Edmonds2030.com is a new site running on the Sitemaker platform. It contains a community planning "conversation" among property owners and citizens regarding redevelopment of the town's downtown core.

Key features of the site, which is managed by local participants, include a News and Commentary (blog) section, links to relevant planning resources, and space for posting design concepts.

Edmonds is located about 20 miles north of Seattle on the east side of Puget Sound. It is a major terminal for the WA State Ferries system, and the impending relocation and expansion of the ferry terminal is a major factor impelling the planning effort.

Visit Edmonds 2030

The ubiquitous blog is approaching your office, coming down the corporate hallway, according to Michael Calore, writing in Monkey Bites, which is, of course, a blog. He describes the efforts of two mid-size hosting companies to offer blogging platforms to help large companies make use of the blogging concept.

Clark IP offers a similar approach for smaller businesses and non-profits, but its low-cost CIP Sitemaker© service also integrates the blog into a comprehensive publishing platform that is adaptable into a full range of sites and is not limited to a blog-dominated structure.

Continues...

Calore Article

Clark Internet Publishing has announced that it will add a Podcast tool to its CIP Sitemaker content management system. The tool will manage audio files and display a list of podcast episodes.

Podcasting is a new way to add sound files to a web site. The files can be played from a web page, downloaded for replay on the computer or a portable player, or retrieved from any of several podcast indexing sites.

Applications abound. Businesses can embed sales pitches or training files. Churches can embed music or sermons. Schools can embed lessons or learning resources. With Sitemaker's Podcast tool, these will appear as a seamless part of the same site, accessible with a single click, inline with related content.

Unlike sites that only host podcasts, the Sitemaker Podcast tool is embedded among other content. This allows a visitor to experience sound files without leaving the site (and being diverted to other content by advertising).

Continues...

If you're publishing a personal site, you can make your blog your home page. Just sign into the editing suite, go to the blog tool in the navigation settings, and click the link to designate the blog as the home page. The next visitor to the site will see the blog first.

This is especially useful if you want to point visitors to the most recently updated part of your site. There's no need to edit your regular content to post a casual or temporary notice. And regular updating of the home page is one of the main criteria used by search engines when they rate your site, and in many the rating governs your position in search results.

A new client implemented a site last week with the help of one of our affiliates. We set up an accompanying PayPal page to enable online sales of the client's new book. The affiliate added descriptive content and contact data. By the next morning the site was in business, and sales have been about a book every other day for the first week of operation.

This is our favorite mode of development. Our affiliates and users can do nearly everything needed to make an informational site, and we can help with special tasks. As special projects recur, we like to turn them into tools and components, so the affiliates or the end users can do-it-themselves while we turn our attention to the next general improvment.

We have an affiliate called Election Options that creates sites for political campaigns. Since Sitemaker provides all the standard tools one needs to keep a constituency informed, campaigns can use the system both during elections and between campaigns. Sites can easily add a donation method through PayPal or any other linkable payment processor, just by pasting the processor's code to an ordinary text component. For more information follow the link below.

Election Options