Keep the pressure on friends. WIX needs to see this is an issue big enough to reverse course on. They use the “Vote For” approach unfortunately. For this issue though, they need to not remove an essential way to “Collaborate” and “Community Build”.
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I agree. Groups is garbage. They traded functionality for imposed junk. They need to reimburse all paid customers for forcing incomplete, half baked broken features. And “migration” was a joke that wasn’t funny. Also there removal of Shared Gallery for nonsense like Pro-Gallery and AnyFile that do not function remotely the same are not solutions or improvements. They are functionally inept and force site owners/anims to have to micromanage every single thing which is idiotic and impractical. They gave us garbage and slapped a crappy AI gimmick on it all on top of that with all the other broken and incompletely and barely working applications. It’s infuriating. Or they can bring them back and stop messing with their paid customers.
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I tried migrating my forum to groups. It does not look like it maintains the user base I’ve worked to build up over the years. In fact, it does not appear to perform the same function at all. What it looks like is you resetting years of my work to build the /forum link of my site into a place people know they can go to communicate with me regarding my products. Why are you discontinuing forums if you don’t have a valid replacement for it? A forum is a bog standard component of a commercial website on any platform. I am not interested in having my own social media channel.
Forced conversions like this only ever lose customers and create bad will. Which it is. And it will.
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Terminating Wix Forum is an astonishing betrayal. The Forum feature is a core value of the product.
Groups is useful, but does not offer an alternative to Forum. The alternative appears to be migration to a 3rd-party forum app and embed it in the Wix site. With many forum categories and subcategories configured with extensive permissions (roles and badges), it would be very helpful to be able to export those permission settings to use in configuring a 3rd-party app.
I do not see how this backend data can be exported the way that the Forum category configurations can. Can someone identify a method?
If there is not currently a way, Wix should take responsibility to provide such export tools.
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We really value having the Forum and we’re disappointed to hear it will be removed. Groups are not the same as a forum because they do not offer the same level of structure, organization and easy navigation that our communities need.
Many of us have built our sites and communities around the Forum and it has worked very well for what we do. Please reconsider this decision or give us the option to continue using the Forum alongside Groups.
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Just out of curiosity…
Is it possible to change the text of the tabs in number 3?
I can edit the text in numbers 1 and 2, but I was wondering if I could “rebrand” the concepts of Groups and Posts in my website… Does anyone know?
That is a very sharp and accurate breakdown of the functional differences between the two structures. You’ve hit on key points that fundamentally change the user experience.
The core issue you’ve highlighted is the shift from a knowledge base/quick-reference format (Forums) to a social/collaborative format (Groups). Losing crucial elements like Search Topics and a Simple List to Scan Questions completely breaks the utility for quick Q&A. These are not minor losses; they affect the platform’s utility as a resource.
I completely agree that the extraneous “Joe Joined Group” noise and the screen-takeover are serious usability regressions. Have you been able to submit this detailed functional critique directly to WIX support? This list is an excellent set of non-negotiable features for those relying on the Q&A format. Thank you for articulating these frustrations so clearly for the community.
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Hi Kate,
I submitted most of these to WIX and they rejected most. See my post in April.
I think they are looking at all the third party forum products (Discord, etc.) and thinking there is no market for an in house forum. This is wrong. WIX’s primary draw is its fully integrated features not its endless features.
Most of us want a forum on our own sites where no user is asked to join an outside site and that works seamlessly with membership and visual themes. We are not looking for more than the essentials in a forum. WIX’s forum met all the needs, was completely integrated and only needed the normal cadence of tweaks.
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Thank you so much for this confirmation, and for sharing your experience with Wix support back in April. It’s highly valuable, though deeply disappointing, to hear they’re rejecting this feedback.
I couldn’t agree more with your assessment: WIX’s primary draw is its fully integrated features. Abandoning a perfectly functional, seamlessly integrated Forum product in favor of forcing users toward fragmented third-party solutions fundamentally undermines their core value proposition.
It’s clear that those of us who valued the native, essentials-only forum are being overlooked in this shift. I appreciate you articulating the problem so clearly. Hopefully, enough users voicing this disappointment will prompt them to reconsider. For now, I’ll consider this matter settled on my end.
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So no way to accomplish this?
Today is the last day. Is there any hope of a change of plan from Wix?
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Absolutely hate Forums going away. I’ve been told by Wix “Support” that Groups will work the same as Forum for what I need and it doesn’t! Then I was told to use “Blog” and that isn’t what I like/need either. Looking into alternatives. Hey Wix, if people are unhappy with your changes, maybe you should consider bringing back Forums??
Hi everybody,
I share most of the concerns listed here. However, we’ve eventually accepted that Forums are gone and replaced by Groups, and we’ve worked hard at trying to simplify the interface and making what we call “discussion groups” resemble to our good old forums.
The problems we are stuck into now is regarding notifications. It seems that it simply doesn’t work as expected. Moreover, we’ve recently discovered that A LOT of new automations have appeared, all related to Groups:
So we’ve spent a lot of time trying to configure them to make appropriate notifications, since only a few of them are pertinent - but are critical - to our users.
But it doesn’t work as expected. What is particularly confusing is that it seems to work correctly in a new Test group we’ve built for testing purposes but NOT work with our users’ groups, those which have been migrated from the old forums.
Does anybody experience such problems too, or have ideas about what could be done? We are pretty stuck with this and our community is rapidly losing momentum…
Hi YvesPeyn,
I don’t have a solution, but please keep posting about what works and what doesn’t. Getting notifications to work with Forums or Groups especially the critical ones as you say, I also have never gotten to work.
If anyone has an alternative to WIX that can be moved to without too much hassle, for those of us wanting an integrated AND functionally finished community website builder please chime in. And of course, if you know how to get it working in WIX, please share.
Rant… The promise of WIX being a great community builder was maybe true 10 years ago when appearance could be sold as community. But its community functionality that matters now. Notifications, integration with SMS, email, LinkedIn, Snap, etc. is essential. WIX has given up on it commitment to integrating and understanding how communities are built and maintained. It’s all appearances and store fronts right now.
Agree with so many of the concerns raised here. Absolute garbage attempt of an upgrade… more like a downgrade (plus loads of headaches and time wasted). Please just freeze forums with no more support and leave as is. I’ll need to look for an alternative provider otherwise.