8 Reasons You'll LOVE Reading the NEW PCBDaily

Many of you have noticed that Monday morning you came to an all new pcbdaily.com!  A change has been a long time coming and in the works, so we bit the bullet, stayed up late and hammered it out.  Web site design trends change often and we try hard to stay on top of it by keeping the look fresh and being sure the content is where it is supposed to be – in front of you and easy to find.

Hit the read more link for a break down of the changes we made and the new features of the NEW PCBDaily.com.

As always, we love talking about news and information as it relates to Panama City Beach.

{+}

• Very graphic light
  • Frankly, I’ve been moving this direction for a while.  Fewer graphics means more focus on the content, and the content is what PCBDaily is all about, right?
  • You’ll notice no borders on the outside of the site, no drop shadows, no pretty graphics to take your eye away from everything that is happening in Panama City Beach.
• Navigation
  • The navigation on the old PCBDaily was along the top just like the new PCBDaily, but it was easy for it to get lost in all the clutter.  The new navigation is a no-frills, straight to the point layout that gets the job done quickly and efficiently.
  • The top bar of navigation is all the pages on PCBDaily and the second bar of navigation are all the categories.  Now, mind you, this is not ALL the categories, just the ones that are the most common or pertinent to our area.
    • If you click on any of the categories, you will be taken to all the posts that are filed in that particular category.
    • If you want to see the categories that are not listed in the navigation bar, just click on the page “Past Articles”, and you’ll see each category that we have along with any sub-categories, if they have any.
• Social icons
  • Well folks, it is 2009, and it’s all about social.  I know that so many of you in business have had a hard time figuring out what in the world to do with all that social flotsam such as Twitter and Facebook, but here at PCBDaily, we like to take pride in the fact that we do a pretty good job keeping everyone up to date through our extensive social network updates.
  • The old site had links to our social sites, but it was always lost in the clutter of our old sidebars.  The new social icons are beautiful and bold, and they are located at the top right in a space all their own so they are easy to find.
  • Here are the icons and what they do, in the order you can find them at the top of each page (they are all active links, go ahead – click them 😉 ):
    • RSS: this button will take you to a page that shows our RSS feeds.  RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and all of our posts are automatically put in our RSS feed.  You can subscribe to the feed and add the URL to your Feed Reader and whenever we post new content, your feed reader will be updated so you can see all the latest in Panama City Beach.
    • RSS Email: this button will allow you to subscribe to our RSS feed by email.  Click on this, enter your email address, and every day you’ll get an email log of all the articles we published on PCBDaily.com.
    • Twitter: twitter is this shiny new micro-blogging instant communication tool that we’ve all come to know and love.  It’s been made famous by the likes of Larry King/Ashton Kutcher follower competitions and has frankly changed the way we are able to get information to our loyal followers and readers.  Twitter has allowed us to keep you informed as to exactly what is happening when it is happening, and it allows us to share with you little tidbits of info that may not be worthy of a full on article.  The other great thing?  You have to do each message in 140 characters or less.
    • Facebook: Everyone’s on Facebook, right?  Well, if you’re not, you should look into it; I’d be willing to bet more of your friends than not are.  Facebook has become a great way for us to build relationships with our readers in a very personal way.  With our iPhones, we can post updates to the PCBDaily Facebook Page on the go and keep you satiated with new pictures and information about Panama City Beach in a medium that many of you already spend time in.
    • YouTube: Every video we film and produce about Panama City Beach, we put on our YouTube page.  I often find great amusement to go back and look at all the videos that I’ve done over the years; that’s usually good for a great laugh.  My goal is to populate YouTube with videos of Panama City Beach in an attempt to someday drown out all that spring break garbage that’s on there.  Noble I know.
    • Flickr: Almost every picture we take, every event we attend, each attraction we visit, all the restaurants we dine in and write about we put the pictures in their very own Flickr Photo Set.  Each set is named date (MMDDYY) and brief description so they are easy to sift through.  We literally have hundreds (if not thousands) of pictures of Panama City Beach.
• Tip Us On News!
  • Something else I saw on Engadget was their quick link for people to tip them on hot off the press stuff they may not have their thumb on.  Hence the “Tip us on News! link right below the social icons.
• Left Side Navigation
  • One of the things we wanted to emphasize was our transitioning into making PCBDaily more of an all Panama City Beach site, not just all newsy-type stuff.  Yes, we’re still going to have all the same great information that you’ve all grown to love, we’re just going to be adding to it.  Moving forward, we’ll be writing about dining, attractions, events, resorts and so much more.  We will be the one stop place for all your Panama City Beach needs.
  • This navigation serves as a simple and easy way to get to some of the hot topics.
• Events
  • This may be the very thing that sticks out the most on the main page and the very thing that has been most requested over the years.
  • The process will not be perfect and I have yet to find a rock solid way to make this happen and keep the events postings consistent without TONS of work, but I’ve developed a process that I think will work, so we’re gonna give it a go.
  • At any given moment, the latest events three weeks in advance will be displayed at the top of the “content-area” on the main page.  The event title will be linkable and will take you to a more information page.
  • At this time, we have not been able to come up with a way that allows us to display events in the future any more than 3 weeks and keep with a consistent, clean look and feel.
  • At the bottom of the events are two buttons, one taking you to all the events we have published and the other taking you to a page where you register your event to be listed on PCBDaily.com
• Right Sidebar
  • You’ve probably noticed the lack of clutter.  This is all in an attempt to keep the whole site real simple and easy.  We will have some more stuff in the sidebar in the future, but for now, it will remain as empty as possible.
• Content Area
  • We changed this part of the site the most.  I’ve been a long-time reader and have always loved the simplistic approach to Engadget.  Our new layout includes a large title, a large “header” image and a brief excerpt (or teaser, if you will) of the content to be found in the full story.  To read the full article, you can click the “read more” link, or the post title.
  • No ads!  I’ve always hated those ads in between the posts and am finally glad they are gone.  I’ve always felt they took away from the content.  I actually have hated having to put ads on PCBDaily at all, but I had to monetize it somehow, right? So, the ads are gone, what are we going to do to cover costs now?  We’re still working out those details.

That’s about it.  I hope you guys love the new layout, and I hope more than anything, it serves you well.  I’d really appreciate comments in the comments section below.