Hey Everyone,

Today I’m really excited to give the Wealthy Affiliate community an update on the many improvements and new platforms that we’ve been busy working on quietly in the background! As of today we released a major update to the Dashboard activity feed and I am going to tell you all about that. First though, a few general updates on what we’ve been busy working on!

As many already know - in November 2020 (8 months ago) we released a major update to the User Experience and Interface here at WA. This was our biggest update since the inception of WA (since 2005) as we rewrote the main engine that powers many of our platforms. The update was well received by the wonderful members of Wealthy Affiliate, but as with any huge update like that there were subsequent updates and improvements required.

Early on we noticed that elements of the brand new “Classes” platform required updates to work the way we wanted it to. From notifications, to getting classes exposure, to making it easy to subscribe and get reminded when classes are streaming. 100’s of updates have already been made to how classes work at WA...and we’re not done yet. The next iteration of classes and our entire training platform is already in the queue and being worked on - we cannot wait!

One of the biggest and most important elements of WA that is paramount to communication and engagement is the ability to easily comment on both desktop and mobile through our comments. We redesigned the commenting system at WA. This has first been showcased in Classes, and now has been integrated into the brand new dashboard which we’ve released today. The ability to efficiently and effectively communicate is at the core of WA, and this has progressively improved with many recent releases. More to come with this platform soon, so stay tuned!

Each and every week we release many updates to the community with the goal of providing the absolute best platform in the world for learning to build an online business. Today marks a big evolution in the WA dashboard Activity Feed, and I’m going to now dive into telling you about this and what went into making it!

The NEW Dashboard Activity Feed

The most visited page in Wealthy Affiliate is the dashboard. It’s where folks go to learn about what is going on within the community. It’s central to the platform and it allows us all to keep a pulse on what’s happening in real-time. From Success Posts, Blog Posts, to Questions, to Top 10, Upcoming Classes, Hot topics, and New Training. Content from the very active WA community streams into the dashboard in real time

There are several changes that we have made to the dashboard, and I want to walk you through them.

Improved Readability.

In November, during our final testing before release of the new platform we realized that readability with a full-width and responsive engine was not ideal. It’s hard to read content when it’s too wide, and it’s a suggestion we always make when helping folks with websites that have themes that are too wide that spreads content over a wide viewport.

It’s just not optimal to read content that is wide and it’s one reason why mobile has grown in popularity becoming the most popular way to consume content on the web. It was apparent that we needed to solve the issue of readability on the WA dashboard by moving to a 3-column layout for Desktop and tablet devices.

Kyle and I have been using the new dashboard for months, and we can both attest to it being tough to go back and use the 2-column dashboard that was released in November - today we’re excited that you can now also experience a better layout for consuming content!

Quick Navigation.

Within the new platforms in WA (like Classes or Account Settings), you’ll notice that there is a left menu on Desktop devices, and the same in a popdown menu for Mobile devices. We call this the “App Menu” as it’s a menu that is related to the section of WA that you are within. The new Dashboard now has a left hand side menu with some awesome features.

How many times have you wanted to look for the top 10 posts card, or the upcoming classes, new questions, or hot topics card and had to scroll to find it? I know that I’ve certainly wanted to find a specific card countless times and found it less than optimal to scroll and find it within the ever-changing activity feed. We have solved this issue by adding links to a number of popular cards on the dashboard.

New technology, and a complete rewrite of how the feed works allows us to pull cards to the top of the feed instantly. This means that any card in the menu that you wish to view is just one click away, and it loads FAST! And when you want your feed to go back to its default state, just click the dashboard “refresh” button to pull a fresh feed as if you had just visited the dashboard for the first time.

As WA evolves, you will see more and more functionality built into the dashboard cards as well as new cards that will bring information important to you to the forefront. For example, we’ve introduced a new card with this release to show your WA Member Rank. Clicking on your “Rank” within the profile part of the menu near the top, will bring this to the forefront, showing your Helper, Creator, and Activity along with your overall “member rank”.

Faster Load Speeds, Through New Technology.

The technology behind the new dashboard has allowed us to improve feed efficiency 5x, providing better scrolling and faster rendering when scrolling. Along with many updates over the past few months to how the Live Chat works. It’s also had similar technology applied and is working better than ever!

Speed on both the mobile and desktop side of your user experience is an ongoing focus, and we are working with some of the most advanced and current technology now. You are going to see industry leading “application” speeds as we continue to refine and polish the back office experience.

The summer of 2021 is going to be one of our most active yet. Last summer we were working on bringing the new UX and platform to life, and this summer there are going to be many visible updates to Wealthy Affiliate that I think everyone is going to truly love.

Soon to come are:

• Updates to how content is created in WA (blog posts & questions)
• A New Blog UX (new features, look & feel)
• New Member Profiles UX (new features, look & feel)
• New Training UX
• New Website Management UX
• New WA Affiliate UX

Tons of exciting things to come which will keep WA far ahead of “the rest” out there. There is no platform in the world for building an online business like WA, and we plan to keep it that way!

Now it’s your turn! Tell us what you think of the new WA dashboard. Like it? Love it? We want to hear your thoughts and feedback as we always take your suggestions into consideration when developing the community.

I look forward to hearing from you in the comments below!