BiggerPockets Founder's Blog

BiggerPockets just launched a Testimonial System that will allow our members to help us promote the site to potential new members and other visitors. These testimonials will appear on the site's main page - http://www.biggerpockets.com (which you can't see if you are logged in, but is visible to visitors), and on our registration pages.

Help Us By Writing a Testimonial for BiggerPockets!

To share a testimonial, simply go to the dashboard and click on the Write a Testimonial link on the left of the page. You'll see a box drop down where you can write about the site. You will be restricted to 180 characters, so please be concise.

Just let others know what you think about BP, how it has helped you or your business, or anything else you have to say that will let others know about your great experiences on the site. We'll then get notified of the message and can then approve it for inclusion. Once included, the testimonial will be added to the site with a link back to your profile, so people can see that there was an actual user behind the message.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you all think, and sharing it with the world.

One of the places that our members like to spend their time is on our Off-Topic and Political Talk forums.  That said, these forums can often-times be a distraction and a time-killer. 

Recently, one of our members suggested that we remove these forums from the forum feed found in your dashboard.  We agreed that it would be a good idea to give our members the option to ignore these distractive, and sometimes controversial subject areas while navigating their dashboard.

Members Can Now Ignore Several Forum Areas from their Dashboard

We've made some changes in our dashboard which will allow members, by default, to ignore the Off-Topic, Political Talk, and all Marketplace forum topics.  You don't have to do ANYTHING if you want to continue to ignore these areas while looking at your dashboard forum feed.

If you want to see these areas once again, just go to your DASHBOARD and click on the Settings and Password link. Then, just click on the Dashboard tab (see above image) and you'll be able to choose which of these areas you once again want to see in your dashboard forum feed.

We appreciate all member suggestions for improving the site, and do everything in our power to make BiggerPockets a place where our members come first.

Thanks again, and don't forget to invite your friends, colleagues, and associates to join you here on BP!

We've been working on some important updates lately on BiggerPockets and I want to point them out to you:

Share Your Status on your Profile and for your Colleagues:

As the micro-blogging trend online continues to grow, we've added capabilities for our members to keep their colleagues up to speed on their activities. 

Members can now UPDATE their STATUS, by posting in 100 characters or less what's new with them.  These updates will show up at the top of your PROFILE, and in the FRIENDS ACTIVITY LOG of your colleagues in the DASHBOARD.

Here's how:

a) On all of our social networking pages below the BiggerPockets logo, you'll see "Logged in as: Your Name" with a little blue icon to the right of it.  Click that icon and you'll see a text box and Update Status button appear. Simply post your status and hit the button and you'll be redirected to your profile, where you'll see your new status update.

b) Click the UPDATE STATUS link at the left of the DASHBOARD (right above the Updates section).  Then, enter your update and click the Update Status button.  You'll be redirected to your profile, where you'll see your status below your name and occupation.

Below: An example of a status message on a profile:

We hope our members find this improvement to be a helpful way to communicate with their colleagues, and to share their ongoing real estate activities with one another.

Front Page Redirection to Dashboard:

Any member who is logged in to BiggerPockets will now be redirected to their DASHBOARD when they try to go to our homepage.  We're making the Dash into your own personal hub on the site, and have placed all of the links and resources that were on the homepage in the dash.

You'll also note that the three main tabs in the DASHBOARD are listed below.  Whenever you return to the dash, you'll see the most recent tab that you viewed open up.

- Friends Activity - Shows you what your colleagues on BiggerPockets are doing.  You can see when your colleagues: update their status, join a group, post a blog article or comment, post a property or comment, post a bulletin or comment, change their profile picture, upload a photo or gallery, etc.

- Latest Forum Activity - Shows you the last 15 posts in the forums.

- BiggerPockets Blog -  Shows you the last 5 articles on the BiggerPockets blog, written by our panel of experts in all areas of real estate.

We've Made it Easier to Invite Your Friends and Colleagues to BiggerPockets

There are two new ways to invite people to join the site. You'll now see an INVITE A FRIEND box on the left side of the forums, right below the FEATURED PROPERTIES box. Additionally, in the DASHBOARD, you'll see an invite link in the NETWORKING dropdown.

Part of what makes BiggerPockets special is the amount of shared knowledge on the site.  We hope that you'll all take some time to invite people you know to join you here on the site and help us expand the knowledge base even more!

Additional Changes and Fixes

- We've moved all site stats from the front page of the site to our official STATS PAGE. (Note: you'll find the link to the stats page at the bottom of all site pages)

- We've fixed the recent colleague request issue. If you got an error or blank page after following a link in a colleague request email, that link will now work.  Additionally, you'll see colleague requests in the notifications section of the top right of the dashboard.

BiggerPockets has undergone tremendous growth over the last year, and we're excited to let you know that the best is yet to come!  We've got many plans for the site, both large and small, for 2009. 

One of the big goals for BiggerPockets for this year is to reach the 100,000 member plateau.  I think we can easily achieve this number and more, if our current and future members help put the word out and let everyone know why BiggerPockets is the best real estate social network around.

We just want to thank everyone who has been been supportive of the site over the past few years, and we hope that you'll all stick by us as we introduce great new tools and features to help you all with your real estate investing and professional careers.

Coming This Week - Post Your Status to Your Profile and Friend's Activity in the Dashboard!

Micro-blogging through websites like Twitter has become incredibly popular recently and we've decided to make it possible for our members to share their latest activites with their colleagues and others with a new Status feature.  Members will be able to post in 100 characters or less, what they're up to at any given moment.

This minor improvement will hopefully allow our users to give others a small glimpse into their daily real estate lives.

Coming This Week - Dashboard Redirection

As our members have come to rely on their Dashboard to help them to create and navigate their profiles, and the rest of the site, we're planning on redirecting members who are logged in to the site from the current front page directly to the Dashboard.  We know that this will make the daily activities for our members easier to accomplish, but we didn't want to surprise you.  

Other New Features Coming Soon

You didn't think I'd let the rabbit out of the hat, did you?

Happy Holidays everyone!  We launched a few changes to the BiggerPockets site this afternoon that I thought worth sharing.

• Members can now share their real estate wants and needs on their profiles in the Currently Seeking section.  Whether you're looking for properties, partners, money, clients, etc. you can share these so others on the site can more easily connect and work with you.
• We've drastically sped up the Dashboard and other areas of the site!  Regular members will see a big change!
• We've upgraded the recent forum posts section of the Dashboard to make it easier to navigate.
• Corrected several problems in the BiggerPockets Blogging platform.  Users will no longer see blank trackbacks on their articles;  we've also fixed a few bugs in the comments.
• Improved pagination issues throughout the site.
• Fixed several bugs in the member password reset system.  

We've got more great BiggerPockets upgrades for you today!

 We've launched an upgrade to the PM Conversation system, including the following features:

• New styling - we've cleaned up the design of the system
• Increased speed - We've sped up the system considerably and are working onother speed improvements.
• Message archive - members can archive old posts that they want to save. 
• Address Book - Members now have an address book that they can use to locate their colleagues with when sending a new message.  The address book link can be found on the send a message page.
• The ability to report a message - you can report SPAM messages that have been sent to you to an administrator.  This will help us to kick out people who abuse the site.
• The ability to mark multiple messages as read or unread.

• The ability to opt-out of a conversation that you don't want to be a part of.  If you're a part of a conversation with multiple people, you can use the "Remove Entire Conversation" link to stop being a part of it.

In addition to the changes in our PM conversation system, we've also made a change to the Dashboard.  Members can now see the latest informative news articles from the BiggerPockets blog right in their Dash!

In the very near future, we're planning on redirecting all logged in members to the Dashboard instead of the front page of the site.  Please be prepared for this change soon.

 Got questions, comments, etc, post a comment!

Notice Anything Different About the Dashboard?

We just launched the first incarnation of the All New BiggerPockets Dashboard!

Some of the most important improvements of the Dash Include:

• The most used functions on the site are now found easily on the left of the Dashboard in an easy to use toolbar.
• Important website news and updates are all easily visible below the important functions
• Logging: Members can now track the activity of their colleagues on the site. See what your colleagues are commenting on, posting to the site, etc!
• Latest forum posts: Members can see the most recent forum activity directly from the DASHBOARD to help you find interesting topics more easily.
• A New Function Bar: The gray dropdown function bar at the top of the DASHBOARD makes finding what you want on BiggerPockets easier then ever!
• Notifications Box: At the top right of the DASHBOARD will appear all NOTIFICATIONS that require your attention, including Reference Requests, Colleague Requests and Private Messages.

These are just some of the many improvements.  Of course, we've got a bunch of great new features that we'll be adding to the dashboard in the next few days.

 Stick around and check back often!

I thought I'd let everyone know that we're currently working on rebuilding the entire DASHBOARD to help members easily find the most commonly used items, and to enhance the user experience on the site.  The new layout should improve usability, big time!

Additionally, we're adding some features to the DASH so you can better keep up with what your colleagues are doing on the site. 

Thanks for all of the suggestions and we hope you're also excited by the changes to come.

 Stay tuned . . . we're close to launch!