Upcoming changes to MyApnea

MyApnea is receiving its first update of the year next week that focuses on the following core aspects of the website. The forum provides a place for you to learn from the experiences of others, the research surveys provide you a place to learn about yourself by completing surveys and viewing reports, and the blog lets you learn from doctors and researchers by reading the articles.

Forum

The forum is getting a new look and a few small changes. First, we've improved the sign up flow for newcomers to the site who only wish to participate on the forum. We've also removed the automatic forum name generator, and instead provide a sample username new users can select at sign up. Second, in-app notifications are now sent to all subscribers to a forum thread. When you reply to a topic, you get subscribed to the thread, and will receive in-app notifications when someone else makes a comment on the thread. You can unsubscribe from a thread to disable these notifications. Also, for those interested, you will be able to auto-subscribe to all new threads in your settings to get in-app notifications if you wish (I know that's what I'll be doing!) Finally, we've also updated forum profile pages, and you can now personalize it by adding a short bio if you so wish.

Surveys

The MyApnea research surveys are also getting revamped. In short, you can expect to see improved survey feedback and will gain access to a personalized report after completing all the surveys that you can print out and bring to a doctor's visit. The surveys are there for you to learn more about yourself by being able to compare your results against MyApnea as a whole.

Articles

We've improved the display of the blog to be in line with the rest of the site and responses to blog posts will now also be shown on your dashboard. The blog will continue to get articles written by researchers, have patient stories, and other news posted there throughout the year. If you like a particular blog post, leave a comment! The team tries to push content for the type of articles we see reactions and feedback on, so if you liked the style and writing of a particular article, let the author know!

This will be the first release for this year, and will provide a foundation for us to continue to improve MyApnea for you. Thank you again for being part of MyApnea. This is your site to learn about sleep apnea, so keep asking questions. We're learning right alongside you!

I have little desire to be auto subscribed to any thread and have my mail box full of notices. Is there a way to totally disable the auto subscribe feature so each thread doesn't have to be manually un-subscribed? The automatic name generator really was lame and losing that "feature" will certainly make the forum more human as many folks never seem to figure out how to change their username.... looking forward to see the new and hope that it is easy on an old person to learn hehe

Thanks for the thoughts, we can add a setting alongside that allows you to never be auto-subscribed. I can post a link in this thread to where you'll be able to find it in your settings once the release is live next week. Hopefully the new registration flow, and the cleaner settings pages will allow people to better set the username they want to see on the forum. In any case, if there's anything that makes the forum a worse experience after the release, let me know, we want to make sure that we're improving and not taking steps backwards. Also, we'll be making gradual changes over the year, so it should be easy to pick up along the way. If not, feel free to open a thread on the forum, or send an email to support@myapnea.org. Thanks!

I believe the update to the forum was a success! Only suggestion might be to make the original poster under the topic name a bit more readable; darken or size it up a tad. The rest of the functions work fine and hopefully folks will start having usernames that make them more distinct. I tried the picture upload to see what would happen and it seems to work! Thanks! wg

Hi wiredgeorge, I wanted to followup and let you know that you can now disable the setting that auto-subscribes you to a topic when you leave a reply. You can uncheck the option "Auto-subscribe when replying to a forum topic" in your settings here: https://myapnea.org/settings/notifications

We also improved the contrast of forum usernames on the forum index as well, and will keep an eye on other areas that may have low contrast. Thanks for the feedback!

Also, looks like you're all set to go on a camping trip (and you have a lot less snow than we do in Boston)! I'll have to post a picture of our Boston surroundings once it gets nicer out, haha.