How to: Add Cruise Critic's Community forums to your iPhone Home Screen

[LauraS]

 

You can add the community's mobile forums to your iPhone's Home Screen for ease of access.    Here's how:

 

Open Safari

Go to:  https://boards.cruisecritic.com

Click the share functionality at the bottom of your browser's screen (looks like a page with an upward arrow)

Select: Add to home screen

 Click:  Add, then done.

Look for the Cruise Critic icon on your home screen!

 

Here's some screenshots to help!

[LauraS]

[LauraS]

[LauraS]

[LauraS]

And there it is! 

 

[Pensioncruiser]

How do I add it to my new Android,had it on my old one but has not transferred.

[Essiesmom]

I just added it to my iPad ….hope it works.  I never visit forums on my phone…screen is too small and typing near impossible.  EM

[broberts]

56 minutes ago, Pensioncruiser said:

How do I add it to my new Android,had it on my old one but has not transferred.

 

If you are using Chrome, menu (3 vertical dots top right of tool bar), Add to home screen. You can do this for any CC page, or any other web page.

 

 

If you don't see Add to home screen, there is an app for the page so select Install app.

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by broberts

[LauraS]

Thanks, broberts!  I was working on a second post for Android!

[Charles4515]

2 hours ago, Essiesmom said:

I just added it to my iPad ….hope it works.  I never visit forums on my phone…screen is too small and typing near impossible.  EM

 

In a pinch when I don't have my computer or iPad with me I hold my iPhone in landscape orientation. That helps a little. It is not just reading and typing but it is easy to miss the touch points on the Cruise Critic design on the mobile version. It is frustrating after typing a reply and somehow my finger misses  and causes it to disappear. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Charles4515

[Essiesmom]

13 hours ago, Charles4515 said:

 

In a pinch when I don't have my computer or iPad with me I hold my iPhone in landscape orientation. That helps a little. It is not just reading and typing but it is easy to miss the touch points on the Cruise Critic design on the mobile version. It is frustrating after typing a reply and somehow my finger misses  and causes it to disappear. 

You need to understand that I have the smallest phone I can get.  Just last week I upgraded from the SE 2nd gen to the SE 3rd gen.  My first smartphone was the original SE of 2016.  EM

[Charles4515]

44 minutes ago, Essiesmom said:

You need to understand that I have the smallest phone I can get.  Just last week I upgraded from the SE 2nd gen to the SE 3rd gen.  My first smartphone was the original SE of 2016.  EM

Got ya. I have the largest iPhone. I wouldn’t even attempt to read or post to Cruise Critic on the small phone you upgraded too. But you have your iPad. It is not necessary for you to read and post from your phone. If you felt it was you might have upgraded to a larger phone. And even on a larger phone reading and posting can be tough. 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Charles4515

[LauraS]

10 hours ago, Essiesmom said:

You need to understand that I have the smallest phone I can get.  Just last week I upgraded from the SE 2nd gen to the SE 3rd gen.  My first smartphone was the original SE of 2016.  EM

 

My husband has the smallest he could find too.  And then, I snapped a pic of his "FLIP PHONE" and he uses it as the background!

 

[karmamule]

I used to be able to add shortcuts to specific cruise line discussion forums on my iPhone home screens but now even if I'm on a specific site, for example the Celebrity cruise discussion forums, when I save i to the homescreen it is just a link to the main board listing page.

 

I liked having shortcuts to specific cruise line discussion forums. Is there any way to do that or has some recent change made that impossible?

[Charles4515]

2 hours ago, karmamule said:

I used to be able to add shortcuts to specific cruise line discussion forums on my iPhone home screens but now even if I'm on a specific site, for example the Celebrity cruise discussion forums, when I save i to the homescreen it is just a link to the main board listing page.

 

I liked having shortcuts to specific cruise line discussion forums. Is there any way to do that or has some recent change made that impossible?

Hmm. I didn’t realize that had changed. Interestingly my old shortcut link which was to the content I posted in page still works but if I try to create a new link it does as you say. It only creates a link to the boards page. 
 

I liked making shortcut links on my homepage but probably the change creating a Cruise Critic icon on my homepage that opens to the boards page makes more sense. I will have to fool around and see if there is a way to make shortcut links. 

Edited June 26, 2023 by Charles4515

[karmamule]

7 hours ago, Charles4515 said:

Hmm. I didn’t realize that had changed. Interestingly my old shortcut link which was to the content I posted in page still works but if I try to create a new link it does as you say. It only creates a link to the boards page. 
 

I liked making shortcut links on my homepage but probably the change creating a Cruise Critic icon on my homepage that opens to the boards page makes more sense. I will have to fool around and see if there is a way to make shortcut links. 

 

Thanks for taking a look into this! I have a "Cruise" screen on my iPhone and a folder for each cruise line. with (ideally) a link to the CC forum for each line in each folder.

[RM2014]

I tried your directions but it still doesn’t take me directly to the screen I’m following for a roll call.  

[Clay Clayton]

@LauraSthanks for this! One question, does it automatically refresh?  When I’m on CC from the web, I can leave the window open and simply refresh it to update it.  It appears that with this link, I have to close it and then reopen it?

[LauraS]

Clicking the icon should refresh IF you've closed the forums.  Remember, this is linking to the web-version of the forum and is not an app.  Does that help?

 

[LauraS]

On 6/25/2023 at 8:18 PM, karmamule said:

I used to be able to add shortcuts to specific cruise line discussion forums on my iPhone home screens but now even if I'm on a specific site, for example the Celebrity cruise discussion forums, when I save i to the homescreen it is just a link to the main board listing page.

 

I liked having shortcuts to specific cruise line discussion forums. Is there any way to do that or has some recent change made that impossible?

Hmmm, let me try this and get back to you.  I'm thinking (in my non engineer brain) that the same steps should work from the Celebrity forum page.  Be right back...

[LauraS]

4 minutes ago, LauraS said:

Hmmm, let me try this and get back to you.  I'm thinking (in my non engineer brain) that the same steps should work from the Celebrity forum page.  Be right back...

 

So yes, it does work exactly the same way.  What I did was change the TITLE I wanted to appear:

 

[Clay Clayton]

18 minutes ago, LauraS said:

Clicking the icon should refresh IF you've closed the forums.  Remember, this is linking to the web-version of the forum and is not an app.  Does that help?

 

Thanks! It does, just means I have to close and reopen, will likely go back to using it directly from the web where it seems to automatically refresh.  Some of us spend too much time on them and need instant gratification 😢

[karmamule]

30 minutes ago, LauraS said:

 

So yes, it does work exactly the same way.  What I did was change the TITLE I wanted to appear:

 

 

Yes I can retitle the shortcut I save, but then when I use it, it still just takes me to  boards.cruisecritic.com rather than the specific board I was reading. 

 

As an example the specific celebrity forum's URL is "https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/16-celebrity-cruises/" but for some reason when I'm on that page and choose the Add to Home Screen option, it only has "https://boards.cruisecritic.com" as the link it's going to save.

[karmamule]

p.s. Cute dog on your desktop!  😀

[karmamule]

I found a workaround and that is to use the Shortcuts app to create a Home Screen shortcut and I can  even assign one of my pics to be the icon! A bit more work but that little extra ability to customize makes it worth it. (See the CC Celebrity shortcut below)

 

Edited June 27, 2023 by karmamule