Welcome to the new MississippiPolitics.com site. We have made some long overdue adjustments to look, feel and functionality and we believe it will serve our users and provide a better forum for interaction. Our search features and archives will be working and will once again provide a great historical perspective to politics in Mississippi over the last couple of years.
FORMAT
You’ll notice the obvious format changes. Below, you will find links to stories in sequential order that they were posted, just as on the fomer version of the site. However, now just to the right, you will also notice that we have brought the category references to the fore. This will provide an at-a-glance view by topic, which most of our feedback suggested.
Out to the far right, we still will have our comments section featured prominently. Below that we’ll soon be adding some RSS feeds from blogs relevant to state and national politics. We will be adding more to these feeds and encourage you to send us links to feeds you want included.
COMMENT REGISTRATION
Registering usage to comment has been a constant topic for us. We are using Expression Engine, which is a program that gives us far greater administrative control than ever before. This is something we needed to police vulgarity and comments and commenters that go over the line. In addition to some filtering, registration will provide us a stronger arm to police people that insist on crossing the line. “The line” is where we say it is. This is not a democracy, but we are philosophically based on a “no blood no foul” mindset.
Anonymous comments are still OK. In the registration section you will be given specific instructions on how to set up comments anonymously if you want. We only need a valid email address to begin posting, but we will do no further checking than that. You can be commenting in a matter of minutes and we encourage you now to go through that process.
We have also installed optional comment notification features that allow you to self-select whether or not to be notified if anyone has posted to a string you have posted to. Registering will also help us notify you as breaking stories or exclusive content becomes available so that you will know what’s happening in MississippiPolitics first.
PRIVATE MESSAGING
The new system includes a pretty sophisticated private messaging system with which you can communicate with other registered members. You can find it in your control panel once you’re registered and logged in.
FEEDS
For those of you who use a newsreader or other syndication program to monitor feeds, we have brought that functionality to a high level. RSS is a syndication feed mechanism that allows you to remotely monitor new entries without having to logon to MP all the time. I use a program called Klipfolio and it is really outstanding, but there are dozens of feed readers and services out there. The buttons at the top of the page will automatically add MP’s feed to the respective news readers.
OTHER GOODIES
The control panel lets you subscribe and unsubscribe from any thread, whether or not you’ve commented on it. You can also manage your login and password there, among other things. Be sure and spend a few minutes in the control panel and get to know what you can do with it.
SUMMARY
We are overwhelmed by the success that MP has enjoyed, and you have helped make it the definitive political interest site in Mississippi. We welcome your comments and your participation and look for your feedback and any suggestions you might have. Send them to editor + mississippipolitics.com.
