Welcome to the New Features for Member Pages on GreenCountySpotlight.com. Below is a summary of features that were added to the site during the recent upgrade process (July 2010).
The important point about all of the features below is that they can be directly associated with any page in the Community Guide. This is not an automatic process for all the features below. Some features require that an administrator approve and make the association. If you want one or more of the site features below listed to your Business, Farm, or Organization page, please contact via the usual means and we'll set it up for you.
Coupons While members have been able to add coupons to the site for some time, coupons are now automatically linked to your custom page in the Community Guide to help people better find them. For example, when a business posts a coupon, the site automatically generates a "Coupons" link in the "Content Related To:" section for that businesses in the Guide. Anyone who clicks on the coupon link will be taken to a page listing the active coupons for that business.
Press Any press item posted to the Spotlight (press items are posted by administrators) may be linked to pages relevant to that item. This is at the discretion of the administrator and is normally determined by the content of the press item. For example, it an article mentions your business, you will likely find a press link on your Guide page that opens the article.
Classes If your business or organization offers classes (cooking classes or formal education classes for example), you can now post these classes to the Education and Learning Guide using the appropriate link in the member's area (My Spotlight). Please note that only Business, Farm or Organization members can post classes for pages (entities) that they have permission to edit. When posting classes to the Education and Learning Guide, a Classes link is automatically generated in the "Content Related To:" section of the page associated with the class provider.
Classifieds It is now possible for a business, farm or organization to associate their classified ads (such as job postings, new business announcements, volunteer requests) to their community guide page. For example, when a business posts a classified ad, the site automatically generates a "Classifieds" link in the "Content Related To:" section for that businesses in the Guide. Please note that all classifieds posted by the account owner will appear in this area and for this reason we do not automatically associate classified users with Guide pages. To have your classified ads linked to your page, simply contact an administrator via our contact page.
Blogs Blogs are a new feature on GreenCountySpotlight.com and it is possible to associate a blog to a Community Guide page. Blogging is a great way for an entity to distribute a wide variety of information including stories, notices, updates, and even trivia. A blog associated with a page can add depth to the information already posted on the page and is a great way to keep people up-to-date on what is going on at your business or organization. Blogs are associated by Spotlight administrators upon request of the page owner so just let us know if you're interested in this and we'll set it up for you. Once you post to your associated blog, a Blog link will appear in the "Content Related To:" section of your community guide page. Please note that you don't have to have a page in the Guide to have a blog. Any member can have a blog.
Gallery Member Media Galleries are now available on Green County Spotlight. While any member can create a gallery, you must request that your gallery be linked to your community guide page if you want a Gallery link to appear in the "Content Related To:" section of the page. Setting up this association allows visitors to navigate directly to your gallery (containing images, YouTube video objects and more). This is a great way to add some fun, visual elements for visitors to your page. If you would like your gallery associated with your page, you'll need to do the following:
Recipes At this time the only way to submit recipes to the Spotlight (for inclusion in the Community Cookbook) is via our contact page or other email address you may have for us. Still, once we post your recipe, it is possible to have that recipe associated with your page. Administrators will associate recipes with business, farm or organization pages if the association is obvious or if you request the association and it makes sense. This is a great feature for restaurants and other food-related entities to showcase your food products, menus, etc. All recipes are featured in the Community Cookbook (attributed to your business, organization, etc. as you specify) and are randomly showcased in the Food and Dining guide as well.
Maps We are slowly associating map links to community guide pages. If you know the latitude and longitude of your entity's location and want to speed up the process, just let us know and we'll set up a map for your page. Maps are provided by Google Maps and are therefore customizable (adding route markers, pop-up directions, etc.) but this is something you need to create and it's not something for the faint of heart. We'll add some examples sooner or later to help you customize your map but for the time being, maps pretty much just show your general area.
Events Event listings on GreenCountySpotlight.com are provided by the website GreenCountyEvents.com. Any local organization that would like to administer their events in this system can do so by contacting us here at Green County Spotlight. Once your organization is set to administer events in the GreenCountyEvents.com system, your events can be linked to your page on GreenCountySpotlight.com (in addition to the other places on this and other sites where your events appear automatically). Once your events are posted to GreenCountyEvents.com, you can even pull your events from the system and post them to your own site (your web developer should be able to set this up for you). Contact us to learn more.