RT 2.0: A New Look, A Fresh Start
We’ve got a new president, fresh off his inauguration. We’ve got a (sort of) new direction in D.C., as we drag them, kicking and screaming, towards a better tomorrow. Albany on down to Monroe County? Not so much. So we keep on working for change.
With so much new, and RT having been around for over 2 1/2 years now (yikes!), it was time to re-evaluate what we’ve done and what we could do better. What we came up with is RT 2.0– a cleaner, leaner version of RT,with a more engaging look, feel, and functionality. A couple quick points to help you get used to the new features:
- Turning Points - Look up at the top of the right-hand column. You’ll see a new section called “Turning Points”. These are similar to the “Quick Hits” you’ll see on other blogs (like TAP and OpenLeft ). They’re short little news bites compared to the articles we do here on the front page, but they will be of interest to RT’s audience. We front pagers will be adding Turning Points, but we’ve also opened it up to a few “trusted users”, who often send us good leads via email, but don’t feel ready or comfortable doing a full blown post. Feel like you want to be able to add “Turning Points”? Let us know what kind of things you’d like to add, and let’s talk.
- Campaign Corner - Are you part of a political or progressive campaign? Want to publicize something from your campaign on RT? We created Campaign Corner just for you. This works like Turning Points, but specifically for campaign news– whether from a politician or from a progressive group. We’ve also got some improvements to this waiting in the wings, so contact us if you want to add your input.
- Comment images - we now support “gravatars”. If you don’t know, these are the little pictures that appear next to people’s comments. If you want your own gravatar, go to gravatar.com to associate a picture with your email address.
Take a look around, make yourself at home. And let us know what you think in the comments. Remember, if you’re silent on this we’ll assume we’ve shocked and awed the words right outta ya.
Update: Some folks have emailed noting weird formatting here and there. I’m on it, and will be working on it throughout the day. Thanks!
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It’s been a long time coming, but let me be the first to say that it looks good.
Looking better…How about moving “This just In” on top of the Archives…people want the latest first!
Good point– I’ll change it.
Fun Images…Brings to mind that new show on Fox (Gasp! Fox?) “Lie To Me” (there’s the irony!). If you watch it, you learn a bit about reading facial expressions and body language. See: http://www.fox.com/lietome/
Funny how I “read” disgust immediately on two of the faces!
Are you going to allow comments on the Images page?
I’m not sure if my comment never went through or it just has to be ‘approved’ first, but having the blog at http://rochesterturning.com/rt20 is creating bad links and probably turning some people away from the site.
Any old links to the archives are now broken. I followed a link to an article and then had to click in to the /rt20 sub directory and then search for the article I wanted to see.
Just thought you should know…
If you’re going to keep the /rt20 (which i see as unnecessary) then it might be a good idea to edit your Mod Rewrite rules to automatically redirect people to the correct location.