By By Robert Blankenship
Advance Managing Editor
Recently, The Atmore Advance began offering a new service to not only local residents who subscribe to the newspaper, but to people living around the globe who are looking for news from back home or others just wondering what Atmore is all about.
Your newspaper's website has been an ongoing project over the past few months and now it is poised to be a very informative site for hundreds of web surfers looking for local news and sports.
Although there are some aspects of the site we are still working on, it is now being updated routinely and will provide information on everything from local events to current weather. We even have an on-line poll that will feature weekly questions ranging from local political issues to less-serious questions that hopefully will be interesting and fun for our visitors.
Though much of the site will contain information you will have already seen in the newspaper, there are still a lot of reasons to get on-line and visit us there. By clicking on the weather update you will be linked to wunderground.com which will give you an extended forecast and lots of other information about the local weather situation.
Also featured on the website is the archive section. By clicking on archive, you can type in a key word and be only a few clicks away from a list of stories that had previously been featured on the website about that particular topic. However, this will not include articles that were printed in The Advance prior to the creation of our website.
One aspect of the website we are all excited about is the on-line poll. We hope that everybody will take time to visit us and click one of the choices so that we can have a credible and scientific view of what the majority of our visitors are thinking. Along that same vein, it is important that each person vote only once to help maintain the integrity of the poll.
The website also offers visitors an opportunity to submit a letter to the editor on-line. All you have to do is click on the letter to the editor icon and follow the instructions from there.
A great idea that folks may want to consider is making The Atmore Advance website their home page. That way, when you log onto your internet service each day you will have the latest news, sports and weather right in front of you with the minimal amount of effort. Isn't modern technology great!
For local residents who have family members living in another part of the country, The Atmore Advance web site could be a great way for them to keep in touch with what is going on in their hometown even if they're thousands of miles away.
Although we are excited about our website, the truth is that a page on a computer screen is nothing close to holding your own newspaper, flipping through the pages, skimming headlines and pictures until you find the story you want to read first. The paper will also hold an edge due to the fact that there is no way to fit everything we print onto the web pagethere simply is not enough time or space in which to update it with each publication. But, we do hope this service will prove useful, informative and fun.
The address for the website is www.atmoreadvance.com