Patch, Refreshed

It might not feel like spring this week – brrrr! – but Patch has thrown open all the windows and is doing some freshening up!
We wanted to give you a quick tour in case you noticed that your Patch looks a little different today.

• Traffic & Gas is now Commute. In this section, you can find up-to-the-minute information on gas prices in town (and with the Connecticut average now over $4/gallon, that’s great to know before you leave the house) and where you might find slowdowns on the roadways.
• Places, which is the complete listing of every business, nonprofit and municipal office in town, is again being called Directory. We are so proud of our Directory, and the way it makes Patch the one-stop place for all the information you need about the community. We invite business owners to claim their listing—it is super easy.
• Our Neighborhood Gallery, where you can upload all your great photos from life in town, is now called Pics & Clips. You can upload not just photos to Patch, but also all your fun videos as well.
• We moved the weather icon next to the Patch branding so you can find it more quickly.
• We moved, well, YOU closer to the top! (Our "shout stream" is now front and center to show all your comments off.)
• The biggest change is that our comment stream and our events calendar have swapped places. Still all the great commentary on articles and all the amazing events that are happening in town, just in different places. Don’t forget to add your voice to the conversation or put your event on the calendar!
• Still in the same place but always worth a reminder: If you are not a registered user of Patch (and you need to be to upload photos or post comments), go to the upper right hand corner of the home page, click “Join” and sign right up. And are you getting our newsletter in your email inbox first thing every morning? It’s the easiest way to stay in touch with what’s happening in town.
• In the center of the home page, just underneath the comment stream, you’ll see a new area called …What’s Up With You? We wanted to make it even easier (if that’s possible!) for you to add your photos and videos, your thoughts and opinions on the Local Voices blogging platform, and your events to our site. So we’ve added these three links for you here.
• And of course we made things look nicer.

While the site might look a little different today, we still offer the same robust coverage of everything happening in your community. That was, is, and will always be our mission. We hope you like our “refreshed” home page and we'd love to know what you think of our tweaks—email me at jessie.king@patch.com or offer a comment below.