Events Feed Added

Hi again

New updates to the website today include the addition of an events feed to the front page. You will now be able to see a quick snapshot of the variety of events that are on today, throughout the Borough. The data in this section is fed automatically from our constantly updated events database.

We’ve also added a link to our friendfeed in our “Interact with Us” section. If you’re on friendfeed, you can now follow all of our social media updates in one place. Currently it’s reading everything from Councillors’ Blogs, Twitter, Identica and Flickr.

Bar ironing out one or two minor glitches, phase 1 of the redevelopment of the site is now very nearly complete. As such, we’ll very soon be asking for volunteers to take part in our consultation to help us decide on a new design and test new features. If you’d be interested in taking part, please leave us a comment on the blog or simply email us.

Also, of course, let us know what you think of the new features to the site. Does the events feed work OK in your browser? Do you think it’s a useful feature?

As always, we look forward to receiving your comments.

Thanks for visiting.

Councillors’ Blogs and Flickr

Hi there again

First of all, thanks a lot to everyone who has commented on the blog this last week. I think we’ve all started to have a very useful discussion. So keep visiting and keep commenting!

Thanks especially for your practical comments on the page header we put up this week. They’ve all been taken into account for the overall redesign and they’ve been really useful in ironing out a few issues we’ve had with it this week.

As way of an update this week:

- Councillors’ blogs. These aren’t actually within the site as such at the moment. However a microsite called Councillors online has been up now for some time. Currently we have 2 Councillors blogging and we received our first comment back this week. Please pay them a visit and leave a comment. What do you think of the site? Do you have any experience with producing Councillors’ blogs on your own sites?

- Our Flickr account is now up and running and features loads of really great shots of our Borough taken by various photographers. It will be continually updated. If you want to see what photos have been taken in your area, check out the map on which we’ve geotagged photos.

For your immediate perusal, here is an embedded slildeshow of our photostream:

Have you taken any shots of St.Helens? Feel free to add them to our photostream or add us as a contact on Flickr.

As usual, feel free to leave us any comments on this blog.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

New page headers

Hi there again

This week’s new development on the website is our new page header image, featuring randomly generated photos of the Borough of St.Helens.

The photography has been chosen to illustrate both iconic images of the Town Centre and also some images that show off the beauty and heritage of the entire wider Borough – currently including Rainford, Rainhill, Car Mill, Denton’s Green and Newton.

The header changes from page to page so you should get a different view of our Borough with every click.

What do you think? Does it work OK in your browser? What about the download times?

Do you prefer this header or the old montage image? What other images should we include? Do you have an image you’d like us to use?

Use the comments box or email us to let us know.

Thanks for visiting.