We Have a Fresh Look with New Functionalities!
Volume XI, Issue 1, October 2010
Welcome to the updated look of e-Volunteerism! For our 10th anniversary, we decided it was time for a fresh design and time to move our journal to a content management system - which means that all our articles are now in a database and can be fully searched by keywords. We've tweaked the logo and the colors, and we made all the pages more welcoming and readable.
What Does this Mean for You Right Now?
- You can log in immediately from any page at the top left. Once you log in, that log-in box will disappear and you will have complete access to the entire site.
- The home page is livelier and more informative. As before, the table of contents for the current issue is on the home page, indicating articles that are immediately available and those that will be posted later in the quarter. But now you will also see part of the preview description/abstract for each article, accompanied by photographs of the authors. Because we want to draw attention to the wealth of articles in our archives, we will also select pieces from past issues that deserve continued attention, and promote then on our home page, too.
- You can search the entire journal from any page. You'll find the search box in the upper right hand corner.
- The archives are easier to access and have gotten better. By simply clicking on the "Archives" link in the navigation bar, you can choose to search for articles by subject, author, issue, country and section. And the keyword search will now scan the full text of all articles to find what you seek. We plan to keep thinking of new ways to categorize our articles so let us know if you've been wishing you could search the articles in a certain way.
- Comments are easier to post and read. We hope this increases responses! Now, you'll stay right on the article page when you read people's comments or add your own. You can respond to a particular comment or add a brand new comment.
- You can adjust the font size of any article. Look for the buttons that show large and small capital As in the upper right corner of every article. They allow you to increase or decrease the size of the font to your preference.
- You can chose a "printer friendly" text option for every article -- and also create your own PDFs to download.
- You can easily find articles related to the one you are reading. If you are enjoying an article's topic or like a particular author, we make it easy for you to link to similar articles. In the left column, you'll find links to "Other Articles" by that author and on that topic in the current issue and in past issues.
- Subscriptions and renewals will now be done entirely on the e-Volunteerism site. You no longer have to go through the Energize, Inc. Online Bookstore. Note, too, that we have discontinued sales of individual articles to non-subscribers. Instead, people who do not wish to subscribe for the year may access the full journal for a 48-hour period, paying US $10 each time they chose this option.
Content Changes
- More photographs and other multi-media. In the early days, we worried about bandwidth and the time it took for readers to download articles with visual and audio content. But in 2010, more and more of you are connected to the Internet via broadband providers so you can easily access the content on our site.
- We have merged some prior sections into a new one: Voices. After 10 years of quarterly "Keyboard Roundtables" and "Voices from the Past" history articles, we want more flexibility in offering a range of content. So the new section, simply called "Voices," will share something different each quarter. There will be one or two Keyboard Roundtables and more historical pieces, but we also plan to include audio interviews and opinion essays from new sources. All the prior section materials are, of course, still available to you in the Archives.
- Along the Web solicits your favorite sites. On the journal home page and on the article page for "Along the Web," we now ask you to submit the URL of a Web site related to the topic that Steve McCurley chooses for that quarter.
- A country code now follows the name of every author to show each article’s point of origin. Therefore, in the revised Country Index, we only categorize articles under a country if the content is specific to a particular nation.
What Does this Mean for the Future?
- We have the potential to easily add new ways of interacting. We can add forums, connections to Facebook, polls and ratings, and more. We don't want to move too quickly though. We want to avoid just having lots of "bells and whistles;" instead we want to have a journal that meets your needs. So, we'll ask for your opinion on a new functionality before we add something new.
Thank you to all our loyal readers, especially those of you who took the "leap-of-faith" charter subscription offer back in 2000. We've come a long way together!