Visit Scunthorpe has had an upgrade! Following the broadening of some news articles and feedback from posters we've decided to change the way in which the site works. We hope that these new changes will encourage new posters who have made contributions giving comment and opinion on more national news articles the tools they need to continue to do so. We also hope that these changes allow those members who visit the site specifically for local news to be able to quickly and easily pick out just the local news articles and ignore content they may not necessarily want to read. We've reorganised the news into 4 areas. Archives Firstly all of last year's articles now appear in an archive and can be accessed via the "Archive" link on the menu. Don't worry though if you've deep linked any of the archived items from your own blog or site, we're pretty confident that the old links should keep on working; if on the off chance they don't though, do get in touch and we'll take a look. Local News As always the focus of Visit Scunthorpe will continue to be that of Local News stories of interest to people in Scunthorpe and North Lincolnshire. This will continue to be our primary and lead news section, and will by "default" be where all new news articles are stored. Comment We've introduced a new "comment" section, this is aimed at political debate and may be relevant to either Scunthorpe and surrounding areas or to more national or international issues. We've brought this in following comments from several members as to the suitability of some of the more politicised articles in recent weeks and their relevance to the site. Our view on this remains unchanged, we welcome comment and contribution from all aspects of the political spectrum. With the local elections coming up we're looking forward to some interesting articles and debates and would positively encourage local prospective candidates to use VisitScunthorpe.Com to publicise their message, providing that their politics do not infringe upon our terms of use. National News There has been some debate amongst readers as to whether all articles published on VisitScunthorpe.Com are truly reflective of Scunthorpe and North Lincolnshire its self. Our opinion is that there are some national stories which do not necessarily occur in the town but will impact directly on the lives of people in Scunthorpe. One such example is the way in which government cuts and austerity measures are impacting on us all. This is a National issue which does and will affect people in Scunthorpe directly over the coming months. Subsequently we've put together a "National News" section specifically to allow for this type of news to be published and filtered as required by individual readers. We hope that the new improvements to the site are to member's liking, and that this will encourage readers to share their views and opinions of the town and local area as well as discussing their thoughts on broader issues which may affect us all. As some readers have quite rightly pointed out there's a time and a place for this, so can posters wishing to discuss politics or make political statements please put them in the "Comment" section. News Filters You'll also notice that in the main news page, there is a filter which allows you to select the type of news you would like to see. News articles have been banded together in varying shades of interesting "grey" and may be switched off using the news filter at the top of the screen. This filter is cookie based so it "should" remember what you were looking at and therefore when returning to the news section from reading an article you should see the filter remaining intact from your previous selection. If this does not seem to be the case, please let us know and remember we need the platform (ie windows, Mac) and browser that you are using. Also on the News page we've moved the join and create article links to the top of the screen. If you would like to post your own articles on VisitScunthorpe.Com to publicise your activities or discuss your interests then just sign up using the join link and post an article. With the election coming up in 2011 I've already been approached by a couple of prospective candidates looking for help in publicising their campaign. We're very keen to hear from any one who is looking to stand in the North Lincolnshire area in the May 2011 election so do please get in touch.