I missed it entirely (was traveling so missed most of what went on here) but it looks like changes are already in place (and so are a LOT of ads too!!)
Did you look here?
As I said, I just discovered this stuff an hour or 2 ago. Things are now named things like “parents social lounge”. or parents social lounge wellness (or something…) and other sub categories. Still too jet lagged to look further, and dealing with an influx of ads here now. 
I gather we see the new format if we are logged in, but otherwise not. As noted above, it might not be easy to characterize some threads into the sub-lounges.
I do note that once you enter a thread, you can scroll to the end and then the rest of the threads below look as before - newest threads first and threads in which I have participated identified. Not sure what happened to the locked threads. Edit - found them after the sun-lounges.
At this point, I am a only a Parent Cafe visitor. It has my favorite people and I kind of liked how I got to see everything there as the threads were started - sometimes a new recipe idea, appliance buying advice, grandparenting, travel, eldercare.
I may be in the minority, but separating all the different subcategories make the page too busy. And it seems it will require muliple clicks to see what’s new in all the subcategories.
IMO, the Parent Cafe didn’t need a fix, nor a name change.
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Yes, I am preparing things for us to go live with all the changes today or tomorrow.
The thread was started a month ago with the intent of working together to ensure the best outcome. Social Lounge was a renaming that folks on this thread liked.
The goal is to grow the Parent Cafe and to expand it to accommodate more topics. That’s why we need subcategories.
I see the date when this thread was started . But I can’t be the only person that never visits this page of the forum - CC issues - unless I’m having a problem!
The amount of people posting on this thread (not the # of posts) prior to the change yesterday should indicate that people didn’t know this thread/post even existed.
If you posted this same question/statement a month ago on the Parent Cafe - or any page being affected by the new changes - I’d bet money you’d have more feedback.
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See my post above. And what do you mean no changes have taken place? I see the changes.
@abasket, not that it matters much now, but this was not posted in the CC issues, but in the College Confidential Community, which is where we post announcements and other community/CC news.
I just commented saying that I started making some changes as we prepare for rolling out the entire redesign today or tomorrow.
I am fine to keep the renaming discussion open. While I personally like the Social Lounge better, I am OK to keep it Parent Cafe if that makes most sense. However, based on the feedback in this thread, the new name seemed to work fine.
Wha does “make the forums better” mean?
Better for whom? Casual visitors or long time users?
“Easier to navigate” on what device? Is this optimized for desktop, tablet, or smartphone?
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Well, there we go - proof that I go neither place - issues or community - unless I have a question/problem!
I gave my opinion - which is what I do when I’m AWARE of something up for discussion- I’ll move on and deal or stew on my own. 
Appreciate your responses.
I’ll clarify my response again. I didn’t see a reason to change it from Parents Cafe.
But social lounge was a lot better than Parents Corner which sounded like a preschool thing.
I vote for the Parents Cafe to stay as the Parent Cafe. As I said in my first post, you don’t need to fix that…it’s not broken. It’s a place a lot of parents enjoy once their kids are not in college any longer…and changing it, in my opinion, will lose people, not gain them.
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@CC_Sorin More on the Parent Social Lounge, which I agree with others, Parent Cafe doesn’t need fixing; many of us have been here for over 20 years and don’t do well with change!
If a topic get listed under one of the Categories (Food, Health & Wellness, Entertainment, Travel) at the top of the Parent Social Lounge page, is that thread now not listed under all Threads below? I am use to reading down the line for new thread, or others I am following. Do I now also have to check each of the Categories to find what I am looking for? This is not easier for us old timers.
Yes, you posted about the upcoming changes in an area most of us don’t visit. Like it was mentioned above, if you had posted the same thread in the Parent Cafe, many of us would have given feedback at that time. As a very large number of us on the Parent Cafe only visit the Cafe, this was all new to us. Do people really visit the CC Community on a regular basic; I am pretty sure these Cafe parents do not.
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@CCSorin: It’s Parent Cafe again! Thank You!
As @abasket said, most of us Cafe patrons don’t usually have a need to go to the CC Issues or College Confidential Community pages, so you weren’t capturing the audience.
And once I realized I wanted to give my input, it was difficult to find this thread as it isn’t stuck on top.
And for ease of use, one continuous list of threads works for those of us who want to see ‘what’s new’. If I am looking for something specific, eg. a recipe, I’ll use the search.
OK, I’ve said my piece.
Peace.
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If you go to the lounge/cafe, all the posts, including those in the subforums will appear in chronological order, just like they do now.
I personally do a “latest” view whenever I’m on the site, and have done that from the get go. IMO, not as a moderator, but as a regular member, it made sense for me to want to read all the parents/student postings as they relate to the college search to try to help pay it forward to all the help I got. Doing it that way ensures that I see the latest across the subforms.
Totally get there there are plenty of senior members who are here for the connections they made with fellow posters and stay strictly in the cafe, but that really isn’t the main mission of the site.
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Following the feedback I did a few things:
- reverted to the Parent Cafe name for now so we can discuss options
- adjusted the settings so that all threads (including from subcategories) are visible on the Parent Cafe category listing
Things to consider:
- please use the subcategories when creating specific threads; the threads will anyway be moved to the corresponding subcategory but that just creates extra work for the mods and admins
- please make sure to also check out other sections of the site if you want to stay engaged and up-to-date
As previously said, the goal is always to make the site better and improve user experience.
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I know change is hard. Personally, I appreciate the administrators using this community forum to ask users’ opinions before they make changes. In the past, they’ve asked for our thoughts on ads, subscription models, the search function etc.
If you are interested in providing feedback before changes are made, you might elect to be notified of new threads in this forum (select drop down from the bell icon).
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For anyone who did not take time to read back through this thread, here is a link to the draft theme we have been discussing over the past month. The changes to the Cafe are just one piece.
Please follow the College Confidential Community forum as it is the logical place to post about topics related to the site. The administrators value our input, and we need to work together to use the site as intended.
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Just as an FYI, we have started rolling out the new design to the live site so there may be some wonkiness while this work is ongoing. There is also a site-wide blue announcement. .
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We have completed the homepage redesign. There are still some tweaks & adjustments to be made but I am confident the site looks much better now. Thank you all for the valuable feedback!
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