— by Margie Doyle, Editor —
Our website upgrade is happening this week! And while the upgrade is in process, we’ll all be going “Cold Turkey” without the presence of OrcasIssues.com on the Internet!
We’ll be unavailable for a period of time on Tuesday, Nov. 26 and Wednesday, Nov. 27, but expect to be back before your eyes and under your fingertips by Thanksgiving Day. So you may not be able to access us on those days, but rest assured, we’re coming back refreshed and stronger!
This is our first major upgrade since Michael Sky developed the Orcas Issues, News & Views –“BullWings” — site in early 2009.
The biggest change you’ll observe is the two-column, multi-story “Main Page” when you first open the site. You can see all the most recent articles at a glance and click through to read the whole article. And, no matter where you are in the site, you can now see the latest 20 article titles on the left sidebar so you can easily go to the one you want to view. We’ve moved our excellent “Search” function from the top left-hand corner to top the right hand column, or sidebar. We’ll keep all our advertising on the right-hand side, rotating ads as we now do, so that every time the site is opened, your advertisements appear in a new order. The site is now “responsive” – which means it will resize itself according to the device you are using and its screen size – so it can be viewed on any PC as well as mobile devices and smart phones.
We’ve moved all the “public information” features to the left-hand sidebar, so if you want to check out the ferry schedule (or the new vehicle-count availability on each sailing). legislator addresses, calendar, weather, how to contact us at Orcas Issues, the weekly poll, or the organizational “did you know?” feature, just scroll down that left-hand sidebar!
Behind the scenes, our technical genius Ann Palmer of Technosense has switched us to a new WordPress theme which makes it easier to take advantage of ongoing updates. With this upgrade, it is now much easier for us to make changes and manipulate the content in the sidebars and we have a lot more control over how the website looks and works.
We hope you enjoy the “new” Orcas Issues!
We have gotten some great feedback – mostly positive, but some constructive criticism as well. Here’s how we have responded:
Navigation: See Your Feedback and Navigation Tips
Community Journalists: Look for the Login link at the bottom of the left sidebar
Sharing Articles: we added a Share link on the full article page
Font size: We made the font larger so it’s easier to read