Ok, so not all of the improvements are ready yet.  Actually, most of them are not ready.  But the fresh, new look and new platform are here and ready to go.  Now we can get to the good stuff.

So what has changed?

Well, we’ve simplified the navigation menu by eliminating the drop-down menu.  We’ve gotten rid of sections of the site that were not important to anyone.   The overall design has been freshened up and we’ve paved the way for new things to come.

In the coming days, we’ll be enhancing the various new “sections” of the site with the additional content we have planned.  For example, the schools page will feature the school calendar and other school related resources in addition to the School Related News stories that get posted.  We’ll be bringing back the games section (never fear children) as part of the parenting/kids section which will be the home of great features like our annual summer camp guide.

Not quite as immediate (but certainly very soon) will be the implementation of a brand new, custom design coupon system.  It goes without saying that the software that runs our current coupons section leaves a lot to be desired.  This time around, we’re not going to be fooling around with an off the shelf product.  We’re building it from scratch so it functions just the way we need it to.  Bear with us for a few weeks longer.  We promise it will be worth the wait.

For those that frequently contribute articles, we’ve completely changed over our publishing platform.   We believe the new system is more functional, easier to use, and perhaps a bit more familiar to some of you (if you’re a WordPress fan, that is).  As always, we welcome articles either directly submitted, or via email.

We did our best to convert over all of the past articles from the old publishing platform.  Some of the articles came through brilliantly…others didn’t make it through quite as nicely.  We’ll do our best to clean up the old articles.  In the meantime, we’ll leave the old archive of articles up and running.

We’ve got a lot of work ahead, but we’re bringing the site back live a mere 8 hours after the major renovations began.  We’re very happy to report things went about as smooth as could be expected.

So enjoy the new site and please pardon our dust in the upcoming days.  If we can help you in any way, please let us know.