BiggerPockets Founder's Blog

Speed, Style, and Incentives

You may have noticed that we just rebuilt the front page of BiggerPockets. This redesign came about for several reasons.

 Here's a few things of note:

1 - The old front page took almost 6 seconds to load on a broadband connection -- that was not acceptable! The new front is much faster!
2 - The old front page had little information for possible new members. The current front page is designed to get possible new members excited about signing up!  It is important to focus on recruitment, and we believe the new page will greatly help.
3 - Instead of just showing random members on the front, we're now showing members, others who live in their area. If you log in from Los Angeles, you'll see members in LA, while New Yorkers will see their fellow New York City residents. If your city doesn't have a lot of BP members, you'll see others in your state.
4 - We're still showing the latest 6 forum posts and have added the most recent 4 articles from our blog. After polling a group of current members, we determined that these were the two things that they used the most on the old front.
5 - We updated our registration page to include more info why members should sign up.

We hope that these moves help to drive new signups to the site, while satisfying the needs of our current membership.

Thanks for listening . . . we've got more great improvements coming to other parts of the site soon.

BiggerPockets is Hoping You'll Help Get Us Nominated for a Prestigious Tech Award! 

Hey folks!  Like the Oscars and Emmys, there is an award for companies in Technology, and I'm hoping that you'll nominate BiggerPockets! The 2008 Crunchies are put on by some of the top tech companies, and we'd love to be considered (If you really want to get in my good graces, you could nominate me, Joshua Dorkin, for Best Startup CEO or Startup Founder)

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!

Many of you may not know that BiggerPockets has a system to allow members to take private notes on other members and on property listings.

That's right, Your Notes are PRIVATE!

Your notes are viewable ONLY BY YOU!

Taking notes on other members is a great way to stay organized, to remind yourself of conversations or discussions, etc.  Essentially, notes allow members to keep a virtual file on those people that they come into contact with on BiggerPockets!

Here's how BiggerPockets Notes Works:

1 - Find Notes Tab on a member's profile and click on ADD NOTE

 2 - A dialogue box will ope, allowing you to create a note.  Write your note and then save it, or cancel if you don't want to.  Notes can be deleted at any time.

3 - After saving the note, you'll see it every time you open the user's profile and view the NOTES tab.  Additionally, notes can be viewed from within the DASHBOARD by clicking on the NOTES tab on the sidebar.

See View from the DASHBOARD below.

That's it!  As you can see, creating notes is an easy way to remember things about other members on the site.

BTW - You can also take notes on ANY property listing on the site.

Questions?