Last year, thanks to the enormous generosity of The D-Word members, we held a successful "15 for 15" campaign to raise funds for a full design and functionality upgrade. Now, after many months of planning and hard work, the new D-Word is finally here.
There are four main issues we’ve addressed in D-Word 3.0:
We’ve made it easier to read and navigate from a mobile device
- Mobile-friendly design - We've taken all the devices you might want to read and post to The D-Word from in mind. Whether it's your brand new smartphone, dumbphone, phablet, tablet or armadillo shell, you're in luck.
- Easier on the eyes - We've given it a cleaner, more contemporary interface, bumped up the type size, opened up the spacing, and generally reduced the need to squint (or pretend you don't need glasses). And with responsive site design, smart phone users no longer need to keep zooming in and out on your screens to keep up with The D-Word.
- More time to edit your posts - Made a mistake? You now have 60 minutes to fix that typo.
- Brand new post editor - The D-Word is modern again - you can style your posts and add links without having to learn any code.
- Endless scrolling - If you're reading a topic, you never have to click to the next page, since new posts are automatically loaded as you scroll. And your place in a topic is marked automatically as you scroll to unread posts.
- Faster and zippier - A bunch of improvements under the hood, including framework upgrades and new faster servers, have brought d-word.com into the teens
We’ve made it easier to get back in the flow of the conversations
(even when you’ve been away from The D-Word for a while)
- Hot Posts - If you think a post is interesting or helpful or just tickles your fancy, heat it up by clicking on the nearby flame graphic. (Don’t worry, this isn’t Facebook. It won’t show up underneath the post.) An automatic tally of the 5 “hottest” posts of recent weeks as voted on by all D-Word users will greet you at the top of The D-Word homepage. Sometimes hosts might feature a particularly notable conversation by turning the heat all the way up to flame-broil.
- Host Announcements - Important notices will greet you at the top of the homepage, as well
We’ve made it easier to find information you want faster and more intuitively
- Favorite topics - Now you can collect the topics you find most useful right at the top of the homepage for easy reading. Just click the star at the upper right of any topic page.
- Favorite people - Think someone might be a great sound person for your next project? Want to keep tabs on filmmakers you admire? Add your friends, potential collaborators and anyone else you might want to contact later with a simple click.
- Favorite posts - Tags are so last decade. If you want to save any post for later reference, you can give it a descriptive label and all your saved posts will live on your profile page. D-Worders can check your Member Profile page see what you've saved, just as you can see any other member's page to learn what they think is most worth saving. So your brilliantly-curated posts can make you a true guru.
- Favorite films - You're probably getting the idea by now...
- Better Search Engine - Search results now show longer excerpts, and are arranged in order of most recent date. And we've given you options to search for phrases or all words or any word.
- Navigate by date - The D-Word has been around for almost 16 years and we have hundreds of thousands of posts in hundreds of topics. Paging through posts is a pain, but now you can now jump backwards and forward in time much more accurately.
- More than one attachment per post - Now you can overwhelm us with your holiday photos and you don't need to post separately for each image (wait, is this actually an improvement??)
We’ve given it a better design, in general
- New Logo - Lots of things are changing around here - including the logo. Time to order a new hat!
- Cool banners - Check out the homepage for images from recent films of our members, which we'll rotate
- Stylish new profile pages - show off your stuff in style.
If you want to know more about navigating the new D-Word, we will have a revised Help page here shortly. And if you still have any questions, feel free to ask in the Let’s Discuss the New D-Word topic