Saturday, May 5, 2007

Almost a year old.

Good News Now started up mid June 2006. I haven’t blogged in a month because we redesigned the site late March. The month of April has been sort of a trial month to get the bugs out. We did two things. We went from FrontPage and me having to keep the site up that way to Dreamweaver and a data base. I think we have had fewer problems on the day to day maintenance. I like the database. We plan to add search capabilities sometime in the future so you can search our archives. I am able to search from the back end of the site which is helpful. The second thing we did is made the site interactive. People can post on our forum and comment on the news articles. We have people sign up for the site, but only a few comments. We will be working on that. I plan to spend more time commenting myself so hopefully you will join in.

What we really want to see happen is have people send us their news stories. We have had that happen. I get emails from Iraq a couple of times a week from a few of the military reporters. That is very cool for me. I always post what they write. I am working on a story about a couple who rescues horses. They have a place in Michigan where you can go meet the horses and also a new website. A woman from Denton Texas, Holly Melton writes a daily devotion that we post through her Associated Content site. We are driving traffic to her site which is good for her and she is regularly one of our most read posts each day. If you are a writer I invite you to submit good news related stories, it will help your traffic. Someone on our MySpace site sent us info on an event in Atlanta called 500 Songs for Kids

"It will be a world record if they can pull it off -- and Josh Rifkind, one of Metro Atlanta's top music promoters has a history of doing the impossible.

In one 10-day period, in May, 500 bands will appear at Smith's Olde Bar -- 50 bands a night will only one song each. The songs will be from the top 500 songs of all time, as determined by Rolling Stone Magazine."

I really like hearing about stories like this one.

We are looking for new about events or news about how your church, club, school, organization or business is making a difference and making “good news.” Contact me at ruthieonart@ruthieonart.com. If you need help in writing the article that is OK. Just give us your leads.