The Neighborhood Exchange! -- Beta Testing Begins

The Neighborhood Exchange Testing Progress:

As some of you know, I have been working on a website to facilitate making it easy for everyone in our community to be able to get in touch with each other whenever something occurs that is of interest to the community. Although, the website The Neighborhood Exchange was originally envisioned as just something we could use to stay in touch with each other, it's sort of grown to include much more functionality then was originally planned, with additional options already planned as future site enhancements. 

I want to thank our early testers for providing feedback on what the site should include and how to make the site useful as a neighborhood communications tool. The site now provides both private and public neighborhood group options and a multitude of privacy settings for users, as a result. We are now in the final stage of our planned testing. This is where the rubber meets the road--real world testing--inviting neighbors to try out the site and requesting and receiving their feedback.  

With the above said, you are invited to try the site out and provide your feedback. Feel free to explore the site at www.theneighborhoodexchange.com on your desktop or mobile device. 

Your feedback is welcome and may be provided via The Enclave at Camino Ranch Group's story form (group feed), group membership required, my Profile Page's "start a conversation" icon (private message), sign-in required; or, if you prefer, via email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Home Page:

Registration is fairly simple. You can manually register or use the provided Facebook or Twitter sign-in options. If just exploring the site, you can select the Community Profile as your registration profile. The other profiles are primarily for public and private group participation.  

Exploring Neighborhood Groups

To explore the available group communication options, simply click the Groups menu link and then click the Join Group button of your chosen group.

• The Enclave at Camino Ranch group, displayed, is a Closed Group, requiring approval prior to membership being granted.
• An Open Group on the other hand provides immediate access upon joining, without any approval requirement.
• An Invite Group requires that all members first be invited in order to join. The display of the group is hidden from all site users except its members.

The following tools are available to you upon joining The Neighborhood Exchange!

Private and Public Social Networks

• Private Group Communication (member access only)
  • Group Stream
  • Discussions (multiple user private messaging)
  • Events calendar
  • User photo and file uploads

• Public Communication (community postings & blogs)
  • Profile privacy settings apply

• Profile Area
  • Wall / Stream
  • Private Messaging
  • Blog / Article creation
  • Photo and file uploads
  • Member access to private groups
  • Create myNeighborhood private groups
  • Join Neighborhood Business sponsored groups (provide feedback on your experience) 
  • Add, view and update classifieds
  • Update / manage profile and friends

Profile Privacy options

• Profile Viewing (everyone, registered users, friends, custom …)
• Restrict viewing of profile fields (contact information and more)

Private and Public Streams & Blog Posts

• Private through myNeighborhood access
• Public through open groups

Other Communication Options:

• Private messaging
• Email
• Blog / Article creation

Site Access:

• Registration/sign-in
• Facebook sign-in option
• Other Social log-in options 

Public Classifieds - contact info controlled by privacy settings

• Can view classifieds posts from profile page
• Business category provides information about area businesses

Join The Neighborhood Exchange now, during this critical testing stage, to become familiar with the site, provide feedback, impact development, establish neighborhood contacts and begin writing about things important to you and your neighbors.