About
Welcome to Backyard Post, a free new service from The Palm Beach Post!
Backyard Post organizes information and conversations at the geographic level where you actually live: Neighborhoods. We’re not talking about cities, ZIP codes or some other vaguely defined area that other companies (you know who you are!) try to pass off as a neighborhood, either.
Nope, the Backyard Post team has been working for more than a year to map the thousands of individual, real-world neighborhoods in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties. It's meticulous, time-consuming work, and some might even call us a little crazy for being so obsessive. But hey, we live here, too!
Which is not to say we got everything right. If you notice a misplaced neighborhood boundary or a misspelled neighborhood name, please let us know. And don't worry if your neighborhood isn't yet on our list. We're starting small with only neighborhoods, schools and parks in the city of West Palm Beach, but we'll expand our coverage area soon enough. If you just can't wait for us to get to your area, please feel free to send us information about your neighborhood, and we'll see if we can speed things along.
Here are the basics of what Backyard Post currently has to offer:
Neighborhoods: The foundation of Backyard Post is its neighborhoods. From each neighborhood's main page (here's one for El Cid in West Palm Beach) you can follow links to a list and map of recent home sales and nearby parks and libraries. Every neighborhood also has its own discussion forum, though you'll have to sign up to post. (No registration is required if all you want to do is have a peek, however.) We'll even tell you which public school attendance zones that neighborhood is in.
Real estate: See how homes are selling in your neighborhood, or just have have a look at how other neighborhoods are doing. Our real estate data start in January 1995, and are updated 5 times a week. Every weekday! Don't see any recent sales in your neighborhood today? Check back tomorrow and there just might be a new transaction waiting for you! Who says real estate can't be a spectator sport?
Schools: See which public schools cover your neighborhood with our attendance zone maps, or check out a school's historical FCAT performance and student demographics. There's much more on the way for our school pages, so check back often!
Parks & Libraries: Look up maps, amenities and hours for local parks and libraries. The information on these pages is a little thin for now, but stick with us because more is on the way!
Customization: You'll have to sign up to take advantage of these features, but in return we'll not only give you posting rights in our neighborhood forums, but let you set up your very own Backyard Post home page, too. Choose your neighborhood, set your own news preferences and Backyard Post is no longer our site, it's your site.
Once you sign up you'll also notice that just about everything on Backyard Post, from neighborhoods to news stories, has a star next to it. Clicking on those stars "favorites" that item, adding it to your personal home page. See an interesting story but don't have time to read it now? Click the star to favorite it, and it will be waiting for you on your home page. Like we said, you can star just about anything on Backyard Post and track it from your personal home page: Neighborhoods, schools, even individual reporters.
In Backyard Post, we hope we have built a resource that will help you, and us, better understand our neighborhoods and our neighbors. But this is by no means a finished product. The Backyard Post that you see here today includes only a fraction of the interesting, cool, fun and just plain useful things that we plan to bring you in the weeks and months ahead. We're going to add new features, improve existing tools and tweak what needs to be tweaked continuously.
Of course, we can add all the bells and whistles in the world, but Backyard Post will be only as successful as you say it is. If you see something wrong here, let us know. If you think of a feature you’d like to see, let us know. If the type is too small, or the colors are too bright, let us know. Even if all you’d like to do is just say hello or send us a picture of your cat (here are some shots of mine), please always feel free to get in touch.
William M. Hartnett
Online Innovations Editor
The Palm Beach Post
2751 S. Dixie Highway
West Palm Beach, FL 33405
(561) 820-4590
P.S. The nerds out there might be interested to know that Backyard Post is ... 
