You may have noticed some brand new changes to your profile here at PocketFives.com. On Thursday, the site’s developers rolled out a spiffy upgrade that features several noteworthy additions, including a brand new Rail Call feature and the ability to display your friends and favorite online poker players more prominently. The PocketFives.com Player Database is one of the largest in the industry and has been growing leaps and bounds for nearly five years. Now, we’re handing control of what’s displayed in your profile over to you. Let’s check out ways you can take advantage of our latest rollout.

First, you’ll notice that the look of your profile is slightly different than it was earlier this week. Below the fold, you’ll find four tabs – Main, Info, Images, and Leaderboards. Previously displayed by being stacked on top of each other, these four vital areas of a player’s profile can now be easily viewed one at a time. The Main tab includes a user’s Recent Scores and Friends on the site. Below that are comments left by other users of PocketFives.com as well as a place to edit your personal blog.
One of the big changes is the addition of a “Rail Call,” which appears below your profile image and relevant distinctions like ranking. The purpose of the Rail Call is to do exactly what its name implies, summon your friends to the rail to root you on deep in a tournament or notify them of a big win. Clicking on “Rail Call” opens up a text box (pictured at left) in which you can update your status similar to how you would on Facebook, Twitter, or a number of other popular social networking sites. Once you start filling out your Friend network, you’ll be able to keep up to date on other PocketFivers' Rail Calls. You can add another user as a friend by visiting their profile and clicking on “Add as a friend” in the upper right.

In the upper right corner of your own profile, you’ll find a new “Edit Settings” link. Here, you can alter a bevy of options like auto-approving friends, auto-approving comments, forum viewing layouts, and even the time zone to troll the forums in. There are also four e-mail settings, where you can choose to turn on and turn off notifications for friend requests, friend confirmations, new profile comments, and private messages. Clicking the appropriate icon on the upper-right of your profile accesses the latter.

Also in the “Edit Settings” menu, you’ll find a widgetthat can be posted onto your blog or other website. You can customize the widget to display your worldwide ranking, country ranking, region ranking, city ranking, or any combination for the entire world to see. There’s a sample widget displayed below these options to give you an idea of what it will look like along with a box containing its embed code. Here’s a look at the widget menu and preview pane:

Our goal is to allow you, the user, the ability to customize the content you see when you visit PocketFives.com. Check out the official thread in Poker Discussion outlining the recent changes and let us know what you think! We’ll be rolling out more updates in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned.