Here are some random notes about how some things work on the blog. 

Some of you probably know this but I get enough recurring questions about how some things work so it bears repeating to get the newbies up to speed.

Subscribers and The Nightly Feed-

There are people that subscribe to the blog and get an aggregation of the day’s posts sent to their email box at night.  You too can subscribe by clicking this link-

Subscribe To Good Morning Gloucester

The point of this post isn’t to get you to subscribe, but to explain what it is that you are getting when you subscribe.  Throughout the day and night the GMG contributors and me create posts.  I assign time slots to our contributors and they schedule their posts for their time slot.  Paul Frontiero has the 10AM,Joanne Silva has the noon, Beth Swan has the 2PM, Manny usually posts early in the morning and the rest of the contributors sporadically post when they can. I usually create around 8 posts and edit and move stuff around so it works as I see fit.

My goal is to fill every hour at the top of the hour with a fresh post from 6AM-7PM.  Often times I’ll schedule a 1AM post as well for the late night crowd that has GMG bookmarked and view the blog directly at the site through the URL- https://goodmorninggloucester.com/ 

The thinking behind this is that I want people to know that every time they check back they will get to see something fresh.  I could easily load up everything at 6AM and that would be it for the day but I like that folks come back and check in and comment on each story and often times the regular folks that comment are having conversations in the comment section. Bloggers live for your comments.  It lets them know you are listening and have opinions about what they are saying or are doing a good job.  The pay may be nil but the comments go a long way to making it worthwhile. 

Anyway, back on track.  What you get when you subscribe as I said before is an aggregation of the daily posts which is done by a service called feedburner.  Feedburner collects the information that all our contributors post up til about 8PM and then creates a sort of newsletter email which the subscribers usually receive around 8:30PM from what I can tell.  It is a very condensed version containing the pictures and text.  It does not have any of the features that the blog has in the sidebar like the running comments, the blogroll, the search box,the Gloucester Music Schedule, The Flickr Picture Feed, the calendar or the live count of how many people are on the site at any given time.  The subscription feed also does not contain any of the contact buttons or tabs along the header of the blog.  I think that for many folks getting the nightly feed is just fine and I’m very happy that folks get GMG in what ever way they can.  I just want to make sure that people know that the blog is constantly changing throughout the day and checking in by bookmarking the link gives you a bunch of extra options for ways to explore and enjoy the blog.  Ideally everyone would subscribe and also check back in throughout the day and comment on stories they like.  that IMO is best case scenario for someone who really wants to get the most out of GMG.

Ill post a picture of what the feed looks like as opposed to what the live blog looks like-

This is what a post looks like in the subscription feed-

This is what that page looks like when you access the blog directly through a bookmark on your browser-

The Sidebar-

Here are pictures of some of the options in the sidebar on the blog when you access it directly by bookmarking this link-

https://goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/

The Search Box located just below the Subscribing Section in the right hand column(sidebar)-

If you go to the site or if you are on the site instead of looking at the feed, first find the search box in the right hand column.  Then go ahead and type a subject in the box that interests you.  an example might be Fiesta, or Jimmy T, or Survivor, or Lanesville, Block Party, Chamber of Commerce, Gloucester At Dawn, Homie or a restaurant around Gloucester that you might be interested in.  Type in anything that search box and you are bound to find dozens of posts on those subject matters and more.  if it has happened in Gloucester, chances are we’ve covered it and the search box is the place to find it.

Just below the search box is the Recent Comments section in the right hand sidebar on the blog-

The recent comments section collects all the recently posted comments on each different post in chronological order.  You can click on each comment to read it and/or reply yourself.  This is a big part of what the regular GMG readers do and I like how it builds community within the site.  I have the setting set to 15 comments so the last 15 approved comments get listed here.

Just below the recent comment section is the link to The GMG Theme Song from Earl and Arch- Gloucester Til The End which you can download for free or listen to on Gimme Sound

Then You have below that The GMG Local Music Schedule Which is an Aggregation of the Gloucester Music Posts

Below that Is Instructions on how to get a free GMG Sticka-

Next down the list in the Good Morning Gloucester Right Hand Column is The Blogroll (a list of links to sites of note)

To save space the rest of the right hand column (sidebar) in order from top to bottom starting under the blogroll goes like this-

Flickr Photos,City of Gloucester Announcements,GMG Podcast Subscription,Calendar, Archives, Top Posts,Who’s On Map, GMG Listener Line Number,GMG Tree Project Thank Yous, Blog Stats, Topic Cloud,Category Lists, GMG Authors,RSS Links, and The Gimme Sound Music Schedule.

The Top Of The Blog Just Under The Header Gives You 13 Tabs With Links To

• About (Links To the GMG Wikipedia Page)
• Eats Map (Links To The Interactive Map Of Each Gloucester Restaurant on the Map with pictures of Food From Each Place)
• Email Us (Contact Us email)
• Fav Posts (A list of some of my favorite posts from early in the blog’s existence)
• Fiesta Coverage (no explanation needed)
• Gloucester Concierge (ask a question, get an answer)
• GMG Facebook (how to get GMG through your facebook Page)
• Local WiFi Map (Links To The Interactive map of Each Free Spot To get free wifi, constantly growing)
• Pics (Links To Flickr)
• Vids (Links To the GMG Video Archives)
• GMG Tree Project (Info about The GMG Tree Project)
• Block Party (Information about The Downtown Gloucester Block Parties)
• GTown Music (Gloucester Live Music Schedules and info)

This looks like this on the site and is just under the header-

I hope this was informative and helps you get much more out of the site than you may have been getting and remind you of some of the features that you might have been missing if you solely got the blog through the subscription feed at the end of teh night.

Please feel free to leave comments and let us know what you would like to see more of and we will try to accomodate

-Joey