Welcome to the new Rochester Indymedia site

As I am sure you have noticed we have, once again, updated our website.  Hopefully you will find the new page much easier to use then before.  This is the first in a multi-step process to improve our site. This upgrade is less focused on the design and more of a feature upgrade.  Expect a cosmetic redesign in the coming months.  With that in mind, I wanted to take a minute to go through some of the new features.

Each the stories on the site now have a category associated with it.  This makes it easier for you to find stories about topics that you're interested in.  All of the categories with articles in them are listed on the left hand side of the page.  This list of categories is by no mean a definitive list, as the range of our writing grows so will this list; so please, when considering writing an article for submission don't feel that you have to limit yourself to the categories listed here.  Also listed on the left below the category names are the titles of the most recent articles from that category, this way you can quickly scan the headlines for each category.

Another major change is to the right hand newswire column.  The idea behind the newswire is still the same, all of your posts will show up here and will be separated into either local or global news.  Now, instead of having to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to see the global news, you can just click on the global tab, and like magic, you'll see your global news. 
   
The biggest change to this column is the addition of the "Other Press" tab.  This exciting new feature allows you to post links to news stories from the mainstream press and start a dialogue about them.  This is a great way for us to keep each other informed about what the mainstream press is doing and learn to articulate our grievances with it more effectively.

Looking back to the middle of the page you will notice the listing of upcoming events at the top of the page.  This will list the next 5 events in our calendar with links to more information about each one.  Just like before, this is a completely open calendar and anyone can add his or her own events by clicking on the (post your events) link.  For now the post link will take you to another webpage, www.radicalendar.com. This is temporary and we are working hard to intergrate the calendar fully into the new site. 

We also added a login system to the site.  Creating a login allows you to keep track of your posts to the site and even go back and edit them later.  A login is not required to participate but it also speeds up the process of posting to the site by automatically filling in the name and contact field with your information in the form.  Logging in also allows you to access the new assignments feature.  Below the categories on the left you will see links for "my assignments" and "all assignments".  Starting as soon as next week, we will be posting information about all of the news stories that we are currently covering and the names and contact information of the reporters and editors of the stories.  This will allow you to not only see what's in the works for the site but more importantly gives you another way to participate.  If you see a story about the fast ferry, for example, and you have some important information that you think will be useful in the writing of the piece, contact the editor and let them know.  Or maybe you will see a story for an event you plan to attend and you want to help the reporter write the piece for it, click on their name and send them an email.  We hope that this will be another a way for you to get involved in the feature writing for the site, even if you can't makes it to the meetings.  Clicking on my assignments will show you a list of all the events that you have signed up to report or edit as well as their due date so you can make sure you're on track with your stories.

When you go to publish an article, any of you who use IE on a pc or firebird on a Mac will notice that the standard text editor has be replaced with a much more feature rich version.  This is an html editor and it allows you to quickly and easily add basic formatting to your posts such as lists, bolding, even font size and color changes, without knowing any html code.  This offers you more advanced format and design options for your articles.  This is an optional feature and if your more comfortable with the standard input box simply click on the button and the box will transform back to the standard editor. The rest of you using any other browser will see the standard input text box. 

Also new to the publishing process, for those of you who want to post photos or video, a "dummy article" is no longer necessary .  When you click on publish you will be brought to a screen with a link to the "media gallery".  Click on this link and you will be presented with a form to just upload your media with some optional comments to go along with it.  When you do this your media will be viewable by clicking on the corresponding link in the newswire tab. 

As you can see a lot of work went into this upgrade and hopefully it will be a vast improvement for all of you.  Problems and concerns are expected, and we encourage you all to post all of your comments, both good and bad about the new site to this article.  We look forward to hearing your input, as it will help us make this site even better.
 
Thank you and enjoy,
    Rochester Indypendent Media Center Staff