BeWelcome News

As some of you probably noticed, we had a server issue on Thursday which made the whole site unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience. 

I would like to thank our volunteers who fixed the issue! Maintaining our servers is an everyday work, and there is currently a big effort being made to migrate to new servers. The server crash is not related to the migration, but it shows we need improvements on the server side: we're working on it!

Hi all,

Only a month ago the dev and testing team brought you an updated search experience for the locations and now we are happy to announce that we just deployed the latest code to production bringing you a better search experience for the forums and groups.

Additionally, this release brings the long awaited option to block messages, requests and invitations from members without 'about me' or profile picture  (see your preferences). 

Comment reminders will now be sent after two days to the…

Screenshot of the first meeting of the newly elected Board of Directors (BoD) 2023/24 of BeVolunteer, the association behind BeWelcome:

- Gbenouville continues to be President.
- Marstr is the new Vice President.
- Thorgal67 keeps his position as treasurer.
- Corazondeviaje left the Board and hands over her job as secretary to Saleme.
 

Saleme is the first US-American ever on the Board.

BIIIIG thanks to everyone who volunteers for BeWelcome - as a member of the Board as well as being active in any of…

We believe that an accurate database of active members makes for a better hospitality platform. That's why about once a year we perform maintenance of our member database. Inactive accounts which have ignored login reminders and not been logged into for five  years are suspended. We also suspend accounts with invalid email addresses.
 

We have just performed such a maintenance operation and suspended 63.838 inactive accounts. That is significantly more than in previous years because we had some…

Hi all,

We just updated the code running on the main website. This is mainly a bugfix release.

• All pages that make use of a location search now use the same code, making the user experience more consistent.
• Image upload to the gallery now allows to create an album for the uploaded files on the fly and shows the images to be upload directly on the screen with a progress bar.
• In case a new profile picture was uploaded but the image not readable the old profile picture stays now.
• Accidentally sending…

We are pleased to share with you the results of the member survey conducted in June and July which we had announced in this article.

They are the feedback of 1.148 members who had logged in over the past two years and had at least a profile photo or some text in the “about me” section of their profile. The response rate has been low (similar to 2017), but the number of replies is sufficient to be statistically significant. We would like to thank all those who answered, as well as our volunteers…

BeWelcome.org, the world’s leading non-profit platform connecting people through the power of cultural exchange and hospitality, is delighted to announce a remarkable achievement — reaching 250,000 members worldwide! This landmark moment reflects the unwavering dedication of BeWelcome.org’s passionate community and reaffirms the non-profit and volunteer run organization’s commitment to fostering meaningful connections and promoting intercultural understanding around the globe.

Since its…

This month BeWelcome is conducting another survey among a randomly selected sample of members. 20.000 of you will receive an email invitation from our survey provider Lamapoll.de to participate in the survey and provide anonymous feedback about your experience with BeWelcome, your satisfaction and what you would like us to add, improve or do differently.

Based on the feedback, like last time, BeWelcome will guide development within the possibilities of our resources.

For various reasons…

Hi everybody,

In an effort to keep the code driving BeWelcome maintainable and future proof the first release of the year 2023 focuses on rewrites of existing functionality.

• Rewritten most of the profile sub pages. This includes: Comments, Family & Friends, Forum Posts, Notes, Visitors, Preferences.
• Reset password moved into the members menu.
• Thanks to the remember me functionality a lot of people never needed to login. There the statistics gave the impression people do not use the site. This…

We love what we do and would not accept any payment for it. Nor do we ask members for fees,. We are a registered non-profit since 2007, and have no staff, offices or large costs.

We do need your help every year to help pay for things like insurance, server costs and domain registrars. Our donation campaign for the forthcoming year is just €4912.   That allows us to serve our growing membership, which is likely to exceed 250,000 in 2023. If you have a few $£ to donate by card/bank transfer, or…