As we promised in our September 29th post, you can now check out the new Yahoo! Groups experience. On the sign-up page, you will see a list of groups that can be switched to the new experience.
Which groups can be switched to the new experience at this time?
Only US groups with fewer than 1000 members can be switched at this time; all group members will see the enhanced experience. In addition, you must be the group owner in order to make this change.
How do I select groups to switch to the new experience?
Just follow these simple steps:
• Go to this page to sign up.
• Select which groups you would like to switch and make sure to save those changes.
• All owners of each group you selected will receive a confirmation of your request and another email when your group has been officially switched.
Learn more about how to switch your groups.
My group has more than 1000 members. How can it be switched to the new experience?
Email your request to optinATyahoogroupsDOTcom (replace the AT with @ and DOT with a period) with the group name and your Yahoo! ID and we will make the switch on your behalf.
How can I switch my group back to the current version?
Simply return to this page and update your preferences.
How can I provide you with feedback on the new Yahoo! Groups experience?
We want to hear from you! We’ve created a Yahoo! Group specifically to gather your input. By sharing your experience within this group, you will be able communicate directly with the Yahoo! Groups team. This group is the best place for you to voice your opinions and thoughts on the new experience:
Please note that we’re still working on building and improving this new experience so you may notice a few kinks along the way. Not to worry, we’re aware of these issues and our team is working hard to fix them soon. Also note, the screenshot on the optin page is representative, and does not mean that files, links, databse, or attachments are gone.
We’re excited for you to try out the new experience and to hear your feedback. Try it out.
Hi oth:
The Canadian groups will be presented with the same options as the US groups.
Our Canadian Group home page is still defaced with this caption which links to
the August 31, 2010 ygroupsblog entry:
—
We are making changes to Yahoo! Canada Groups. Read this blog post to find out how we are working to make Yahoo! Canada Groups better for you!
—
Does this mean Canadian Groups will not be offered the opportunity to stay with the Classic Groups?
[my apologies for posting in the wrong place - I am unable to post this here:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?p=722 ]
I switched, and my group did not like it. So, I have switched back. Their response was they did not like the facebook experience in yahoo groups. They do like the facebook experience on facebook, and only there.
Please keep the option to keep the groups as is and don’t cram another ‘upgrade’ down our throats – or give the option to return to the groups as they are now, if requested by the members. Thank you for listening.
If you send a mail with text format insteed of a rich format to the group, it looks terrible in the messages part. did anyone check it?
I am so glad that we can opt weither way. Our groups will not be switching.many of us don’t like the new format just like the new yahoo email. I was glad to see we could use old email. and now with this I am so glad to see we dont have to switch and I will not even be in or have a group trhat allows GROUPLY
I own one group and belong to quite a few others in our area. One of the other groups received the preview when the first announcements came out about the changes, and NO ONE in that group liked what they saw. Many of its members also belong to multiple other groups here in Central Florida, and have carried their views back to the other groups. Our communities usually don’t post their opinions out freely, there has been talk of looking for some other options for their groups. I know of one that has shut down already. Why make changes to something that works? They can make the options available for the groups, then set it up so there are different group types, this will give everyone something that they like and will continue to use instead of going elsewhere. If it becomes a permanent change, then Yahoo will see many groups just disappear, people will find some place else that is more to the original group idea.
i’ve just switched and so far so good.
except that…
in firefox: messages don’t wrap so that one needs to scroll sideways. messages also aren’t formatted so that they display in courier default.
and in chrome: worst still. you can’t even scroll sideways.
i understand all this is opt-in still in beta. but i see the promise.
can’t wait to see all the small kinks ironed out…
one question: will the new y! group rolling out remain free or are we looking at something like the boys at ning.com did a while back– switch and bait?
peace
The month and year detailing the messages are no longer on the home page. I don’t like the fact that these are gone, as I used this feature quite a bit.
Lack of word wrapping in messages over a sentence long, lack of a simple browsing function for older messages, leaves this as a very amateur kludge of Twitter. I doubt many will appreciate this, until at least the basic message functions are made functional. Very few people want to see messages with 256k long text strings running off to the right forever. A moderator’s instruction set for administrating the chat feature would be a minimum expectation, I think. These are not small problems. This interface is not ready for even beta release as it is.
I’ve switched one of my groups as a test group but the overall decision is most of my members prefer the old style BUT would welcome the chat facility as an accessory/option – is this possible?????
Obviously the YG team put a lot of work into the makeover, & it looks pretty good.
(YGs EMAIL-blogging still works better than any of the new blog sites out there (& I have tried several), except that YGs has never offeted inline photos for email posts).
As for the makeover promo page/example you link to, a few questions:
1. Where is the Links page? I don’t see it in the left menu column. (& will switching cause our links page to be lost?)
2. The homepage photo (upper left) looks smaller & more of a rectangle shape. How do its dimensions compare to the prior homepage photo?
3. I don’t see the stats chart that was at the bottom of the prior homepage (which showed all years of group posts by month). I always liked that chart, made it easy & quick to see how we’ve done over the years, posting-wise; & it was a quick way to jump to ANY month’s posts for ANY year.
4. I don’t see a JOIN THIS GROUP button anywhere.
5. I don’t see the group posting, subscribe/unsubscribe, etc. addys anywhere (that used to be on lower homepage).
6. How well will the new sites work from iphone? The current sites work great from iphone, so I hope there will be no surprises in that regard.
7. Lastly, just a personal opinion, but dark purple is definitely not one of my colors. Wondering how much purple I will have to be looking at. :-/
Maybe I will try the makeover on one of my very very small groups just to see how it will truly look & function. Glad to see there is a way to switch back, just in case.
Thank you!!
Nice to see the powers-that-be at Yahoo actually listening to their users and then keeping their promises.
Is it possible to view it without signing up?
Good to be part of the group. Gooood thinker.
I have just looked at the introduction. I did not see a tab or icon for “files”.
Does the “files” feature remain? Or, does one have to rely on “attachments”.
My group, a group of teachers, shares documents pertaining to a textbook that we all use. We need an organized file system for quick retrival of documents and for new members to have access to in the future.
James O’Donnell
Trésors du temps group
im actually looking forward to the groups change. i think the design is awesome. streamlined and makes everything so much easier. just will take some time getting used to it and figuring out where everything is but great job yahoo!
I’ve switched my group… but I already have a bug-report. I posted a message about the switch and then while viewing the posted message, I notice the text doesn’t wrap. It just keeps going out of the box and straight out into… well, wherever it goes. The reader must scroll the screen to read the message.
Also… is Chat enabled? Or is it only enabled when 2 or more users are logged into the group?
It just looks like a makeover to me, ie, about appearances only.
The underlying functionality hasn’t improved.
As a group owner, of community groups, ie, not just a family site for sharing hugs with mum and dad, I want functionality to help manage the message threads. Like being able to set up in advance the core set of threads members can follow, such as one for events, another for maintenance, team specific. The general members don’t want to have to organsie these themselves, but later wish they knew how to get back to an earlier post. I can see a benefit for sub groups of members within such sites. Hence enabling members to share some messages with everyone, other specific to their group.
I’m talking real functionality improvements, things that make a fundamental improvement to Groups.
The Beta functionality has been Beta for years, and never seen the light of day. They are pointless having them as the members can’t see them without searching at every login, but they could make a useful addition to Groups.
I wish the Groups developers would stop spending time and energy, in my wasting it, on the superficial before getting the core functionality better.
I switched over my group, but I can not see attachments in messages. How to you open attachments
In my case, I am merely a moderator. The group owner has abandoned the group. I guess we’re therefore SOL.
You’re using Grouply for this??? Most of the groups I’m on (including my own) will not allow Grouply addresses because of problems. I do not see anything that addresses what the “new Yahoo Group experience” does.
Nice post on the new way things work with Yahoo Groups. Happy Halloween to my fellow moderators and to moderator central in advance.
Lonetta (lonettahpinky)
Please start with:
FIX THE YAHOOGROUPS MESSAGE SEARCH.
Search has been FAIL since February 2009.
Next:
We want multiple word search or “phrase” or “-” advanced search.
Search multiple groups we are a member of.
Search “all public message” groups at the same time.
These are the kinds of features that would be worthy of Yahoo! and provide members with increased usefulness for Information Resource Networking.
Best Regards!
.
I switched one of my lower activity groups over to te new format. Please number the posts. By doing so, we can reference back to previous posts. The way things are set up in this new format, it’s hard to follow posting. Yahoo, I know you can do better!
hello, I own the Yahoo Mail group. it has over 5000 members. i was surprised to see that it has been switched again to the new version. i’m not disturbed about that but this created problem. i can’t moderate new messages now . I get a message telling me “Connection refused”.
What can i do about that ? i don’t find the option to switch back to the Classic version
This sounds fabulous. Thanks for making it easy for people who are excited (like me!) to see the new version of Y! Groups– and, for taking the feelings of those who are a little more timid about the change into consideration.
Hopefully, after those of us who have given the new Y! Groups a try, and have kicked the tires a bit, we will be able to sway the rest of the masses (aka the several millions of other groups out there) that change isn’t all that bad.
Thank you for the due diligence.