Spring has sprung! With the promise of new beginnings and buds on the trees, the Experts Exchange team is working hard to develop new features and products that will improve your experience in our community.
See what we’ve been up to in our Spring update!
Solve Common Tech Problems With New Tools
In your day-to-day life, there’s often a need for tools, like an SSL checker or a Postgres Monitoring System, to debug and validate your SSL configuration and collect and display usage statistics. Now, you don’t have to search around other sites to try to find access to these tools. Free diagnostic and discovery tools are now live on experts-Exchange.com. Check out the list and let us know what other tools would be useful.
Come One, Come All, To Get New Schwag
In need of a new T-shirt? Need a perfect gift for a friend’s baby shower? Look no further than the recently revamped Experts Exchange store. Now our own Experts Exchange branded products are available with more merchandise than before to meet your purchase needs. Stop on by to grab a piece of schwag from your favorite online community.
See Who’s On Live
Have you ever asked a question on site and wondered if any experts were currently online and available to help in real time? Now, when you’re viewing a question, you can see icons of available Live consultants at the bottom of your browser window. This update makes it easier to quickly engage with consultants at a time when you’re most likely to want help. Live, real-time help is a pay-per-use service and rates vary per consultant. Head on over to search for solutions or use our Live interface to find a consultant and instantly see who’s online to help you 1:1 in real-time.
New Easy-to-Use Editor
We’ve recently updated the WYSIWYG editor used to draft articles on site. The new editor has superior support for copying and pasting text from Word documents and an improved file upload capability (specifically for drag and drop uploads). We also added formatting support so you can change font size, families and colors, paragraph styles, text and image alignments, and insert videos and tables. These enhancements will make the interface view and process of drafting an article on site easier and hassle-free.
New Streamlined View of Topic Pages
UX is all about pretty lines and consistency. So we followed our own advice and updated the view on topic pages. The layout has been converted to a two-column format that not only highlights the topic feed but is consistent with other pages across the site. The simplified layout improves readability and boosts content engagement. Don’t believe us? See for yourself.
Update Your Profile on Live
Live consultants can now customize all their settings in one place. From topic preferences and available hours to hourly rates and notification preferences, settings are now more comprehensive. To help make better connections, you can also set the topics you’re interested in. This change, added to an updated algorithm, will only show clients the consultants who are best matched to help them with their question, issue, or task.
Annual Expert Awards Revised and Polished
At the beginning of the year we made some changes to the way Experts Exchange Annual Awards are valued and chosen. Now, instead of simply awarding points for helping others on site, we pay attention to the professionalism and customer-first attitudes you show in these efforts. Award titles have been revamped so that when listed on your resume or profile, they have a more professional sound for industry recognition. Award recipients are also now chosen by a selection board process, similar to the current MVE program. For more information, check out the eligibility requirements for each award.
Share Your Thoughts With a Post
After a lot of time spent observing how the site has been used, we noticed a need for an informal way of sharing ideas and solutions that didn’t fall into the Article or Question category. Enter Post, a new feature and approach to sharing information on Experts Exchange. The modern, easy-to-use UX design provides a simpler way to engage in the community and get topic discussions off the ground– with more inviting content. Currently in private beta with a wider release slated for early Q2, we hope you’ll participate and get to know others in the community through the new Post feature.
Thank you for your continued participation on Experts Exchange!
