We need your help!

As you can see above, we’ve launched a new beta feature on the site: advertisements. And we need your help to test it. The idea is to make it easy for businesses to reach the people that are right there in their own neighborhood.

The whole purpose of a beta is to test the software and get feedback on what works well and what doesn’t. There’s very likely bugs in the system. We need you to help us find them.

So, for the next month we’re offering free advertisements on CentralDistrictNews.com. The only thing we expect in return is to get people to try the system out and let us know what they think.

If you’ve got a local business, organization, or event you’d like to publicize, please give it a try and place an ad. No credit card or other financial information is required. Just click the “Advertise Here” link underneath each ad you see on the site. It will let you build quick and easy text ads, or upload your own image for banner and other graphical ads. But please limit your submissions to ads for real, meaningful things, not “Testing”, or “Cougs Rule”. “Happy Birthday Dad” type of ads are just fine.

Wondering why you’d want to advertise on a neighborhood blog? We (humbly) think it’s one of the best options that small businesses have to spread their message to the people who are most likely to come into their store or restaurant or to need their professional service. Each week we have thousands of unique visitors that may have never heard of you or may need a gentle reminder to come back and do business again.

So please try it out and let us know what you think.

Update: Our first bug report! (Alex728 gets finder’s credit). If you already have an account on the site before creating an ad, you won’t be able to access your ad-management page in your profile after creating an ad (it gives a 500 error). This is now fixed as of 7:00am on Friday 6/6.