The Appalachian Independent is committed to its community and fostering the Dialogue of Democracy using modern technology and the World Wide Web.

With this goal in mind, we would like to introduce you to the new Appalachian Independent interface. Aside from cosmetic changes, we have made functional changes to the way the site works, and to the underlying technologies we use to present the community with a valuable resource for discussion.

What's New?

Our new format presents many new features, which we believe improve the quality of the AppIndie experience.

The Front Page

One of our main goals with the relaunch of The Appalachian Independent was to get a wider variety of our content out to the reader. Previously, there was not much diversified content being shown on the first page load.

Now, when a reader loads the Front Page of The Appalachian Independent, the reader sees the newest articles from across the site in an animated widget:

Under the Latest News widget sits our Section Panels. Each Section Panel corresponds to a section in The Appalachian Independent, and shows the reader the last 5 stories that have been published in that section:

Simply click on an article title to view the article's full text. Also, the reader can click on the title of the section or the "See More" button to view a listing of the sections latest articles.

Menu Changes

We have shifted around the standard navigation elements on the page to present the user with a more streamlined experience. The Main Menu has been moved to the top:

Just underneath the Main Menu, we have placed the User Menu, including the Community features on the left and user Login options on the right:

Community Calendar

The Community Calendar link in the top navigation takes you to the Community Calendar feature, with improved options for submitting events and subscribing to the calendar in a variety of formats:

New to the Community Calendar is the Event Request Form option for submitting new events to be included in the calendar:

Following this new link, the user is presented with a simple form for submitting a new event to the calendar:

When a user fills in the information about their event, the event is submitted to our Community Manager, who will then add the event to our Community Calendar. The user can point their cursor over each of the labels for elaboration on what information is needed in each field.

The user can choose a date using a point-and-click calendar widget, making it much easier to choose the correct date for the event.

Submit an Article

Users are encouraged to submit new articles to our Editorial staff for inclusion in The Appalachian Independent. It is now easier than ever to submit a new article for publication. Simply follow the link in the top navigation menu, fill out the form provided, and the article is sent on to be reviewed and published:

Just like the Community Calendar, hover over the field labels for more information, and use the calendar date picker for ease of submission.

We welcome our readers to submit new articles to The Appalachian Independent.

Article Comments

With the improved Latest Comments sidebar list, the user can now quickly join in on the discussion happening on The Appalachian Independent:

Now users can see which articles are being discussed, as well as the titles of the articles themselves. This makes it easier to follow along with the discussion on our articles.

Improved Search

The right sidebar now gives the user Google-powered search functionality:

It is now even easier to find stories on The Appalachian Independent!

Speed, Looks & The Future

In addition to these functionality changes, the time it takes to load a page here on The Appalachian Independent has been cut almost in half. It is important to us that our readers can enjoy our content without having to wait.

The updated look lends more comfort to the eyes while reading, and provides more space for individual article texts. Rather than keeping a story truncated to the center row, thereby limiting the dimensions of included images, ample room is given for the writer to include rich media.

We are continuing to look into the future of The Appalachian Independent. We plan on introducing many new features to engage our community, and better enable our readers to join in on the Dialogue of Democracy.

Feedback and Bug Reports

If you have feedback, ideas or comments, leave a comment here, or head over to the Discussion Boards and create new thread.

As with all software products, there are bound to be some bugs. If you notice something strange, out of place, or just plain wrong, please send an email to our This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

We appreciate the time our readers have taken to be a part of the discussion, and we hope that the future of The Appalachian Independent will bring many great opportunities to join in!