Over the past few months I have collected a series of changes that I would have liked to introduce to TippNews.com and I have finally had a chance to implement many of them. These edits were just nagging on me so I dedicated 5 hours of the wee early morning to them. I hope you will be able to not only see a difference from the way it looks, but also the easy way you can contribute your Stories and News now. Consider it… Citizen Journalism 2.0.- First off, you will notice some stylistic changes to the site with color treatments, borders, backgrounds and shadows. The next most prominent change will be the introduction of more media options. I have added more photos, more galleries and more videos.
- From an editing standpoint I have made it much easier to maintain the site as we are seeing between 60-80 articles being posted each month. Less time consuming for me, means more news for you.
- FASTER! The site was running really sluggish so I tweaked many of the settings and code pages to require a whole lot less processing per page view.
- Better Search Optimization. While it wasn’t a priority when I first developed the site, I have cleaned up the site to allow Google to have better and deeper reach.
- Navigation Drop-Downs are Smarter! The dropdowns were way to slow for me, so I sped them up and juiced them with some added flair. Check it out.
- Bigger Ads! I’ve increased the size of the ad that appears on the inner pages from 250×250 to 350×250. More room for our advertisers!
- Sweeter looking Galleries! Just hover your mouse over the image to see the large image displayed.
- ALL REGISTERED USERS can now UPLOAD PHOTOS! A nagging complaint for many months. I have allowed contributors to upload and host the photo of their choice with their article. And if you contribute MORE than one photo, it automatically generates a photo gallery to display them.
- Easy Sign-up for Contributors. You can now sign up to post news on TippNews DAILY using your Facebook, Twitter, Windows LIVE, Yahoo!, and LinkedIn! No need to fill out additional forms. Just one click and you get to start contributing Tipp City News.
- I got rid of Disqus Commenting System. I don’t think it brought much to the party, and it hogged the page load times. Now news article commenting is light, pretty and properly styled.
I am interested in what you think. Your help in keeping the news fresh, interesting and relevant makes TippNews DAILY what it is today, and what it will be in the future. Have a fantastic day!
– Mike, Editor TippNews DAILY
