Over the past 36 hours, we've been hard at work upgrading our forum to the latest version of our forum software, along with implementing major changes to how our forum operates as we expand our use for it.
Forum Software Upgrade:
One of the major changes you've likely noticed is that our forum software has been upgraded to the latest version. While a lot of these changes are visual and on the backend, several new user features, including a refreshed look on our existing theme, have been introduced as part of this upgrade:
Updated forum post text editor.
Longer topics will now have a summary at the top of the post, allowing you to filter the topic to the most helpful posts.
Security questions are now available in addition to 2FA.
The mobile experience has been significantly improved.
General UI improvements throughout the forum, making it easier to navigate.
The ability to collapse forum sections you may not wish to view
Forum Reorganization:
The Aerosoft forum has been around for nearly 18 years, and during that time, our product catalog has expanded substantially. This has resulted in an ever-growing amount of forum categories making navigation hard for new forum users. To combat this, we've reorganized nearly every single forum category to combine lesser used subcategories into a single unified category for easier navigation.
For example, in the past, if you wanted to post an issue with regard to the systems on the CRJ, you would have to navigate to the forum category in the below way:
Aerosoft Flight | Flight Simulation Support → Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 → English → Aircraft → Aerosoft CRJ → Support → Systems
Whereas with the reorganized structure, the new navigation is:
Aerosoft Flight | Flight Simulation Support → Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 → English → Aircraft → Aerosoft CRJ
Another example can be seen in the existing Aerosoft Move forum categories. Previously, if you wished to create a post in the City Bus Simulator forum section, you would have to create a post in the below way:
Aerosoft Move | Game Support → City Bus Simulator → English → City Bus Simulator Support
Whereas with the reorganized structure, the new navigation is:
Aerosoft Move | Game Support → City Bus Simulator → English
In addition to category combing as showed above, we've made the following additional changes:
The Aerosoft | House Of Simulation section is now dedicated to news directly from Aerosoft.
A new Aerosoft | General Support section has been created, which the General Discussion, Shop Questions & Answers, and Hardware categories have been moved to.
The Hardware section has been removed, and merged with the above section
A new Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 category has been created, separating 2020 and 2024 as our Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 product catalog grows.
Older and less used simulator titles which no longer see as much forum traffic, such as Aerofly, World of Aircraft, Flight Simulator X, and Prepar3D have been moved to the "Other Flight Simulator" category to keep the main category list clean.
We have added new categories for popular and recently released sceneries within the Microsoft Flight Simulator categories.
Several older categories have been moved to the Public Archive (See "Public Archive" section below for me details)
The announcements section has been combined into a single unified category (More on this next week!)
Lastly, we have gone through and unpinned hundreds of pinned posts from all categories which are old or no longer relevant, leaving only pinned posts with still up-to-date information.
Public Archive:
Over the 18 years the forum has been active, some products have been removed from sale or moved to different development teams. Many categories where products fell under this status were set to read-only mode previously, but were left in their existing forum structure/category. To help clean the forum navigation clean, we have archived several of these categories, such as the Aerosoft Twin Otter, NavDataPro, NavDataPro Charts, PFPX, and more, into a new Public Archive section. This ensures that posts created within these categories are still viewable and searchable, but do not clog up forum navigation.
Aerosoft Move:
We're excited to welcome back our Aerosoft Move customers to the forum, and all Aerosoft Move supported games now have their own forum categories. We'll be adjusting these forum categories over time, and our customer support team will be monitoring these section to offer support, just as the way our Flight Simulation sections work.
Misc:
In addition to all of the above changes, a few misc changes have also been applied:
The creator of a thread can now mark a reply as a solution in all support forum categories (previously only a select few).
Each forum category now has a matching icon.
The latest news from Aerosoft can now been seen in a carousel at the top of the forum.
We've created a new "Expert" forum role given to those with expert knowledge in certain areas.
The "Deputy" role has been renamed to "Moderator" to be inline with our Discord server.
We've created a Forum Roles information thread, where you can find information on each user role the forum has.
Existing Aerosoft Move categories have been renamed to match the exact name of the game on Steam, where relevant.
A new navigation menu at the top of the forum has been implemented, with quick links to each section.
Closing Remarks:
This forum upgrade he resulted in major changes to the forum structure. If you notice something that isn't quite right, please let us know. If you also have an existing, active thread that you feel may now be better suited in one of our newer categories, please self report your post mentioning where you'd like it moved, and we'll be happy to move it for you. Additionally, we'll be making more changes to the forum over the next week pending any issues or enhancements that may improve the experience.
We look forward to announcing more about how we'll be using this forum next week!
By
Tom ·
