Happy Birthday Kingstonist!

Okay, in actuality Kingstonist’s first birthday was some time last week, but that doesn’t really matter. I mean, you didn’t even call, or stop by for a big piece of cake. What gives? It’s been slightly over a year since we officially launched Kingstonist.com, and with our first trip around the sun behind us, there are loads of accomplishments to brag about. Our volunteer contributors pieced together 246 posts, and helped our Flickr and YouTube become huge repositories of the scenery and events in Kingston. To Danielle, Josie, Steve, Junior, Tyffanie, Krista, Duke and Zenieth – thank you so much for all of your hard work, dedication and continued support. I would also like to acknowledge our awesome, unbelievable and somehow still-growing readers for taking the time to comment, and spread the word about Kingstonist!

As you’ve probably noticed, Kingstonist looks a bit different than it did last Friday, thanks to our brand new WordPress theme. The last minute scramble to get everything installed and configured would not have happened without the generous help of of our web guru, Josie Vallier. Kingstonist’s new theme sports a 3-column layout, while featured content is in rotation at the top of the page, and older posts are condensed better than the previous layout, which required endless scrolling to see everything on the main page. As well, the right-most column lists popular posts, and the most recent comments, which look really fancy with the personalized Gravatar icons. In the next few weeks, we’ll be hard at work updating thumbnail images throughout the archives, retooling the events calendar, and finally adding contributor bios.

This past weekend we caved in and subscribed to Twitter, which has already afforded us better connectivity with the local community. Don’t believe me? Well then, I suppose I won’t tell you about the Tragically Hip’s newly announced benefit concert at the K-Rock Centre (May 23rd), which was tweeted earlier this morning. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As we crawl towards the terrible twos, we’ve got even bigger plans for making Kingstonist better than ever.

Once again, keep spreading the word, thanks for reading, and keep those comments coming!