Improve Your Hyperlocal Site, Now

Finding and reading different hyperlocal news sites is the best thing about having this directory. Over here on the blog portion, we offer suggestions about how to make those sites better and easier to run.

Here are today's ideas for taking your site up a notch, without breaking the bank or getting your hands too dirty.

Photos

Finding the right pictures to go along with the day's news is one of the most time consuming parts of making a good community news site. Now, take those pictures up a notch.

Reduce the File Size: Large files take longer to load, trim down those photos. Don't give your reader an extra second to think about clicking over to another site.

Making the actual size of the image smaller is just the first step. Saving the picture at a lower resolution will be a big help too. While you're at it, run the picture through one of the tools that can bring down file size without sacrficing image quality, like smush.it or shrink-o-matic.

After slimming down the image files, test your site and see what else can be done to speed up your website.

Add an Image Border: Nice image borders are a quick way to add some class to a news website. They make each picture look a little more hand chosen, and not just slapped up there at the last minute.

Without Border

With Border

Classy right? All this, and it only takes a couple little lines of code in your stylesheet.

img {

padding:1px;

border:1px solid #021a40;

}

To find your CSS file in Wordpress, check out: Finding your CSS files in Wordpress. Once you get the hang of it, there are plenty of variations on the image border to try out.