Updated NW Citizen Website - Here It Is
Updated NW Citizen Website - Here It Is
To Northwest Citizen readers and writers and commenters,
Today, we have put our new website online - and you are looking at it. Thanks to your generosity, we have been able to replace our outdated 2008 Content Management System with a new, more efficient one. We could not have done this without your generous support last October, when you donated enough to even exceed our $6,000 goal.
While the site may look quite similar - we think the changes will make it easier for you to read, comment, find articles, and register to comment and receive notifications of new articles. One big and immediately noticeable improvement is the speed of this new code; it is much faster than that of the old site.
Search
We especially wanted to improve the search capabilities - and we hope you approve of what we’ve done. Many - most, really - of our readers are civic-minded political junkies, or elected officials, or government bureaucrats, or even reporters from commercial news media, and many of you use this site as a reference; or would like to. We have repeatedly heard that you’ve tried to return to a previous article using a writer’s name, or keyword, or even a general topic, but the old site simply could not do it. We’re excited about our new search process and look forward to your feedback. We hope it meets your expectations.
Login
Your email address will now be your login name and you need to set a new password. To login the first time, enter your email address and click the “Forgot my Password” button. This will immediately trigger an email to you allowing you to set a new password. From then on, you login with your email address and new password.
We hope, in the next few weeks, to enable a new process of logging in without passwords. More on that later.
Also new, you can now register to comment right below the articles. To do this, we need your real name and contact information. All our articles and comments have the real name of the author; no anonymous posting on NW Citizen, as long time readers know.
Finally, on the menu bar, you will see the “Notifications” button; it allows you to sign up for email notices of new articles. All we need is your email address - nothing else. You can unsubscribe anytime.
About Us
We do absolutely nothing with the information you provide for notifications and registering to comment. We do not share, sell, nor reveal it to anyone. As we do not have advertising, there is no use of your info for that. Our cookies are minimal, and only used to serve you while you search for articles and want to go back to a previous page. We do not use the cookies in anyway for anything. Period. Full stop. Really truly.
You can check the “About” button on the menu bar for more details about the site.
NWCitizen is a venue for local citizens who want to inform their community on some important issue. Our writers are local and our commenters are local. Generally we are Whatcom County focused, but we have some commenters and writers from Skagit and San Juan counties as well as lower British Columbia.
We are very pleased and excited to open this new site, which was financed fully by you, our readers. We all know that even well-meaning non-profits and corporations have strings and conditions attached to their grant money and advertising dollars. But because our only funding source is reader donations, we are only beholden to our readers. In these troubling times for commercial news media, we think there is a real, and permanent, need for citizen journalism. At NWCitizen, we have been practicing this since 1995, 30 years.
Again, thank you for your most generous response to “The Big Ask,” our one and only funding drive. Ever.
Northwest Citizen owners and editors, John Servais, Tip Johnson, Deb Gaber and Dick Conoboy