We are excited to announce that BigTent.com has a new look!

Thanks to our sponsor Old Navy, who made this makeover possible, you will find the site more visually appealing and intuitive to navigate. This is our first step in improving the look and feel of BigTent. We hope you like it!

Before:

After:

After you check out our new look, go get one for yourself! From now until Feb. 22nd, get $10 off purchases of $50 or more at Old Navy, where items start at only $5.

Like the look? Tell us what you think of BigTent.com’s redesign by emailing support@bigtent.com.

Cheers,

The BigTent team

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Bridget Alexander, Founding Director of Art Beast Studio, about her group, BigTent and group goals for the future:

Q: How did your group start and how many members do you have?

A: The Art Beast group started when we launched Art Beast in July 2009. We were looking to spread the word about our art events and experiences for young children.  We now have 643 members.

Q: Why did your group choose/or switch to BigTent?

A: We choose BigTent because it was such a friendly place for beginners to develop outreach skills and build a membership. With terrific ease, we were able to set up events, post news, feature our site in photographs, and develop a membership base. We stayed because the maintenance is so simple and our members love the weekly newsletters that profile events in all their groups.  The price is certainly right as well!

Q: What is your favorite BigTent feature?

A: We love the calendar and event scheduling. We set aside time every few months to input all the events for the quarter ahead, and then we never have to do a thing to keep our members informed each week.  We also use the news and email blast features to highlight details to our members.

Q: What are a few of the goals your group has for the future?

A: We would like to build our photograph vault on BigTent as we realize many people explore our group through these visuals. We would also like to partner with other BigTent groups in our area.  So many parenting groups are on BigTent that it only makes sense to forge those bonds.

Thank you to Bridget and Art Beast Studio for sharing your story with us!

Cheers,

The BigTent Team

P.S. Do you have a great group on BigTent? Tell us about it by emailing acerundolo@bigtent.com.

We know the BigTent site has had issues over the last 24 hours, preventing users from logging in or navigating the site. We sincerely apologize for any frustration or inconvenience this has caused – it is no fun to be on a slow site! – and thank you for your patience as we investigate the issue.

Please rest assured that maintaining optimal site performance is our number one priority, and our tech team is working diligently to resolve the problem. In order to do this, we will need to roll out a system update tonight that we hope will fix the issue. This means that the site will be down from 7pm – 8pm PST/10pm – 11pm EST this evening, January 25th, as we perform the site maintenance. Please schedule your BigTent activity accordingly.

We value your membership, and thank you for being a part of the BigTent community!

If you have any questions or comments, please go ahead and send them to support@bigtent.com, where we would be happy to address them.

Best,

The BigTent Team

Looking to grow your group this New Year? BigTent gives you the ability to create a public web page for your site.

Having a public page will allow your group to be searchable on the internet, giving prospective members the opportunity to learn about and sign up for your group.

How to Enable Your Public Page:

1) Go to the Group Dashboard tab of the Admin Manage section. Scroll to the bottom of the page under “Marketing Your Group” and click on “Group Public Page”.

2) Click the “on” radio button. Note the public page location url, which you or others can use to access the page.

3) Choose a background style for your public page using the drop down menu (basic, sky, or flowery).

4) Click “save” at the bottom of the page. You now have a skeleton of a public page. Keep following the remaining steps to customize the page for your group.

5) Add a group banner by clicking on “view/edit” in the “Group Banner” box. At the bottom of the page, select “edit group banner” where you can select an image from your computer, the web or flickr.

6) Add a group message to non-members in the ”Public Page and About Page Message” text box. Click “save”.

Congratulations – you now have a a live public page!

Log out of your BigTent account and browse to your public page url to see what your page looks like to non-members.

Taking it Further:

For more information and step-by-step video instructions, watch our public page video tutorial: http://bit.ly/A6dIoJ

Use BigTent’s rich text editor to futher customize your page with pictures, headers, custom fonts and more. Here’s how: http://bit.ly/x3ZTw3

As always, please be sure to reach out to us with any questions at support@bigtent.com.

Best,

- The BigTent Team

We hope everyone is having a fantastic start to 2012!

One of our New Year resolutions is to hold monthly training sessions where we demo the BigTent site to help familiarize new admins with BigTent functionality and features. These will also be good for some long-standing admins who are just looking for a refresher. Here are the first two scheduled trainings below:

- Weds, Jan 18th – 10:30am PST/1:30 EST

- Weds, Feb 1st – 5:00pm PST/8pm EST

You can sign up for a training by following this link.

All the best,

- The BigTent Team

Wishing you and your family the best for this holiday season!

Thank you for being a part of the BigTent community, and looking forward to 2012!

- The BigTent Team

Adriana has been interested in fostering community and strengthening relationships ever since being a Transfer Student Councilor on the Brown University campus. Before embracing the role of Community Manager, Adriana started at BigTent as a Campaign Manager, where she became well-versed in the product and learned firsthand the value of BigTent and its groups. She brings to the role experience in project management, communication and marketing from her former roles at Citrix Systems, Inc. and Federated Media Publishing.

As Community Manager, Adriana will support the BigTent community by providing regular admin and member tips on getting the most from your group, sharing relevant news and updates, spotlighting new and interesting groups through our blog, and being another resource to answer your questions. Also, starting next month, she will be relaunching our online BigTent training sessions.

When she’s not keeping BigTent members up-to-date with the latest news and tips, Adriana can be found biking through the city, playing piano, practicing yoga, or browsing the local farmers market. She urges you to drop a TentMail note to say hi, as she loves making new friends.

Please join us in welcoming Adriana!

Best,

- The BigTent Team

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Dan Lott, Ministry Leader of Bayside Career Coaching, about his group, using BigTent and their goals for the future:

Q: How did your group start and how many members do you have?

A: We started because we saw a need to encourage and support individuals in job transition.  As a larger church we felt we could serve our own members as well as individuals in the community. Since starting in February 2009 we have registered 1,500 individuals and have seen 347 become re-employed.

Q: Why did your group choose/or switch to BigTent?

A: We chose Big Tent because of its graphical user interface and the functions that 1 – allowed individual privacy, 2 – forums, 3 – subgroups, 4 – file storage, 5 – news distribution and 6 – calendaring.

Q: What is your favorite BigTent feature?

A: We use the forums extensively to share information amongst the members and to post job information when we hear about an open job.

Q: What are a few of the goals your group has for the future?

A: We doubled the successfully re-employed numbers from 2009 to 2010 and would like to see the same result for 2010 to 2011. We are over halfway to that goal.

Thank you to Dan and Bayside Career Coaching for sharing your story with us!

2) Go to www.bigtent.com/group/index

3) Click on the red “Moderate” across from you group’s name.

4) Go to the “settings” tab.

5) Select the radio button for the notices you would like to receive and check the boxes for the forums, News or classifieds posts you want moderator notices from.

6) Click “Update” to save your changes.

We are asking you to rally your group members, schools, friends, and communities to make Yahoo! their homepage in support of classrooms in need. Yahoo! will be donating $25,000 per week for 8 weeks across the top homepage-generating projects (up to $600 per project).

Here is an example of a project that needs funding:

Project Name
Differentiated Instruction Through Guided Reading

Teacher’s Description
My students are beginning to discover the magic of books. I have students asking me to get books for our library; after reading aloud to them “The Circuit” and “Esperanza Rising”. They want more guided reading books to discuss, connect, and write about what they read. My students are mostly Latino and African American. They come from an economically disadvantaged background. All of the students are in the government reduced/free meal program. They are hard working students with a thirst for knowledge. In order for them to exceed in their education; all they need is the opportunity to be motivated and exposed to literature, technology, and differentiated learning instruction. By reading and being exposed to more books they will develop a passion for reading and become life long learners.

What the students need
My students need 3 collections of Guided Reading books at their reading level in order for me to differentiate their instruction. We also, need a variety of other books (5 titles) to enhance their reading comprehension.

Teacher/ School
Mrs. Berger  |  Florence Avenue Elem School  |  Los Angeles, CA

Individually we can cast a vote, but together we can fund projects!

Please take a few minutes to find a project that you are passionate about and pass this message onto your family, friends, and community.

This program ends on October 16th, so get your votes in now.

Go visit Yahoo! Homepages for Homerooms to find a project to support!

Thanks,
- The BigTent Team