iBrattleboro.com has turned 21. That means the site can now drink in most states.
Brattleboro’s experiment in citizen journalism continues, and from my perspective there has been a bit of an uptick in use of the site over the last year. Many seemed distracted by social media for a while, but people are returning and we’re seeing a bit more writing again. It’s heartening. Thanks!
A few reminders of iBrattleboro’s history, for those new to the area.
Just a quick housekeeping note. When tagging you stories, you are tagging them for this site and not that other social media site you might be thinking of, whatever that is.
No hashtag is necessary here, just a comma!
If you like the number 2, today is a good day: 02-20-2022. It’s also the 19th birthday of iBrattleboro.com. Can you imagine?
For those new to town, iBrattleboro is citizen journalism. It’s a local, free publishing platform for you to share your news, events, comments, and other Brattleboro things. We have free classifieds and free advertising. Anything you publish gets promoted to over 1600 twitter followers as well.
It’s 02-20-2021 and iBrattleboro is 18 today. Watch out now, we’re all grown up and can vote! Still a few more years until we can rent a car, but hey…
More seriously, the site stated 18 years ago as a place for people in the Brattleboro area to share news, events, information and opinions. iBrattleboro can be whatever you, the community contributor, wants it to be. If it is exciting and useful, you made it so.
Wondering how many people are visiting iBrattleboro.com? Let’s look at some recent stats.
May 2020 had 33,760 unique visitors, with 60,030 visits to 458,918 pages. (This does not include traffic generated by robots, worms, or crawlers.)
Unique visitors for Jan were just above 27k, Feb had 32.5k, March had just over 31k, and Apr was 22.5k.
A few housekeeping notes.
A new sign up/log in option is now in the “contribute” menu in the upper blue bar. Much easier to find, and right where you might want it to add a story, event, link, or photo. We’re also keeping the other one, mid-page, between stories and recent comments.
Can you believe it? iBrattleboro’s been going for 17 years. You’ve been people-powering journalism in Brattleboro for almost two decades.
This year, I leave it mostly to you to reflect on your accomplishments. (In addition to your thoughts, feel free to ask questions. We’ll answer anything today.)
iBrattleboro comes of age today. The site turns sixteen.
Sixteen means we can get a learner’s permit for driving. We can drop out of school. We can consent. We can get an adult passport, donate blood, and in some countries vote, drink or join an army.
Some other notable sixteens: Louis XVI, 16 personality types in the Myers-Briggs system, 16 pawns in a chess set, the F-16, and it’s the the age Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger and falls asleep.
Can Author Preview Their Story Before Submission?
From now until the end of August, all year-long ads on iBrattleboro are half price! That’s right, a one-time chance to be featured for an entire 12 month year, saving you five hundred dollars.
This is a big, color ad (300x300px) with a link to any web page you want, on a site that thousands check regularly to see what’s going on in Brattleboro and southern Vermont.
Its been 15 days since I last posted on iBrattleboro. Brattleboro=47 in English Reduction(2+9+1+2+2+3+5+2+6+9+6)=47. 47 is the 15th prime number. iBrattleboro=137 in English Ordinal 137 is the 33rd prime number. 33, in numerology, is the master teacher number. Teacher=33 in English Reduction. I figured today, the 11th, was a good time to post, plus, 11 is my favorite number.
iBrattleboro.com is now using SSL – a Secure Sockets Layer certificate. It provides an encrypted link between a server and a client—in this case the web site and your browser.
We’re the first local news site in Brattleboro to do this for you, and we join our fellow community media sites BCTV and WVEW in doing so.
Normally, data such as logins and passwords, is sent between browsers and web servers in plain text. This makes a site vulnerable to a “man in the middle attack,” or site spoofing schemes.
It’s the same as before, except different!
Technically speaking, this is version 3.0. We’ve switched the underlying content management system, the site is now mobile-friendly, and everything will soon be encrypted.
Our work isn’t finished, but it is close enough to let you join us as we make final adjustments. It helps to have people using the site actively as we fine tune. You may see a few test items come and go over the next few days, and you will see some definite improvements.
