You may have noticed already but there has been a big change this new year. I am not just talking about the brand new joke of the day or cute kitten calendar you have just hung up in your office. The Appraisal Buzz has undergone a major facelift! Both the email newsletter and the website have been drastically redesigned based on suggestions from appraisers like you.
Change can be tough, and I have a tough time dealing with it too! I’ve had the same cell phone number for 15 years and still use the same shampoo I used in high school. With that in mind, we wanted to ease the transition and use this article to walk you through the new site and get you better acquainted with all the new features.
FEEDS
The new Buzz site is a place appraisers can go to first thing in the morning to find out what is going on in the industry. Our AROUND THE WEB and BUZZ FEED areas on the site feature the latest news from other industry news sources and prominent bloggers. PRESS RELEASES and CAREER BUZZ posts right on the front page to give you easy access to the latest corporate news and company job openings.
You can stay current with all the latest news even if it’s not an Appraisal Buzz article. If you are only interested in our Appraisal Buzz articles, subscribe to the new RSS feed to be notified every time we post a new feature article.
COMMENTS
One of the biggest issues we had with the old Appraisal Buzz website is that the comments required a login, which we implemented to stop spam, but passwords are easily forgotten and it still didn’t stop the spam comments selling Michael Kors handbags or the latest black market medicines for hair growth. Many of our subscribers were so frustrated with the process they just stopped commenting.
We want to welcome you back and invite you to try our new system, which is drastically streamlined and improved. You can login with your Facebook, twitter, Google+, or Disqus accounts for easy access to post your thoughts. You can now also post images, share your comments on social media or respond privately to other commenters. Just try and keep the selfies to a minimum! Comments will still be moderated but now our authors and moderators will be more accessible to communicate via the comments section.
CALENDAR
This is something that’s been missing from our website for a long time now. With so many different conferences, education classes and important dates, it’s hard to keep track of them all. Our new calendar on the front page of the site shows you important upcoming dates and allows you to export and save events in your Google calendar, iCal, and Outlook Calendars. Set up notifications so you don’t miss a date. If there is an event or important date you think we should include for everyone to see let us know and we would be happy to add it to the calendar. Before you ask us to put it on the calendar, your dog Fido’s 4th birthday doesn’t qualify as a date the whole appraisal industry needs to remember.
RESOURCES/WEBINARS
The major issue our Appraisal Buzz readers had with our old site was with our old store. We have gotten a brand new store hosted in the actual Appraisal Buzz site. No need to go to another website to download the item. Checkout and view the product right in confirmation window. Don’t worry, you will also get an email receipt with a link to view the product as well for those who want to save it for later. If you tell the store to remember your information you won’t even have to retype it anymore. One click can get you access to all of our resources available for download.
APPRAISER SEARCH
One new feature is the Appraiser Search powered by Clearbox. The widget provides live stats on fees and demographics provided by Clearbox data. This search allows potential lender and AMC clients to contact appraisers registered in Clearbox. CLICK HERE if you want to update your Clearbox profile information.
Hopefully you’ll like the new website and this mini tour helps you get accustomed to our revolutionary new site. If you really are overwhelmed with the change and feeling nostalgic for the old Appraisal Buzz you can still access the old site with all of our past articles by going to archive.appraisalbuzz.com . Let us know what you think and if there is anything you think we still need to include. We would love to hear your feed back in the comments section below or via email at comments@appraisalbuzz.com.
