March 29, 2016 – This post is no longer “sticky” where it always appears on the front page. We will still make changes and additions as needs appear. In the meantime, please feel free to comment or make suggestions for the polls, or the discussion boards. We want to make this the best local news source we can make. We need your help! Especially, we would like to publish all the news from our local clubs. Tell the community what you are doing, and encourage new people to take an interest in your group.
February 10, 2016 – Added a community Discussion Board. Click on the “Talk Here” link on the top menu above. Users making posts must register for the first time. Usually takes a bit to get approved, no more than one working day. Topics for discussion are welcome. If you are registered you can make your own topics.
February 3, 2016 – Added a Polling Page. This is accessed by the “Non and Non-Local Polls” at the top of the sidebar. As the Introduction says, some of our polls are fun and some are serious. We hope you, the reader, will add your suggestions for polls. Please use the “Submit News” link on the top menu bar.
January 18, 2016 – Readers are now able to submit news and photos to be posted on this website, or in our print edition. Click on the “Submit News” link on the top menu bar. Full details on that page.
January 15, 2016 – New advertising should now be appearing. We are not able to place all ads from the printed edition, but several are appearing. If you want your newspaper ad to appear on the website, call Faye at the Smoky office at 780-837-2585. There is a small charge. Right now we have only a small number of readers on this site, less than 100 per day, but we hope that will grow, especially as we add new content and improve the site. If you are one of those readers, thank you very much for viewing. You may also check the site on your smart phone.
January 4, 2016 – Adjustment to the weather information. We are still drawing from Open Weather for the forecasts on the illustrated screen. The forecast below that, identified as Environment Canada, is from that federal agency, so the reports might be slightly different as they draw from different weather stations and follow different forecast models. We have also added 511 road reports which has handy cameras on their map and the Fire Hazard, which you might find useful in summer. All we need now is somebody reporting ice thickness for winter anglers!
December 20, 2015 – Added a weather module. The current information should come from the nearest weather station, which is either in Falher or is the Peace River – St. Isidore station. Not sure which we are drawing from but it is probably Falher. The weather forecasts come from Open Weather. They are quite different from another weather service provided by Accuweather. We will watch this to see which one gives the best forecast.
December 10, 2015 – We will fill out all the basic information pages in the next few days. We spent the last few weeks trying to get the advertising that is in the newspaper proper so it could be read and was in a good size. We are still working on that but it is much better than the past couple of weeks. Tomorrow we add a weather part. We were testing this the past few weeks and the temperature doesn’t seem quite right. We will keep an eye on this. Coming up, a bulletin board that will allow you to put your own posts; and we want to try a feature that will allow readers to post their own photos of our local happenings. Also, for people who have lost loved ones and their obituaries are posted here (as time goes by we will add more of our past citizens) if you would like to add more information and even photos about them, please contact the Smoky River office at any time. There is no charge for this.
November 19, 2015 – We now have the basic menu items laid out. There are many empty pages but we need them to act as placeholders until we add content. We’ve noticed that some photos are black and white. This is because the content coming to the website comes from the newspaper, not from the original photos which are all in colour digital. This on the to do list, as well as getting their sizes better. Plus, lots more.
November 5, 2015 – If you have hit this site the last few days, since it became live again after a too long absence, you might also have noticed this post itself has changed a lot. First we went live. Then we had to make adjustments to get even get a title to appear. Then we started making stories and trying them out. And every time we made a small step forward, we logged it here. Only because we were so happy to make something work and appear! Anyway, we are getting there, never happy with what we have, but always moving forward. So now its time to start dating what we are up to.
Next up is getting the photos to pop in the right places and get the sizes better. In the meantime, everything you see here is real stories and real photos of our wonderful small part of the world in Alberta, Canada.
November 3, 2015 – The Smoky River Express newspaper website is under renovation and construction.
We expect you will see some unusual layout and design glitches while we tweak our new design, but we figure there is nothing that will make your browser crash.
Content, features and more will be added weekly, more quickly right now, and probably more often once we get into the routine of operating our new site.
Commenting is presently disabled. Keep this in mind even if you see a box there. This will soon enough be enabled and we hope this will be a worthwhile addition to the site, allowing you to present your opinions as you are allowed similarly with Letters to the Editor.
We hope to have our archives for the past year and years online too. We also expect some new features. The only caveat we have is we are learning our new software here as fast as we can. We hope shortly we will be up to speed as far as content goes, which will be followed as quickly as we can making the site pretty. We think you want the news first and we want to do that too.
Thank you for visiting. We hope to see you again.