' may well have its place on other online forums, I'm not at all interested in starting such a ranking system here on this forum. I trust in our reader's basic common sense and instincts of what makes sense for them and what may not be useful or relevant for them without having to be told by votes what or whom they should or shouldn't trust. As you noted too apache, such a ranking system can very easily be abused and then I'll wind up having to police the whole thing which could easily become too time consuming.

Unlike many forums on the web ours isn't really a debate format in any event, but rather an experience sharing place in an effort to encourage well-meaning sharing of ideas, experiences and insights from all of our collective long years dealing with this lousy condition.

Thanks for everyone's feedback and suggestions and keep them coming when an idea pops up. We likely will not include every wish but I'm happy to confirm that the vast majority of the comments posted here so far indeed reflect core factors in our design and layout direction and plans.

Cheers!

Shannon



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2016 01:33AM by Shannon.