Raise the Hammer
Summary of changes to the RTH website that were made this week.
By Ryan McGreal
Published March 13, 2009
If you've been following the Hammerblog this week, you may have noticed some minor changes and improvements to the website. This article summarizes the changes in one place:
We now publish articles on an ongoing basis, rather than in discrete issues at regular intervals.
We added three newsfeeds (in Atom format) that include full page contents rather than just summaries: one for recent articles, one for recent blogs, and one that combines the two.
We added a user profile management page so registered users can change their email address, preference for receiving email updates, comment signature, and so on.
We made some minor style changes to the Articles and Blogs menus on the right, making the links easier to distinguish from each other (and easier to click).
The comments section now has more details, displaying how many comments have been posted, whether a commenter is registered or anonymous, and the commenter's optional signature (for registered users).
We finally fixed that annoying bug in which refreshing a page after posting a comment would post a duplicate comment. It no longer does that.
As always, we value your feedback. Please let us know how these changes are working for you, and if you would like to see any other fixes or enhancements.
By grassroots are the way forward (registered)
Posted March 14, 2009 21:06:45
Hi ryan: I am not very technical, I hate machines to be honest and the skill that goes unto those who can understand the endless miles of wires is appreciated.
I wonder, did you read Maggie's views on the poverty blog about what she has to say about those who have no real access to avenues like this?
If a grassroots movement is to happen, then is it not imperative for all to have access to this venture?
Shouldn't those who struggle have the ability to access the information given here? What about those who cannot afford to pay for internet access?
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Grassroots wrote:
Shouldn't those who struggle have the ability to access the information given here? What about those who cannot afford to pay for internet access?
Sounds great. I'm open to suggestions on how this might take place.
The main problem as I see it is that we're a web-based publication precisely because the cost to publish to the web is very low (it costs me ~$15 per month in hosting fees, depending on bandwidth).
Publishing to other media is harder - both more time-consuming and more expensive. Since RTH is volunteer-run and takes no revenue, we just don't have the resources of either time or money to extend it into other media.
Some RTH content is concurrently published in the monthly H Magazine, which is free (subscriber funded) and available most places downtown, so that's one way for people who don't have access to the internet to read our stuff.
Another option is accessing the internet via free public library access. I know some people who do this, and while it's less convenient than having a computer in your home, it's better than nothing (and it's always nice to spend time at the library.)
In addition, our policy is generally that anyone can copy and redistribute our content, as long as they reference the original source (we really should probably licence the content through some open source framework to make that formal and official) - therefore anyone who feels so inclined is welcome to provide our content in other media.
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Newsfeeds
By smz180 (registered)
Posted March 13, 2009 14:24:21
woohoo! i can change my email. lookout gmail, here RTH newsletters come.
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