The week of March 15th, the EX Community will be moving to a new platform! I’ll be posting twice more with details and instructions. Here’s what you need to know:
- There will be some downtime (we’re keeping it as short as possible)
Our team will start the work while many of you are sleeping. We will need to put the community in "read only" mode shortly before the move begins until the new site is live. You’ll be able to read existing posts but no new posts can be made during that time. We will have a group chat available for anyone who wants to connect with other EX members during this time. Please know that our team is trying to keep this “read only” time as short as possible, but it will be at least a day, possibly two. This time allows us to do the data transfers AND make sure things got transferred correctly.
- Many features will be the same
The new platform is run by the same partner as our current platform. This means that a lot will remain the same! A few examples are below:
- Asking questions
- Posting discussions
- Journaling about your experience quitting
- @ mentioning people to draw their attention to your post
- Mayo Clinic Blog
- There will be some exciting new features
- You’ll be able to see who is online. There will be a green dot over someone’s avatar if they logged in recently.
- It will be easier to find Friends to quickly access for Private Messaging.
- It will be easier to find specific content. You can add “labels” to your post to help other people easily find your content. These labels make “Search” really useful.
- Signatures. You can create a signature to add to your posts.
- There will be some changes
Overall, the new EX Community should be easier and simpler to use. Sometimes less is more, especially when it comes to finding helpful people and content.
- Smaller number of groups: Over the years, hundreds of groups have been created. Many of these were very similar. It has been confusing which group to post in and some groups haven’t had much activity. We’ve combined content from related groups to make it easier to connect around shared interests. Rest assured the popular “Games Group” and other popular ones are waiting to greet you!
- Conversation “areas”: Conversations will have a handful of areas that will make it easier to know where to post and find content. One of these will be called Journals / Blogs, which is where personal blogs will live.
- No more points: These are not available on the new platform. Members will continue to earn system-generated badges related to activity in the EX Community.
- Simplified quit calculator: Simplified to count days before and after your quit date.
- Shorter usernames: Users with very long usernames will see shortened usernames to fit the requirements of the new platform.
- Documents: We are exploring a related feature that may be available after the initial move.
- Most content will be moving, but there are a few exceptions
We’re moving all the content we possibly can. It will be more than 1 million content elements! But there are some things we can’t move for technical reasons.
- Current profile pictures won’t be moved, but you’ll be able to upload a profile picture on the new community.
- Peer-to-peer badges
- Polls
- Past events
- Bookmarks: Save the pages you’ve bookmarked. See how
- Follows: If you follow a person and they also follow you it will become a "friendship". Anyone you follow that doesn’t follow you won’t be backed up. See how
My next update will be March 8th.
Thanks for your patience and support!
Mark
EX Community Manager
