Subtle changes, bugs and feedback

I used the usercp page for catching up and subscriptions for finding a specific thread.

The issue with all of these design decisions was that vBulletin wasn't opinionated and would offer 3 or 4 ways to do anything which results in a confusing interface where a lot of people do get lost and find it too complex.

1. New Posts
   
2. Today's Posts
   
3. Subscribed Threads
   
4. UserCP
   
   

All show a collection of threads indicating read/unread, ordered by recently updated... with slightly different filters to them.

But essentially they are the same thing.

Each was flawed in it's own way too, but there were two different main audiences:

1. Regular users who were catching up and discovering content.
   
2. Power users who had long-sinced given up trying to read everything and now were focused on staying in touch with the conversations they cared about.
   
   

Some overlap exists... but essentially 2 usage patterns.

It should be noted, new users go to the home page and browse by section/forum/category. They go into "Bikes & Bits" and that's it.

"Following" delivers for scenario #2, and delivers big style... because we now tell you far more... who replied to you, who mentioned you, do you have an update to a private message?, etc.

We are definitely lacking a good story for #1, which I was aware of but wondered whether the search functions would cover it well enough.

The answer is no, so a "Today's Posts" page will be built in a few days.

It's also likely that we'll offer a filter to the "Following" page depending on the type of update. i.e. "Only show me the updates where someone mentioned me" or "Only show a list of conversations I'm following that have had updates" (being analogous to the UserCP page).

The filters will take a bit longer to do, that query is fairly complex and every time we touch it another quirk emerges.