The new home for the IMVU Community is help.imvu.com. For more information, check out this article.

ShannonMac · Last edited by ShannonMac on Thu Feb 23, 2017 3:26 pm; edited 7 times in total

Hello everyone:

We’re excited to give you all a better user experience by introducing you to an entirely new Community platform on February 24th, 2017!

At around 8:30am Pacific Time, our current forums will be locked and set to read-only. Directions on how to get there will be supplied in the forums on the day of the launch. The Forums are now going to be called Discussions.

Some history...

The process to find a replacement for our aging forums started in mid-2016 and took several months, many teams, and lots of dedication to get to this point. The existing forums are built on very old architecture that leave us almost no room for growth. Modern Community Management platforms offer capabilities well beyond anything our current forums could provide.

The forums are filled with fond memories for many of you. Some of you have met some wonderful people and established long-lasting friendships. Others received help with an issue when no one else could help them.

The great thing is you can continue to do that in our new Discussions.

We are planning to keep our existing forums open in read-only form until at least the end of March. We will not be copying over most forum topics, so this will give everyone some time, including mods and staff, in case any relevant conversations need to be referenced.

Here are some of the many benefits of our new Community:

1. Everything is streamlined. Trending help articles, the latest Discussions (the new name for forums), and user helpfulness rankings are now displayed on one page. Front and center at the top of the page is a search function that searches the entire Community Page, including Discussions and traditional knowledge base articles. Discussions and the Help center are now in one place. Check out this visual here:

2. Look at this! Comments to posts will now be more like a conversation. The look and feel is very similar to other parts of IMVU Next:

We will also have indicators for staff, mods, and VIPs.

3. Creating a new thread looks like this. You select a category (similar to selecting a forum currently), enter a subject, and then enter the body of your post:

4. Commenting on posts looks very much like IMVU Next messages. Just enter your comment and click Send.

5. Users will be able to report posts and comments so that mods and staff can review for TOS violations or spam. You’ll no longer have to message a mod just to tell them about something inappropriate.

6. Customer Support is now in the same location as the discussions. Your pending cases are shown to the right in this example. We are only migrating the last two years of cases from our older system. The case submission process will be very much the same. Click Submit a Case to start a new one.

As always, be as detailed as possible. We’ll make some suggestions on Knowledge Base articles that might help.

Click Next to submit your case anyway.

7. We’re excited to introduce a new reputation system built on people helping people. At the beginning, this will be based only on the number of posts in the community, but ultimately, we will give users the ability to gain points in other ways as well. We’ll even have periodic contests to encourage this kind of helpful behavior. The more helpful you are, the more your reputation will grow!

8. Every user will have their own My Page, which is your own personal hub of Community activity that is related to your account. Toggle between My Activity and All activity to see your original posts and submissions and the comments of others.

For more details, see the FAQ that follows. It will be updated as needed so check back regularly, please.

This is just the start of something awesome. We look forward to these exciting changes to make the Community a better environment and hope you will partake in this journey with us!
_________________
Shannon Mac

IMVU Senior Community Manager of Customer Care & Education

ShannonMac · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 10:53 pm Post subject:

FAQ

When is this happening?
The launch will begin at 5:30am Pacific Time Friday, February 24th. The current forums will be locked between 8:30am and 9:00am. Some recent help center case data may take up to 5 hours to migrate Friday morning.

When will the new Community be translated?
Non-English Discussion topics will still exist, and translations of other parts of the new Community are coming soon.

Where is my avatar card?
These will be available in a future release. Currently, avatar photos will link to imvu.com homepages.

Why can't I post photos?
At launch, you will be unable to post images in new Discussions or Comments. We are working to quickly add these after launch because we understand how important they are to communicating and helping each other. Until then, please use external sites to store photos and link to them in your posts and comments.

What about Signatures?
These will not be available when we launch but we are working at making it available to our users in a future release.

How do I send a private message to another user?
We will not be replacing Forum messaging with anything similar in the new platform. Please use traditional IMVU messaging to communicate privately with other users. Coming soon: based on your feedback, we’re going to increase message limits.

Where are my badges?
Although badges will not be displayed in the new Discussions, you can still see those on avatar cards and user homepages.

How will Creator Tiers be impacted?
Creator tiers will no longer have a forum participation component. We will likely add this back in at a later date.

How do I add formatting to my text?
This isn't currently available. We may add text formatting at a later date, but at launch, posts and comments will be in plain text.

How do I quote someone else's posts/comments?
You will no longer be able to quote other comments using system commands. There are no plans to add this back in the future.

Where are my old cases?
We have migrated old cases from the last two years. Any cases older than that will be removed permanently.

Where are my open Help Center cases?
All open cases will be migrated by 12 Noon Friday, the 24th of February.

Tell me about Hashtags and @mentions!
Even though quoting is gone, you can @mentions another user with their avatar name and your comment will show up in their My Page. You can also use hashtags to immediately catalog something for easy search in the future. For example, if you had a question related to meshing, you could use #meshing to easily find that post again in the future. Other users can also search for common hashtags.

Do I have to use Next in order to participate in the Community or get help?
Although it may look a lot like IMVU Next, the new Community Center is the home of the Community for all of our platforms.

What is happening to Creator Payout Tickets?
There's no change there. Those tickets are housed in a separate system.

There is some really important information in the old forums. What is happening to that?
We will all still have read-only access to the old forums for the next month or so. We'll be porting some of the threads over and we encourage you to do the same for posts that are important to you.

Is there going to be a way to like the "best answer" or to up-vote someone's response?
This is absolutely something we intend to do very soon.

Where are the AP forums?
We've decided to not port over the AP forum for the time being. We may bring this back in the future.

updated: 2/23/17, 7:15pm
_________________
Shannon Mac

IMVU Senior Community Manager of Customer Care & Education

Keodi · Joined: 26 Jun 2011 Posts: 11319 Location: United Kingdom

Looks horrible.

Lots of IMVU history lost forever.

More features ripped away from us.

Getting points for being helpful?? ... oh yeah that won't cause spam issues. Rolling Eyes

0/10
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iDiva · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 11:47 pm Post subject:

Wait what? Forums and tickets are being taken too? Moved to Next?
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No.
To everything and everyone.
Just No.

TheBratGirl · Joined: 22 May 2010 Posts: 2558 Location: USA

Wow...this is quite the announcement indeed.

Gonna take some time to process.

Shocked

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Severity · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 12:00 am Post subject:

I hate it.
I don't want it.
Do we even have a voice anymore?

No one wants this I can assure you... :l

sigh....

Where will devs be able to host shops now like we did in product and content request for custom orders?
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Check out my shop :3

Severity · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 12:02 am Post subject:

Removing my comment since I don't feel safe posting anymore.

Have a good day everyone Smile

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Check out my shop :3

IsukiyomiSue · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 1:13 am Post subject:

Once again, without fair warning (a few days is not fair) a major change is made never giving a thought to the customers who actually use this site. Amazing Rolling Eyes

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Sometimes, we just snuggle.

Polystyrene · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 2:11 am Post subject:

This is a sad day for the community.

The forums hold a wealth of knowledge that is going to be lost.

Geh. I don't know what else to say. This just really saddens me.
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DarlinLila · Joined: 29 Mar 2007 Posts: 8732 Location: USA - MI

*sigh*

Although there's been requests to get us out of this outdated forum set up, this just isn't it. I suppose to get out of this obsolete setting, we have to move to something new.

The old forums will be set to read only, but just how readily available is the really helpful threads going to be in the new forums?

Oh boy... a rating system. Like we won't see abuse on that one. Rolling Eyes

That's not even necessary. What makes imvu think that's an important addition to the forums? Have any of the constantly helpful users ever asked for a pat on the back or a gold star? I've never seen that request.

I'll admit, there's a few things I like about it, but ... I don't know. Not that it matters what we think. imvu doesn't listen or care anyway.

And Shannon... you've been told that imvu has this terrible habit of giving us a heads up either right before a change, although most times it's the day of or two days after they've made a change (and a user points it out). Can't you, as our liaison, please do something about these last minute announcements? C'mon! We've dealt with years of terrible communications, been promised it would improved, and it simply does not. Please do something about this.

Oh, and traditional imvu is being fashioned to match Next? It appears we are being forced into it one way or another.

wBlackWolfw · Joined: 20 Feb 2013 Posts: 347 Location: Brazil

Everybody will see my cases or they will be private?
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Abram · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 3:38 am Post subject:

Posy · Joined: 17 Aug 2010 Posts: 39 Location: Ireland

I am not impressed with this new ideas. Are you freaked kidding me? You realised you are going pissed more people off. Yet worst more people will leave IMVU over this.

You realised people are going hate you for this, like they have already did before with "Photo Stream,", " Creator" ,"Pules." Of course our "homepage" to be exactly.

It seem to be it alway about "What IMVU WANT" not what "WE" want in IMVU. You asked "US" to give you feedback and Yet you " ignored" us.

It alway seem to be about ME,ME, ME, ME THIS from imvu.

We have told you that we do not like the ideas of " IMVU Next" Because of the catalog shop on imvu next, Because of the way you display our work and production was a slapped on the face and slapped on the wrist too. You don't care about "CREATORS" or the "COMMUNITY" people who have spent their time on imvu and to make what imvu is today.

IMVU ONLY CARE ABOUT THEMSELVES, THEMSELVES ALONE AND NOBODY ELSE

DirkStrider · Joined: 26 Dec 2009 Posts: 325 Location: USA - AZ

I'm 100% not okay with this. This was a bad idea and you guys just keep developing the idea. Please don't do this. You're literally hurting your loyal customers this way. Let alone new ones. Most of your loyal customers are Neophobic like me and dislike ugly layouts and horrible interfaces such as this.
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wBlackWolfw · Joined: 20 Feb 2013 Posts: 347 Location: Brazil