This is the first in a series of blog posts intended to introduce you to the makeover of Yahoo! Groups. You can consider these posts an in-depth tour of the service’s updated look and feel.
Today, we want to address more of the rumors that have been circulating about the remodel. Subsequent posts will explore particular features in depth.
What happened to specific functionality that I used all the time?
This remodel incorporates a lot of feedback we have heard from the Yahoo! Groups community as a whole. We have taken an iterative approach so that you can benefit from the updates as soon as they are ready; this will also allow us to improve features more quickly.
We’ve tackled Chat, Messages, Photos, Members, and the home page in this release. Other features will be addressed on an on-going basis. Although your group’s most-used features may not be addressed in this release, they soon will be.
What information is shown on the Updates stream on the home page of my group?
The Updates stream includes only activity within your group. Any activity outside of your groups will not be displayed in the Updates stream in this release.
What is changing with my group’s privacy options during the remodel?
Privacy options will continue to function exactly as they did before.
Learn more about when email address will be displayed and how to change what information is shown in your group.
What is changing with moderation and other permissions?
All of your current permissions will continue to function as they did before.
If you are a moderator, you will continue to be notified of any pending messages, members, and photos via email. When there are pending messages, members, or photos, you as a moderator will see a pending notification when you first come to your group.
What is changing with message archives?
Message archives will be available to members if that option has been selected for the group. If not, then the archives will not be available. This also holds true for public archives.
Learn more about archive settings.
What is changing with email?
There were no changes to the email system in this release. That means, you will continue to receive emails as you did before.
Learn more about email.
What happened to the web features (e.g. Links, Databases) that my group uses?
These features are still available to those groups that have turned them on and appear in the left navigation bar.
In fact, if you use any applications (e.g. People Map, Birthdays, Group Profile, RSVP), they will now appear in the left navigation bar as well.
Learn more about the web-only features.
What happened to features such as Message History and Reply-to Sender?
Unfortunately, some features didn’t make it into this release.
Reply-to Sender: Reply-to Sender as a reply setting from the web interface will be released very soon. None of the groups that have this option set as the default will be migrated to the remodel until this feature is available. Please note that you can continue to reply to sender via email as you were able to before.
Message History: This feature will be brought back soon in a slightly different form in the near future.
What is happening to my Adult groups?
Adult groups will continue be supported as before.
One difference from Adult groups and other groups that you will notice is that the Chat feature is not supported for Adult groups. Learn more about why Chat is not supported for Adult groups.
When will the Chat feature be enabled for my group?
Chat will be enabled for your group once your group has been converted to the new look and feel.
If you are a moderator, you can enable or disable Chat. Simply click on the Management tab in the left navigation bar.
You will see an alert notifying you that the management settings haven’t yet been remodeled.
Just click the “Continue” button and you will see the management settings you are familiar with.
To change the Chat setting:
- Under the “Groups Settings” section, click on “Web Tools.”
- Click on the “Edit” link to the right of “Web Tools.”
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and enable or disable Chat. Click on “Save Changes” to update your group’s settings.
When will my group be converted to the new look and feel?
The new look and feel is being slowly rolled out across all Yahoo! Groups in the U.S. You may notice that your group switches back and forth between versions as the rollout progresses.
If you use a local version (non-U.S.) version of Yahoo! Groups, the same look and feel will be available to you soon, within the next several weeks.
You can learn more about the remodel changes in our dedicated help section.
Next in the series: Group Descriptions.
انا بحب معا
Will we still be able to add color to our Yahoo group? Will we be able to change the background colors, headlines, borders as we do now?
I do NOT like the new format, it’s too hard to use! I’m not a Facebooker and I don’t want to be. If you continue in this way, I will become a lurker who can’t participate in the groups that I am a part of, and will find another forum to host the groups which I currently own on Yahoo Groups. Consider me a customer lost.
BYE!
Juliette
I think others have said it well. Our group is on Yahoo becuase we are trying to share information, not social network. The changes to the format are impairing our ability to reference previous threads and discussions. Please, seriously consider allowing group owners the choice in formats if you feel you have to provide the more social network/facebook style format.
So you’re clearing up confusion, huh? You have definitely succeeded in doing so, you’ve made it clear you’re going to render a working Group into a pile of rubble, come hell or high water. Thanks for clearing things up and encouraging me to continue my research for a replacement to Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Mail. You’ve already waved your magic wand and destroyed other parts of Yahoo I used to enjoy in the past, so I might as well fulfill your wishes for me to leave completely.
PLEASE STOP THE INSANITY YOUR ENGINEERS AND OTHER STAFF ARE DOING!
The new look is horrible from a graphic design perspective. It seems like Yahoo groups wants to copy Facebook. I liked the old archives on the homepage and the colors and larger group photo. Most of my groups were designed with all this in mind. This really saddens me. If I wanted Facebook I would be on Facebook. I hope somebody re-thinks this!
Denver’s suggestions are a good start. However, we still need the following:
Full moderator control of membership;
Full moderator control of messages;
Ability to hide members list;
Ability to keep message sorted by date as a default;
Ability to keep Albums as the default view in Photos;
Get rid of the Avatars or give moderators the option to no display them;
Bring back message numbers to make it possible to search old messages.
Donna, I’d like to know too. I can’t even get a list of members, and although I own one of the groups changed, when I try to post it says this: “Your message must be approved by the group owner before being sent to the group.” I don’t have my group set to be moderated. How do you get rid of spam if it comes in and how do you write a member privately when their email addys are hidden from you? As group owner you’d think at least I could be trusted with that.
Here is a group which has received the makeover. It used to be owned by somebody else and was given to me so I’m the owner now: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EverythingCellular2/
The group has not been active for quite a while. I have not figured out how to turn the Updates panel off. I don’t like it at all. Messages are really hard to navigate. If anybody knows how to delete unwanted messages or updates, please let me know.
To anyone whose Yahoo Group archives have not yet been destroyed by the corporate vandals, this software seems to be pretty popular for downloading the message archives and searching them offline:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pgoffline.html
“PG Offline is a message reader and downloader for Yahoo Groups. It allows you to download messages and attachments from Yahoo Groups, so you can read them at your leisure, without having to visit the Yahoo site. You can choose to download all the messages with their attachments, import or export a range of messages for a group as one file, sort by author, date, message number or subject. In addition, you can search for messages by author, subject or content even across multiple groups.”
Very sad that this change to “FaceBook” style is being forced through.
As many other users have said the old format allowed an easy method of viewing threads etc.
To release a new version in such an incomplete state is, to me, the work of an idiot. Try “reply via a web post” & you simply start a new thread.
I would strongly urge Yahoo to provide an opt out of this change over.
Without it – I can see a lot of users leaving – that will in turn jeopardise your potential revenue from advertising. No-one is a winner in forcing this through.
What happened to the numbering of the messages?
Good grief, folks, do you have ANY idea what you are doing to us.
Basically, I am watching 10 years of work go down the tubes. This is not a minor issue.
Who knows what input you got from whom, but it surely was not from your older and more sophisticated users.
We need an opt out!!!!!!!
Tearlach: I’ve also used the old archive search function many times to track down material I needed to quote for publication. Great to know everybody’s turning everything everywhere into Facebook in order to pander to teenyboppers who are too friggin’ stupid to remember where the original Facebook actually is.
RS @ 3:37: You win the thread. Summarizes my thoughts perfectly. MBAs are the same kind of pigs wherever you go, and God knows I’ve worked under the policies created by enough of them. When they’ve committed themselves to a decision and their credibility is on the line, pointing to real-world facts (like overwhelmingly negative customer feedback) to demonstrate that it was stupid is about as futile as arguing with a tree stump. They’ll just pay someone to act all nice and put the happiest spin on it they can, and take the flak for them. No matter how stupid an idea is, “It’s a good idea because I’ve got an MBA.”