Really. I promise. This is good stuff. Starting sometime next week you’re going to be seeing a new and improved Areavoices homepage. The crew here at Forum Communications Interactive Division is hard at word on a theme and software update for Areavoices.
It’s going to do a couple of things:
1) It’s going to make it easier to find featured blogs. Instead of just listing all of the featured blogs, it’s going to compile a few of the most active blogs into a square grid-like pattern (I’m sure the tech geniuses here are cringing at my lingo.) Think about the open of The Brady Bunch. It’s a little like that. Each square will contain the most up to date blog from our highly active featured list. We’ll still keep our traditional directory list as well. You should be able to find all featured Areavoices blogs on this directory and many of them in the grid-like part of the page. Again, a featured blog is one that is featured in at least one of our FCC-owned news websites.
2) It will enable a greater search of blogs. The new search function will allow you to type in a keyword which in turn will bring up any Areavoices blog that used that word. It should help you narrow down and find blogs that might interest you.
The upgrade also provides security enhancement.
So what do you need to know now?
Not much really.
Just know that sometime next week, we’ll have to take down the Areavoices site for a couple of hours. It’ll probably happen in the middle of the night, so it shouldn’t affect many of you – unless you’re an insomniac who writes blogs in the wee small hours of the morning.
I’ll keep you posted on when the update will be coming.
Also, next week I’ll tell you more about how to put a featured image into your blog dashboard. These featured images will be suggested for blogs that will be appearing in the new grid layout.
If you have any questions. Just let me know.
How active is “most active”?
@lunika Most active means the homepage will pull in the most recent blog post from the featured blog list that Tracy will curate.
Tracy, the Brady Bunch reference is a perfect description. “Here’s a story of a lovely…”
When are people going to be allowed to comment on Forum articles again?
Thanks for the question. The decision to cease comments on Forum articles was made by the publisher of The Forum a few months ago. Areavoices is administered through Forum Communication’s Interactive Division which works with all 36 of FCC’s news websites. Decisions made about each individual paper are made by the paper’s publisher. Therefore, I’m afraid Areavoices (and I) aren’t involved with those decisions. Is that confusing? If you have questions or concerns, I know The Forum’s publisher, Bill Marcil Jr. would welcome your feedback. Thanks again for your comment.
Isn’t it censorship? Comments are allowed on other Forum Communications sites, but not The Forum? If readers of just one paper are unable to speak, it sure sounds like censorship to me. Maybe it is time to do some further checking ………..