As some of you may recall we have posted periodic updates on the Discussion Boards (DB) over the last several months about our plan to move to a new system. A few times we asked participants to share feedback via surveys.

The main reason why we're moving is because we want you, the people who use the Discussion Boards on a regular basis, to have a better user experience - not only now, but for the long-term. The only way to accomplish that is to move away from a technology that can no longer support the size and activity of this community. We know it's challenging to move away from something that is familiar, and like an old friend, to something less familiar, but we believe that with time and practice you'll come to enjoy the new software just as well, if not more than the old system.

• The Patient Services Discussion Boards is on a very old system - it's been around for about 10 years. Internet technology has changed so radically in the last ten years and as a result the old system is not compatible with newer, more efficient technologies. Our IT team has also made us aware that the old system is having a hard time staying stable. As you may have experienced in the past, the DB will sometimes go down for an undetermined length of time, or some sections or pages will load very slowly. Even as this is being written the DB appears to have gone down! This is completely unacceptable especially when we know that our participants rely on this environment for support from their peers in challenging times, so we feel that it's time to move to something that is more reliable for you and that we can maintain more effectively and easily.
• The new software (which has actually been available to use for our Team In Training and Light The Night Walk participants for close to two years) enables participants to have a more customized and streamlined experience. If you are interested only in one or two particular topics (i.e. Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia or My Child Has Cancer) you can make it so whenever you log in those are the only topics you see. We've added a guide on how to do this in the Getting Started Guide section. You can also take advantage of tags, which we have explained in another separate guide.
• See a post or thread that is offensive or in the wrong section? Report it quickly and easily via the Report Abuse feature which can be found under "Actions" in the right hand side of the screen. Once you report something, it will go into our monitors' queue and they will address it that same day or by the end of the next business day. We have created a guide that talks about this feature more.
• Stop having to insert code every time you want to bold a word or sentence. When you create a discussion or reply to a thread and you want to emphasize something you've said, just highlight what you want to bold and then click the Bold icon (or Italics or Underline or...). It works very similarly to Word and other document creators, so it should be a familiar process for you.