Wow! It seems as if us Web folks have gone underground since our last posting. Sorry for the lack of attention to our yakimaherald.com development blog… we have been very busy over the last month. I’ll try to wrap up the latest developments that have consumed our department and answer a question or two that I have fielded over that time.

First the questions:
Q: Does yakimaherald.com have an RSS feed? (Learn more about RSS)
One of our readers, Scott, noted that he could not find an RSS feed for yakimaherald.com. Scott isn’t alone in asking whether or not we have an RSS feed.
A: Yup, we do. We have been quietly using feedburner to manage our news stories that are published on yakimaherald.com. Quietly? Yea, well, after we started building out the RSS feed - we found that some headlines/stories actually come through poorly depending on the RSS reader used. After struggling to iron out the consistencies among several RSS readers, we decided to not ‘advertise’ the link to the RSS page, but allow for it’s availability quietly. We can provide the link on request or, if you are a tech savvy RSS hunter, you can find it in the right side of the address bar in your Internet browser as an icon, (like this ) which, when clicked, would take you to our yakimaherald.com’s RSS page: http://feeds.yakimaherald.com/yhronlinenews. So - until we get the kinks worked out regarding the feed’s display in different readers, we won’t make a big deal out of it.

Q: Is every story that is published in the Yakima Herald-Republic on yakimaherald.com?
A: Yes and No. All stories written by YH-R staff are destined for yh-r.com. Stories written by the AP or other writers may or may not appear depending on whether it has a major local impact. Such as an AP story about agriculture that is focused on Yakima industry, or something of that nature. We also publish AP and other wire stories during the day as updates, when they provide local readers other interesting stories that are happening that day. Any story that is published in the newspaper can be sent to you by fax, e-mail, or mail by request. Contact our librarian Donean Brown at 509-577-7697(9am-5pm, Monday through Friday)

Q: Where is the ’search archives’ search box?
A: You can find it in a variety of places within our new navigation bar. Hold your mouse cursor above one of the section listings, and a menu will drop down containing subsections and search links. Instead of being contained on the left side of the Web site, we decided to move it to consolidate our features and links to one location.

(In the next blog posting!)
The latest developments: Upgrades, special projects, video and workshops - oh my!