What do you think of the new website?

After more than a month the new website is almost ready to go!
Hundreds of hours of production, coding making graphics, daily conference calls, revisions and the revisions and still more revisions we are nearly finished.
We are really excited about the new site.

One thing we really wanted to bring to the table with this new site was a feeling of community with the people in our area.
So many news organizations and their websites are one way. When I mean one way I mean they are just giving you the information.
There isn't a great deal of interaction between what we are doing and what you think about it. As they said in that commercial a few years back (I think it was making fun of the use of buzz words) - anyway I digress ... We are out to change the pair-ah-dig-em! Yes I know it is actually paradigm - so take your cursor off the comment button to flame me about it:)

So what are we trying to do? We are trying to create a sense of community. You may notice that you have to be a member of the site to do certain things on our site - like comment forms on articles, fill-out feedback forms and You Write It where you write the articles that appear on our site.

WE ARE NOT trying to get you to sign up for membership so we can send your personal information to credit card companies. - Seriously, I hate that as much as you! One good thing about moving here recently is the pre-approved credit card offers haven't caught up to my new mailbox yet.

WE ARE COMPLETELY FREE - we are not having you sign up as a member to charge you to search our archives - that's another peeve of mine.

We realize that there are a lot of places you can get news. We hope you like the way we do it and that's why you are on our website, but we want to take your interactive experience on our site to a new level.

That is why we are turning the keys to the car ( or the website in this case) over to you.

You can:

Write a comment on just about every story and see it appear almost instantly on the site.
Write your own news articles.
Write a testimony about a spiritual experience.
Write an opinion page.
Write a movie review about how awesome the new Indiana Jones movie was.
Write an article about how you were disappointed in the series finale of the Sopranos.

It really is up to you. Plus you can tell your friends you were published on WSPA.com! and send them a link to it.

So take the new site out for a spin sign up as a member and tell me what you think.

What do you love? What do you hate? What could be better?

And don't be a jerk about it!
I welcome all the constructive criticism you can throw at me, but don't just write "Your website stinks!" - that doesn't tell me anything. At least tell me why it stinks and what could make diminish it's stinkiness.

I try to respond as many comments as I can, but I can't always resond to all of them.
Post your comments and look for responses to you comments in the area below.