Central District News was the original beta site for Neighborlogs, the neighborhood blogging platform that we’re building. It and CHS are the places where we try out new features before we they’re totally ready for official release.
Here’s some new stuff we’ve added that we need your help to test out:
- Classifieds – We’ve added free classifieds to the site. It’s a place where you can try to unload your old stuff, find a rental or home to buy, post neighborhood jobs, or put up a photo and description of your missing cat. It’s totally free, so give it a try.
- Twitter – When we first started the scanner reports last January, our friends Lee & Sachi said we should also post the reports on Twitter. We totally agreed, but it was a pain in the ass to post all that stuff twice, so we never got around to it. But we just finished a new project to integrate Twitter into the site so that we can tweet content without any extra work. There are two accounts: cdnews, where we’ll post general-purpose stuff such as announcements of new stories or small bits that aren’t worth a post on their own, and cdscanner, where we’ll repost every entry in each scanner report. Not sure what Twitter is? Check out Lee’s & Sachi’s awesome video (recently shown on ABC’s Nightline!)
- Maps – Are now cooler, letting you zoom in to exactly the set of content you want to see. The RSS icon on that page remembers your zoom setting, so you can subscribe to that and then keep track of stories and scanner entries located around your house. Not sure what RSS is? Again, Common Craft has a cool video to learn ya.
- Menu Bar – We’ve redone the site navigation to make it easier to find what you’re looking for. Be sure to check out the Reviews area that used to be kinda hidden. There’s some great businesses in there that could use a recommendation, and maybe one or two that could use some constructive feedback. Also, be sure and post a new entry for any businesses that we might be missing.
And be sure to let us know if you find any bugs or other things that could use tweaking. Thanks!
Hi Scott–
Cool updates. I’m wondering how I can find my Ads stats from the My Page section?
Thanks,
C
Hi Christina – Are you logged in? It’s a requirement to be able to view your ad dashboard.
Hi Scott, The easier navigation with the expanded tabs looks very good. Direct access to the map and reviews works well with the links right in front of your face. One improvement I have been thinking of for a while is some way to sort the reviews in other ways than an alphabetical list. Now that the list is longer than one page the places with names lower in the alphabet end up on the second page, like Tougo. Maybe the reviews could be broken down by categories? There is already a map so you have reviews by location covered. Maybe a selector of sorting options with the usual breakdown of name, most reviews, most popular, date added, etc.
The local classifieds will make a handy bulletin board for those things that really are not stories but need to be posted such as lost cats and yard sales.
I guess I am such an old fogey now that I just don’t get Twitter. It is good to make things available to those that do like another RSS feed. Speaking of fogeys I had to laugh when I saw the faux newspaper layout template for CHS. I personally really enjoy a newspaper in the morning. Maybe there will be those who print it out with a cup of coffee.
Keep up the good work with tuning and tweaking.
Thanks for adding those accounts Scott. Twitter has basically become my RSS reader – now I won’t miss a CD News story. :)