Rochester IMC is Back!

It's been a while, but Rochester IMC is back, here to stay, and hopefully better than ever.  We've upgraded our server software and are excited to start building up the new site with all of you.  Let's talk about some of the new features!

New Frontpage Layout

Our frontpage has gotten a face lift.  Features are now displayed in a slideshow format on the top of the page.  We think it looks pretty, but more importantly, it gives us room to put the local newswire in the middle column instead of stashed away on the side.  This means that as soon as anyone posts a local news article, it will go directly to the center column of the front page.  For readers, this means more/faster site updates, and for writers this means that your articles will be more prominently displayed.

Better Image/Media Support

When you're publishing articles, try out the "Insert Image/Audio/Video" link.  It lets you easily upload images and float them on either side of the article.  It also supports linking to posts on on YouTube, BlipTV, Archive.org, and flickr.

Photo Gallery Support

Also, be sure to check out the "Image Gallery" section at the bottom of the page when you post an article.  It lets you quickly upload multiple photos in bulk and create an image gallery with them.  A couple of lines of text + a bunch of photos from a rally is an easy way to make a nice looking article.

Much More

• Nicer image support (try clicking on one of the photos above)
• Better Spam Filtering
• Syndication of US-indymedia to the global newswire
• Save articles as a draft before publishing them
• Link to show hidden comments on an article
• Simpler editor interface, so we can focus more on writing articles and less on wresting with our web software.
• More in the near future

Why we went down

There's been some speculation that we went down because of an internet attack, but main reason was that our software was just getting very old.  Here's the details:

Another component of the rocus.org server was compromised by someone looking to send out spam.  This led us to move websites off of that server and on to a new one.  A standard procedure when you're doing this is to get a fresh copy of the software you run your website with.  The problem with that was is that the website for our software, DadaIMC, wasn't even up anymore.  We had been wanting to migrate away from that software for a long time, so we decided at that point is was time to leave the old software behind and start fresh.

If you have any questions, bug reports, feedback, or hate mail, please send them to rochesterindymedia@rocus.org.