https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/ebyusv/updates_to_community_page_design_on_desktop/
created by mjmayank on 17/12/2019 at 17:30 UTC*
221 upvotes, 57 top-level comments (showing 25)
Hi everyone,
Over the course of the last couple months, we have run a bunch of tests to try and improve the experience of users landing on community pages on Reddit. We ran these as A/B tests, and also talked to Reddit users both old and new to gain insights into what was confusing about the experience for them. The goal was to simplify the hierarchy of information so that users understand that they are on a community page and can quickly understand what the community is about.
We wanted to announce these changes to you first so that you have time to update any settings on your community that you’d like in preparation for this change which will roll out on January 6th, 2020. Just to clarify, these changes will not affect old Reddit.
Here is a list of the major changes:
Without further ado, here are some screenshots of how communities appear with the new design:
As a reminder, the way to make changes to your community’s styles is to click on “Mod Tools” above the “About Community” card on the right side of the screen. Then scroll down to “Community Appearance” where you can make changes.
To update your display name, go to old.reddit.com/r/YourSubredditName/about/edit and edit the “title” field. Alternatively you can find “subreddit settings” in the right sidebar of any community that you mod.
This setting will be coming to new Reddit when this update rolls out under “Community Settings” in your mod tools.
To get an early preview of what your community might look like, navigate to your community and then add ?experiment_desktop_guest_exp_filters=flair_sidebar to the end of the URL (for example, https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews?experiment%5C_desktop%5C_guest%5C_exp%5C_filters=flair%5C_sidebar[1][2]). There are some minor updates that we will be making in the meantime before it launches (such as the display name and widget colors), but it should give you a sense of what it will look like. If you see anything funky, please let us know so we can look into it.
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews?experiment_desktop_guest_exp_filters=flair_sidebar
We’ll hang around in the comments for a bit to answer any of your questions!
Edit (10:46am PST): Need to log off for now. Will check back periodically for the next couple days to answer any lingering questions.
Comment by likeafox at 17/12/2019 at 17:46 UTC
24 upvotes, 2 direct replies
This was a common feature that we saw a lot of communities using CSS hacks to implement on old Reddit. These will live in a sidebar widget just below the community description. However, there are currently some limitations on the controls, as it’s automatically on for all communities that use flair and available flairs can’t be customized since they are automatically determined based on flairs available in the feed.
Right so just to check and see how you have this roadmapped:
Comment by tizorres at 17/12/2019 at 19:07 UTC
20 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Pinned posts now show in a more compact way at the top of the page
Please make pinned posts show on all feeds, not just the hot feed. This is more important now than ever since feed sorting is saved per user, per subreddit. If a user has the subreddit saved to sort by any feed that is not "hot" they will almost never see the pinned posts.
Comment by jofwu at 17/12/2019 at 18:56 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I'm really excited to see "filter by flair"! But a few issues...
1. Some of my flairs aren't showing up in the "filter by flair" widget. Not sure if that's a real bug or just something that's not ready yet.
2. It really should come with the means to filter by more than one. Or to filter flair OUT. I think it's MUCH more common that people want to hide posts of a certain flair rather than only see posts of a certain flair. Right now, I click on one flair and gets all posts of that flair, with no means to include any others. The functionality is there, as I can see by toying with the URL. At the very least, I'd like to see the option to click more than one to filter by. A better system would be to make it so that clicking one of the flair buttons will *hide* that flair. (and more than one can be hidden in this way)
3. We might be a niche usage of flair here, but I wish these ended up more flexible with how they filter and what filter options are included in the widget. We use these in several book series subreddits to filter posts by book. But we also encourage people to edit the flair text if they would like, in order to be more specific. It seems that `flair_name` will miss posts which had the text edited. Granted, filtering by the `flair` parameter type isn't perfect either, but it might be nice to at least have the option of choosing which is used? Even better if there's something more flexible. I'm sure other subreddits may fall into a similar boat.
Comment by cahaseler at 17/12/2019 at 17:43 UTC
18 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Is there a way of hiding the post composer at the top? In r/IAmA we have very specific rules about who can do an AMA, how they have to provide proof, etc. Those rules are highlighted when someone submits a post with the full form (though not enough on new Reddit imo). Not even showing the user our rules won't lead to good outcomes.
Comment by Ven_ae at 17/12/2019 at 17:57 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
How similar is the post flair filter, compared to the one teased nearly two years ago?
Can users pick and choose which flairs they want to see, or does it allow only one at a time (or a maximum amount?)
Posted this just yesterday, I'm super excited for this feature: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/ebthcy/when%5C_we%5C_will%5C_see%5C_a%5C_filter%5C_by%5C_selected%5C_post%5C_flairs/[1][2]
Comment by JustAnotherSuit96 at 17/12/2019 at 20:39 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
When are we going to get updates on CSS control on the redesign? You guys promised we'd eventually have support way over a year ago now, and I've not heard anything since. Are you just hoping everyone is going to forget?
Comment by anders987 at 17/12/2019 at 22:49 UTC
8 upvotes, 3 direct replies
* There is now a post composer unit at the top of the feed * This change rolled out about a couple months ago, so you may have noticed it already. By making this change, we observed a 0.5% increase in users that submitted a post and a 0.8% increase in posts per user. The biggest thing however was that we observed a 15% increase in users entering the posting flow, so we’ll continue to work on improving that experience to help those users finish their posts.
Maybe they mistook the big text field for a search bar, accidentally entered the posting flow, and then stopped when they realized their error. That would explain why there were almost no difference in the number of posts.
Comment by BuckRowdy at 18/12/2019 at 01:30 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why does the bar have to be white? Please give us the ability to change the color of that white bar and trust us to make good choices on color schemes.
Comment by Atojiso at 18/12/2019 at 09:32 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Some minor styling feedback:
Comment by Ripstikerpro at 17/12/2019 at 17:51 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Very good improvements all around, one thing that looks a bit odd right now is the two floating white bars above the post flow (the submit post bar and the sort bar), which seem to be unnecessarily pronounced and large. Maybe they could be merged , or be made smaller ? Seems to negate the purpose of slimming the pinned posts.
Comment by [deleted] at 18/12/2019 at 12:01 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Any updates on Custom CSS? It's been a year since the last update.
Comment by cahaseler at 17/12/2019 at 17:46 UTC
12 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Can we have an option to move the flair filter down below other sidebar elements? I'd prefer to have our calendar of upcoming AMAs feature more prominently on the sidebar.
Comment by [deleted] at 18/12/2019 at 09:17 UTC
6 upvotes, 3 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by jg429 at 17/12/2019 at 17:38 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Is the filter by flair supposed to be that big? I use the sidebar widget now and it's pretty compact, but you can still see all the flairs without clicking "see more." The updated/automatic version seems a little clunkier? Not a major issues, obviously, just curious
Comment by [deleted] at 17/12/2019 at 19:54 UTC
17 upvotes, 2 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by [deleted] at 17/12/2019 at 20:27 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by AssuredlyAThrowAway at 17/12/2019 at 21:20 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Whats a communities page?
I feel old now, I have no idea what any of this means.
Comment by [deleted] at 17/12/2019 at 23:09 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Hey, great to see your working a bit more on new reddit, I know I really do enjoy some of the new reddit specific mod tools such as locking individual comment trees
Still, this flair filter system feels a little barebones, and not much different than what a lot of subs were doing for it way back on old reddit
Even with these new features, which are very nice and I do appreciate you working on them, it does feel minimalistic compared to what we can do on old reddit with CSS
Could I please ask, the CSS button on the new reddit community experience has been greyed out as coming soon since i first began modding subreddits last spring, is there any idea when that may roll out? I know some of my fellow mods are sort of against using new reddit and as such the development of our new reddit layouts often lags behind old reddit mainly due to the lack of design and freedom options the missing CSS feature provides
Comment by joaopaulofoo at 17/12/2019 at 19:23 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
where is the 'controversial' sorting in this new format?
Comment by SolariaHues at 17/12/2019 at 23:08 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Flairs can't be customised since they are automatically determined based on flairs available in the feed
I'm tired, but does this just mean flair listed in the widget can't be changed, we can still set and edit the available templates?
Also first reaction is that I don't like the "see more" bit. I like all my flairs visible, or almost all. Maybe an option so we can set how many show before the "see more" bit?
Comment by -JAS0N- at 18/12/2019 at 00:08 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Couple things: First off the order of the flair in the filter doesn't seem to be in any specific order on my sub, it would be nice if they could be rearranged or follow the order that is already set in the current flair filter. The second thing is that at least on r/GreenDay the subreddit name is not displaying the way it is in your screenshot. It shows only "r/Greenday" in large letters. It would also be nice if we could change the way the r/ name is displayed up there if it's going to be prominent (even if a CSS hack has to be used) since in many cases such as ours, the original sub-creator didn't use the capitalization that we'd like.
Comment by I_Me_Mine at 18/12/2019 at 13:30 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thanks for making this available as a preview with a good amount of lead time before it goes live.
Please take this approach more often.
Comment by Randomystick at 18/12/2019 at 13:49 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Any plans in the roadmap to implement these features on mobile? Traffic from Reddit Apps or Mobile Web account for about 75% of total visits on a sub I moderate and we can really use the flair filtering feature
Comment by weewhomp at 08/01/2020 at 00:30 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'm tired of constantly putting so much work into making my subreddits look exactly how I want them to on new Reddit, only to have Reddit keep F'ing up the layout and causing more work. The huge amount of white space at the top is wildly plain and excessive. I had a menu bar graphic specifically made, but apparently now that only shows up in posts. Now, we also have an additional amount of news feed space carved out for another unnecessary bar for Hot/New/Top, in addition to the already pointless Post Composer bar that only really functions as a link to the "Create Post" page. I already spent time on creating a widget for flair search, only to find out you've F'd that up too and made it more of a waste of space. Instead of taking up a small amount of room showing all of the flair, it now takes up the whole damn page. And to top all of that off, you make these all mandatory with no way to choose what we want to display or not.
At this point, I'm probably going to stop supporting New Reddit and start guiding users back to old Reddit. Every update to New Reddit feels like one step forward, two steps back.
Comment by MajorParadox at 17/12/2019 at 19:37 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We now show a display name for your subreddit
This is a great idea, especially for communities that don't like the upper or lowercase used in the name.
Subreddit name, subreddit icon, and “Join” button have been moved from the sidebar to the top of the page
Why did you remove the title color from the sidebar widgets? Did you also remove any other sidebar styling too? Some of our communities used those to help break up colors between the widgets and background.
Also, what about when a post is loaded in the lightbox? I hope the name is back in the sidebar again. I'm not sure the test link shows that correctly because the opened post doesn't append the test URL. However, when you load the post in a separate tab with that link, it does show it the old way.
Pinned posts now show in a more compact way at the top of the page
Your screenshots make it appear we can style sticky post differently than regular, but I think those are done via special sticky flairs which won't a viable workaround for some communities. Will we be able to create a separate styling that's automatically applied when a post is stickied?
There is now a post composer unit at the top of the feed
I like it. Much better spot for people to find how to create posts in the feed is right above the feed. That said, I'm glad you kept it in the sidebar too because users who are used to it there would get confused too.
We are adding the ability to filter the feed using flairs!
This is really cool, but a possible pitfall is that some communities apply custom text to specific flairs. So, maybe "Rumor" or "Not True" or whatever else the mods feel they need to let users know about. This means the filter will shows those filters as selectable, finding only that one match, right? Wouldn't it be better to filter on flair templates?
Also, flair filtering would be 100 times more useful if we could multi-select flairs and also exclude flairs.
