Personally I miss the bullseye logo from 2005 when we first opened the doors of WA...lol.

Much has changed in OEP when going from WA Platinum (the previous version as of April 3, 2012) and this post will give you some insight into what has been removed and why. This is a response to Klrriders’s blog “WA - The way we were”.

Training Changes

All of the OLD tutorials are still here and are indexed when you do a search. The issue, is that old tutorials did not have "Tags" and if you do a "Tag" search you will not find the old tutorials until they are updated. But that isn't a problem because ALL tutorials from the OLD system are still indexed..better yet, individual pages within those tutorials are indexed so rather than just being able to search the "Title" of your description, the results will search:

Title
Description
Page Titles
Page Content
Tags at the Resource & Page level

The training center gives you exactly what you're looking now.

Anything removed from WA has been removed because it was hurting the success rate of members due to the fact the content was outdated. Here is that list with some explanations:

Accreditation Sources - Outdated - PPC & Email marketing training in the OEP training centre blows away these courses 10 fold and are much more current

Buddy Network (... *poof* gone!?) - Buddy network was not integrated nor did it have a purpose. Adding buddies has been replaced by "Following" it's the same exact functionality, however people who you are following now dictate your personal feed, it has meaning. People who follow you - powerful as your actions make it to their feeds.

Campaigns - Barely used in the old system, didn't make it to OEP

ClickBank Research Tool - Clickbank now has all of this functionality in their marketplace.

Hot Clickbank Products - Clickbank gives you this information, you can sort by gravity

Marketing Materials - Nothing here that isn't available now

My Bookmarks - A much more powerful system is coming

NicheQ- A much more powerful system is coming

Rapid Writer - Still here in the main menu

STF Marketing Blueprint - One of the most misleading and outdated guides that were here at WA. STF - DO NOT PROMOTE IT, we have not had the time to keep the site up to date and in its current state it will not convert. Honestly it's a great product, but we went through a transition last year with it and the changes hurt conversions.

Site Rubix - This was replaced by WordPress Express 2 years ago however we will be introducing a link to access the system for those who have recently used it. NEW members to WA have not had access to this for 2 years.

Task and Goals - A much more powerful system is planned

Training Center Categories - Does it makes sense that there are only 8 categories for online business? Absolutely not. Categorization is a very old 2005 way of doing things. We're in 2012 and our search is the most powerful part of finding training at WA. Tags have replaced categories and we now have the ability to offer training on any topic related on online business. Categorization does not allow for growth, rather it greatly inhibits it. Personally in the old system I've wanted to add training before where there is no category available so it would never be found anyway. OEP - blows away the old training center.

If you are missing "Categories", the old categories were migrated and turned into TAGS so you can find all of those old training resources by clicking on the related tag. Example: PPC Marketing the category is now PPC marketing the tag and is available in the tag cloud on the training center home page.

Training History - A much more powerful system is planned

Turn Key Feeder Sites - Feeder sites are for the lazy, the used to convert back in 2005 when Google had no problem with duplicate content. A feeder site gives you absolutely nothing and this was another outdated system that hurt member success rates. WordPress express will get you a website up and running in 30 seconds.. use it by clicking “Build new Website” from the website page.

Web Site Templates - Does anyone actually miss the 5 website templates that we had before? You had to download them, unzip them, upload them via FTP, and then edit the HTML manually. No one uses HTML templates anymore. We provide you with 1000’s of professionally designed wordpress templates within WordPress Express.

Forum Integration - Changes coming to make it easier to find out what is going on in the forum

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As you can see we've changed a lot with the ultimate goal of stripping all of the content that was misleading, out dated, or simply useless (and there was quite a bit).

The Open Education Project focuses on education and training..it's the reason why Wealthy Affiliate University has been around since 2005. Major updates are required to stay current and continue offering training that will lead to great success. The NEW training center is very powerful, and the interaction at WA has never been greater. Being able to find training and get support are the two main focuses and will continue to be at the core of all decisions that we make.

We've got a long ways to go and we're still just 5 days into the new platform. We've had more new training created in the past 5 days then we have in the past 5 months in the old system. More blogs, better interaction, much more use of the training center, more meaningful relationships formed (Followings).

Loads planed for OEP, this is the BETA version and you can expect daily updates until we get it just right!

Thanks for reading :)

Carson