Basketball Coverage

When the boys basketball team played in the District 1 semifinals on Tuesday, Stoganews.com was there. With cameras, a laptop and free wireless at Temple's Liacouras Center, we brought you halftime and final score updates instantly, along with text updates of those scores. As boys basketball starts States, we will be experimenting with other ways of bringing you the news, such as live-blogging the games, when the events occur at locations other than Conestoga. Stay tuned!

SMS Breaking News Updates

Yesterday we rolled out a new feature: SMS updates. If there's breaking news (important sports updates, bomb threats, etc.) you will be texted with more information. Not every new post on Stoganews.com will be SMS-ed to you, and we will be judicious as to which updates we send. In other words, you will only be notified in the case of big news. Standard text messaging rates do apply.

-HR

PDFs of the February Issue

For those seniors who skipped, or if you want to read it again...The Spoke's February issue is available online in PDF format. Click on "Print View" at the top of the page. You can actually turn the pages of the issue. If you want to read it, just click and you will be brought to a full screen version. Enjoy! -HR

What's new

As the warmer weather rolls in, we're rolling out some new projects on Stoganews.com. Here's an overview:

• Breaking News Above all, we now have the capability to update news instantly, as it happens. We've done this most recently with the snow during the midterm week and the boys basketball playoff run. Hundreds of you clicked on the site for your news, and be assured the news will keep being updated frequently.
• Advertise We secured our first ad contract this week; advertising here is affordable and reaches the teenage audience. Please e-mail us if you're interested.
  
• Expanded Photo Galleries Scroll down the page to the right and click on the different albums for expanded galleries.
  
• RSS Feeds We're still working out some kinks with subscribing via e-mail, but you can grab the RSS feed itself for your blogs (like I did with this one)
• Comments Comment on stories you liked or didn't. We want to hear your views.
• Polls Be sure to take our polls and make your opinions heard.
• Share articles with your friends via e-mail or post them to your Facebook pages. Just click the "share" button at the end of every article.
• Related Posts Like a story? Click on the related posts at the bottom of each page to see articles like it.
• iPhone/Blackberry You can now view Stoganews.com on your iPhone or Blackberry easily with a new interface for mobile.
  

More to come!

-HR

On the Web

We’re heading online

By Henry Rome
Editor in Chief

Cue doomsday music. In a world where national and local newspapers are consolidating, firing staffs, cutting pages, shutting down…

…Your local high school newspaper is dynamic and expanding.

It’s a new age for newspapers, and while we reaffirm our commitment to providing you the most accurate and most informative Conestoga news once a month in print, we are making the transition online.

Stoganews.com, in its second year, has recently been redesigned by our Web team. With the redesign, which took place a few weeks ago, we rolled out a variety of different projects. All to keep you more informed and allow you to interact with your news.

Go on Stoganews.com for the latest breaking news, updated daily. Check out the site for blogs, polls and photo galleries. You can comment on stories or share them with your friends with new Facebook compatibility. You can get RSS feeds from the site, or just check the site out with new Blackberry and iPhone capabilities. While you’re looking at the newest information from Conestoga, use the links to check your school e-mail, grades and more.

This is just the beginning for Stoganews.com. In the coming months we plan to roll out several new projects, including an interactive event calendar, SMS breaking news alerts and PDF versions of The Spoke. Also, in the coming weeks, we will form a new Stoganews.com Production Club, where students with an interest in Web design can contribute to the site.

But we want to know what you think. What would you like to see on Stoganews.com? What new features would you like to see, what aspects of Conestoga would you like represented? Shoot us off an e-mail and let us know. Because it’s your site.
And while The Spoke may be expanding, know that you can still count on us for the most current Conestoga news and information—in print or online. Without the doomsday music.

Henry Rome can be reached at hrome@stoganews.com.

Printed originally on p. 7 of the Feb. 13, 2009 issue of The Spoke