- Original Poster
- #1
It's been a few weeks since I last checked in here to post an update, which is mainly because I took my first holiday off work in more than three years only to immediately come down with covid at the start of my holiday and it's taken me a good few weeks to recover! Typical that I avoid it for the whole pandemic only to get it when I take my holiday 
. I wanted to post a little update of some changes we're going to be making to the forums which have taken a little longer to implement than I had hoped, but here they are.
Some of you may recall my mentioning several months ago the feature of "Upvoting" replies to threads. This was intended to bring in the awareness of this functionality ahead of changing the structure of the business advice sections of the forums which will be changing to a Questions & Answer format. For those of you familiar with sites such as Quora and StockOverflow will be familiar with this style of format which we will be introducing here.
Note: Upvoting is different from when you "Like" a post. Liking posts has no effect on ranking a reply.
Moving forward anyone posting in the business forums will have the option to ask a question rather than post a "discussion", and people will be able to Upvote the most useful/informative answers. This will be able to help rank the answers to the question, and the best answer will then be highlighted as the Solution to the question and moved to the start of the thread directly below the question. You will be able to see this in action as some of the posts in Accounts & Finance have been working this way for a few days now.
Something else which has been driven by some changes by Google, we are hiding the Time Out section from public view. Going forward this section will only be visible when logged into your account, and once you have been a member for a few days and made at least a few posts. Unfortunately the off-topic conversions of Time Out may be downgrading the quality of UKBF business relevance in the eyes of Google which we cannot have, so this is an aesthetic tweak to eliminate that possibility.
Finally, spammers are getting a bit cute in hiding link drops into quoted posts and replies they make or simply making full stops and such likes as link drops, so we're bringing back the ban on posting links until new users have passed probation. This won't effect regulars and we want to continue to keep these forums free from spam as much as possible, so this change is coming in to support combating spam.
We have some changes coming up for the website but I'll post that in another update at a later date, along with announcing the next locations of our UKBF networking events. I'd like to thank @Paul Kelly ICHYB for hosting the very successful UKBF London event last month. I'll be attending this months event, and if you haven't booked on already register for UKBF London Networking on EventBright here. I look forward to seeing many of you there on 20th July.
What announcement wouldn't be complete without me mentioning our UKBF Stories podcast! This podcast contains interviews with small business founders from across the UK, and talking to them about their journey through life that led to them starting their own business. Some successfully and some not so, and what they learned from their successes and failures. I'm not talking to celebrities, I'm talking to real people running real small businesses. It's available across all major platforms from Apple, Amazon, TuneIn, Google, and others - the links to various platforms where UKBF Stories is available are on AnchorFM here. Please do give it a listen, and follow/subscribe on your chosen podcast platform.
Thank you for reading and I'll see you all around on the forums
. I wanted to post a little update of some changes we're going to be making to the forums which have taken a little longer to implement than I had hoped, but here they are.Some of you may recall my mentioning several months ago the feature of "Upvoting" replies to threads. This was intended to bring in the awareness of this functionality ahead of changing the structure of the business advice sections of the forums which will be changing to a Questions & Answer format. For those of you familiar with sites such as Quora and StockOverflow will be familiar with this style of format which we will be introducing here.
Note: Upvoting is different from when you "Like" a post. Liking posts has no effect on ranking a reply.
Moving forward anyone posting in the business forums will have the option to ask a question rather than post a "discussion", and people will be able to Upvote the most useful/informative answers. This will be able to help rank the answers to the question, and the best answer will then be highlighted as the Solution to the question and moved to the start of the thread directly below the question. You will be able to see this in action as some of the posts in Accounts & Finance have been working this way for a few days now.
Something else which has been driven by some changes by Google, we are hiding the Time Out section from public view. Going forward this section will only be visible when logged into your account, and once you have been a member for a few days and made at least a few posts. Unfortunately the off-topic conversions of Time Out may be downgrading the quality of UKBF business relevance in the eyes of Google which we cannot have, so this is an aesthetic tweak to eliminate that possibility.
Finally, spammers are getting a bit cute in hiding link drops into quoted posts and replies they make or simply making full stops and such likes as link drops, so we're bringing back the ban on posting links until new users have passed probation. This won't effect regulars and we want to continue to keep these forums free from spam as much as possible, so this change is coming in to support combating spam.
We have some changes coming up for the website but I'll post that in another update at a later date, along with announcing the next locations of our UKBF networking events. I'd like to thank @Paul Kelly ICHYB for hosting the very successful UKBF London event last month. I'll be attending this months event, and if you haven't booked on already register for UKBF London Networking on EventBright here. I look forward to seeing many of you there on 20th July.
What announcement wouldn't be complete without me mentioning our UKBF Stories podcast! This podcast contains interviews with small business founders from across the UK, and talking to them about their journey through life that led to them starting their own business. Some successfully and some not so, and what they learned from their successes and failures. I'm not talking to celebrities, I'm talking to real people running real small businesses. It's available across all major platforms from Apple, Amazon, TuneIn, Google, and others - the links to various platforms where UKBF Stories is available are on AnchorFM here. Please do give it a listen, and follow/subscribe on your chosen podcast platform.
Thank you for reading and I'll see you all around on the forums