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NOW LAUNCHED: Join 2,500 readers in the new HfP forums

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We have launched the Head for Points forums. Please join us!

Many of you will know that we have been planning to add forums to the site for some time. Initially, we planned to do it soon after we launched the new site design in August 2020, but life got in the way.

Sinead went on maternity leave and I took over the commercial side of the business for nine months, leaving Rob to do the majority of the writing. This left us with little time to work on bigger projects. Luckily Sinead is now back which has freed me up to work on this, with the help of our IT partner Neil Barrett @ Enbecom.

We launched the forums this week. Over 2,500 readers registered in the first 10 days and we have ironed out most of the bugs and glitches.

HfP forums screenshot

How to join the Head for Points forums

You can register for the HfP forums here. Note that your forum login can also be used to comment across the site.

Your first post / comment to the site will go through moderation to avoid spam registrations. If you cannot see your post immediately please bear with us as we process these.

If you have any problems registering or encounter any bugs or other technical issues, please leave a comment below. We have also created a dedicated topic on the forums where you can leave any suggestions you have here. Of course, if you have trouble registering then you won’t be able to post there 🙂

If your comment would require sharing any personal data, email your query to rhys@headforpoints.com instead.

How to navigate the forums

If you head to www.headforpoints.com/forums or click the link which will appear in the navigation bar later today you’ll see we have a number of forums dedicated to miles, points and travel in general. This should make it easier to find the information you are looking for versus searching old chat threads.

We have also added a ‘London life’ thread for off-topic questions about restaurants, going out, property or whatever. We may add other non-travel forums if there is demand.

If you want a quick overview of active conversations then I suggest using the ‘Recent Topics’ page. This is linked in the top right of the dedicated forum menu (or you can access it here) and lists all topics by most recent response. It’s a particularly useful way of keeping abreast of the entire forum.

Have we got the categories right? Only time will tell. We have done our best to second-guess what you will want to ask about. We will keep an eye on things and delete / add sections as necessary.

We have deliberately kept the forum ‘light’. You cannot have a linkable online profile, you cannot have a signature, you cannot upvote or downvote replies etc. From our side, we will keep your reading experience clean by not placing any advertising in the forum.

What you can do, for five minutes after posting, is edit what you have written – this was a much-requested feature in the old chat threads.

What will happen to the daily chat threads?

A daily chat thread will be opened each morning IN THE FORUM and not in the main news feed. There will be a new ‘daily discussion’ thread each day which will work in the same way as the current chat thread.

It will appear at the top of the forum listings so you won’t need to scroll down to see it.

The daily chat thread in the forum is a good place to, for example, post links to an interesting new offer you have found. However, we strongly suggest that any questions which can be asked in a dedicated forum thread are asked there. This will allow us to build up a strong Q&A database for the benefit of future readers.

It will obviously take a while for the forums to gain momentum, but we hope that we can create something that is both informative and entertaining. As with the site relaunch last year, you will see tweaks as the system beds down – readers have already given us some good ideas.

There are links to the forum in the HfP menu bar. We are working on ways to show a feed of current activity on the ‘news’ side of the site.

Thank you for your continued support of HfP.

Category

General

Comments (286)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • JerrySignfield says:
    15 Dec15 December 13:13

    I suggest having a drop down menu for the forum so that people can go to say latest posts

  • Tarmohamed says:
    15 Dec15 December 13:49

    What I liked about the chat thread was it was easy to ready various types of topics without specifically going into a specific topic. Right now the daily thread is hard to read and then there’s also the spin-off threads in each section/topic which I don’t want to bother reading everyday.

    • Rhys says:
      15 Dec15 December 14:47

      Use the recent topics page! https://www.headforpoints.com/forums-recent-topics/

    • Andrew J says:
      15 Dec15 December 19:22

      Agree, it was much easier to scroll and see if it was a question or a statement – now you have to spend time going into each topic just to see there’s nothing of note. It’s been a sad week but I’ll just need to get on with my life and leave all this HFP discussion business behind and find a new hobby.

      • Rob says:
        15 Dec15 December 21:23

        You know well how many people, eg Aston, were banging on every day about a forum. Now you have one. No-one said at the time it was a bad idea 🙂

        We are working on a way of making ‘Recent Threads’ more prominent, so you will be able to tab between the current forum home page and a list of latest threads, taken from all the forums combined. One of these options should work well for most people.

        • Danny says:
          15 Dec15 December 23:32

          Why can’t we have both? People can ask questions in the chat thread but that doesn’t mean they have to be answered or alternatively have a standard answer and link to direct people. The chat thread has become a unique feature; it’s instantaneous and fun, people can dip in and out. I am not against change or the forum but like some people on here I have been visiting HFP less since the launch as it just takes too much time and efforts.

        • Aston100 says:
          16 Dec16 December 23:06

          I applaud the introduction of these forums.
          Once the few issues are sorted and missing features added (reply notification in particular) I’m sure many more people will start using them.

        • yorkieflyer says:
          17 Dec17 December 23:27

          Why not have a Weekend chat thread that can run for two days for the more social aspects? We’d never have coalesced around Polly’s story in the current format

          • Rob says:
            17 Dec17 December 23:55

            Not a terrible idea, but it’s difficult to see how it works – how do we block questions which should go into the forum?

            I accept your point about Polly, and it is also true that we benefited from the story ideas that readers used to post in chat. Perhaps chat becomes ‘hot deals and chat’ or similar? We’ll see.

      • Cathy says:
        15 Dec15 December 22:09

        I agree, missing the daily thread, I found it really useful and quick to look through.

  • Bon says:
    15 Dec15 December 16:00

    We are sorry that your Bangkok flight has been cancelled, we don’t underestimate the inconvenience this has caused.  We have now suspended our Bangkok service until October 2022

  • Lady London says:
    15 Dec15 December 17:02

    Excellent.

    I take it BA has also informed you of your right to be rerouted onto another airline’s flights if you still need to travel ?

    …Since they haven’t underestimated the inconvenience this has caused 🙂

  • Jill ( Kinkell ) says:
    15 Dec15 December 18:21

    I’m old and don’t like change… and I miss the daily chat in all its random postings.. I’m struggling with the layout on iPad mini..print seems so much smaller . I wonder how many of your 000’s of readers actually like it. A few have shouted loudly enough for forums, but what do the majority of loyal readers and posters want? There’s an absence of a few very helpful postersOver recent days. I dare say your page clicks will tell you.

    • cats_are_best says:
      15 Dec15 December 18:35

      Yep, I also enjoy(ed) the random nature of postings, especially daily/bits.

      Seems likely most HFPers are also on FT, which will have far higher audience able to respond to niche questions.

      Not convinced the world needs another forum.

      • Harrier25 says:
        15 Dec15 December 19:14

        The old daily chat will be missed. It was an enjoyable experience. RIP Daily Chat! 😥

        • Andrew J says:
          15 Dec15 December 19:24

          I’m glad I’m not the only one. It’s been a tough week having to say goodbye, but I respect Rob’s business decision and if I had the skills, acumen and desire, I’d set up my own daily chat blog.

        • Magarathea says:
          15 Dec15 December 23:26

          +1

      • Lyn says:
        16 Dec16 December 02:20

        I honestly doubt very much if most HfPers are also on FT. Or indeed that most of them wanted a forum. But perhaps it is a generation thing?

        Yes, I can see the importance of putting things in their proper places and not reinventing the wheel. But I also agree that the daily chat was sometimes useful. It had both bits of information you didn’t even know you needed until you read it, and questions that people didn’t realise they knew the answers to until they were asked. Serendipity. So far the daily chat forum seems rather a poor substitute.

    • NorthernLass says:
      15 Dec15 December 20:45

      It seems to be much more difficult to get answers to questions. You can start a new topic but realistically no one is going to go through them all to see if they can respond!

  • Danny says:
    15 Dec15 December 23:46

    If Aston100 is so keen on a forum, why did he use the chat thread to pose the question below; why didn’t he start a new thread or put his question on an existing forum thread?!

    “ Hello, someone in the household may have Covid, so there’s a chance I might not be able to fly at the weekend.
    If I have to cancel a BA reward flight (using companion voucher) for an FTV, how would I go about using this for a different destination?
    e.g. South Africa flights that become available in a few weeks from now for Xmas 2022.
    I have enough avios to book that flight even without another companion voucher, if that somehow helps with amendments later (e.g. retrospectively applying an FTV?

    Just wondering if there is a formal process for doing so”.

    • Andrew J says:
      16 Dec16 December 06:38

      +1!!! Seems Aston agrees that the best place to get an urgent answer to a question is in daily chat rather than hidden away in a pocket of the BA forum where this question belongs. Bring back daily chat in this easy to use format!!!!

  • Freddy says:
    16 Dec16 December 08:01

    Bet Rob is mightily unimpressed everyone has asked for a forum and now no-one wants one

    • NorthernLass says:
      16 Dec16 December 08:14

      I had the idea it would be like a set of mini chat threads with titles supplied by Rob & Rhys. Everyone having to start their own thread makes it a bit unwieldy.

    • Harrier25 says:
      16 Dec16 December 08:16

      The footfall so far in the forum daily chat this morning says it all!
      I found that certain people would shout about having a forum when someone disagreed with their point of view, or a question was being asked that they weren’t interested in. Laughable. 😂

      • Rui N. says:
        16 Dec16 December 08:26

        What matters is the footfall in the entire forum. I had 2+ pages of “recent topics” since I last logged on last evening. Not too shabby.

        • Andrew J says:
          16 Dec16 December 08:55

          Not great though is it. Nothing like how it was with the daily chat.

          • Rui N. says:
            16 Dec16 December 09:04

            Is someone is counting number of posts happening overnight for sure it ain’t me, as I have better things to do with me time.
            But it doesn’t seem lightly used for sure.

          • Rob says:
            16 Dec16 December 09:08

            We were over 70k page views on Mon and Tue which is well above normal.

            There is other stuff though:

            * a forum benefits a bigger group than the old chat thread
            * the forum will be Google gold in terms of sending us new readers

            There will be changes next week. We are putting the news stories at the top (so you could use the forum home as your site entry point) and we will have a tab for Recent Posts so you can swap easily between two versions of the forum home.

      • Andrew J says:
        16 Dec16 December 08:57

        And if you dare post anything in the daily chat, people who don’t like the idea of the daily chat will shout you down and tell you to stop using it.

    • Rui N. says:
      16 Dec16 December 08:28

      Who said that no one wants one? Have you heard of the Internet before? People who say something are the ones that are unhappy, not the ones that are happy. When there was only the daily chat here, the people who complained were the ones that wanted the forum. Now that we have the forums, people who complain are the ones that wanted the daily chat here.

      • Peter K says:
        16 Dec16 December 09:00

        Interesting @Rui N.
        I’ve nothing against a forum, but they are not my thing. I assumed there would be a forum and a chat page. I’m not sure why there can’t be 🤔

        A forum for regularly asked questions, and a chat page for chat, tidbits and urgent time sensitive questions.

      • Freddy says:
        16 Dec16 December 09:09

        No need to be rude. My comment was based on activity in the forum, people’s comments and my own view.

        Probably not Rob’s demographic but I would have recommended a discord group which looks great on mobile, has good notifications and you can direct message other posters. Could even have charged for ‘premium chat’. Forums had their day in early 2000

        • Freddy says:
          16 Dec16 December 09:11

          My comment was directed at Rui N haha – one benefit of a forum I guess

        • Rui N. says:
          16 Dec16 December 09:36

          If I sounded rude that was not my intention. But apologies if you felt that way. It’s another consequence of the Internet, people sound rude even when they had no intention of being so!

        • John says:
          16 Dec16 December 10:22

          And a “chat thread” is so 1980s…

          • Rob says:
            16 Dec16 December 10:35

            You don’t know much about business if you think it makes sense to outsource a core component to Discord, or indeed a Facebook group.

            Let’s be honest. The track record of forums in this space is not good, apart from Flyertalk. Business Traveller has never had much success, Milepoint was closed, Inside Flyer is effectively moribund, V-Flyer is exceptionally niche (albeit that is more of a function of its Virgin Atlantic focus).

            However, we have volume, so we have a better chance of making it work. How we judge whether it ‘works’ is a difficult question, of course. It’s hard to track how many new readers something brings in although I’m sure Sinead can find a way of tracking Google traffic to the /forums subdomain. What we can do is count the page views, and as long as it eventually gets close to the 8,000 – 12,000 per day that the chat thread did then we’re fine. The chat thread was also heavily inflated by Creation discussion, of course, which was falling away regardless.

        • Aston100 says:
          16 Dec16 December 23:10

          A discord group would be well outside the comfort zone of those prehistoric users that struggle even with forums!

          • Freddy says:
            17 Dec17 December 07:43

            Yeah I’m starting to think that now. I recommended it purely for its ease of use and readability. The app is great but maybe I’m too young and hip to be recommending stuff for hfp

          • Lady London says:
            17 Dec17 December 11:20

            No, there’s another word for it. Young and hip would be Rhys, btw

  • Rma says:
    16 Dec16 December 13:50

    Unless I am missing something the Verifly app sequence is bizarre. If you are travelling to the US, the first thing verifly want you to do is agree the attestation form confirming your answers. Until you’ve done that, you can’t move on to the next sections asking you to download vaccination certificates and negative test results. Surely you confirm the answers you’ve given after they have been entered. Also, with the one day test window, it’s one more thing to do at the last minute.
    Sorry if this should be in a forum

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