Introducing Portager Forum, revamped website and new ad options

Thanks to your support, The Portager has covered local news in Portage County for almost six years. 

In that whole time, we’ve been publishing and managing the business using a hodgepodge of online tools held together by the tech equivalent of duct tape. Not ideal, and we were due for an upgrade. So last year, we began overhauling our digital infrastructure using grant funding we received from Press Forward. 

Today I’m excited to introduce our first milestone with the launch of our improved website along with Portage County’s first locally owned online discussion board, the Portager Forum. You now have a friendly and free place to comment on the news, share your events, give feedback to our team and debate local topics. 

We’re also introducing new options for advertisers and improved results reporting. 

And this is just the beginning. Keep reading to see how we’re building a new digital foundation for The Portager.

A better place to share ideas

When Twitter and Facebook rose to popularity in the early 2010s, I was excited about the possibility of a digital town square where anybody could openly speak their mind. 

Nearly 15 years later, I am now completely disillusioned. Big Tech used social media as a shortcut to windfall profits at our expense, collecting our data and using it to manipulate us with scam advertising while perpetuating political polarization that’s tearing our country apart. Yes, I still use Facebook to stay in touch with people, but I have to fight through a wall of rage bait and bizarre advertising to do it.

With the Portager Forum, you no longer have to trade your personal data for connection. And you no longer have to let Big Tech algorithms mediate your conversations.

Our forum is powered by open source software that we’ve integrated into our new website. Whenever we publish a new article, a new topic appears in the Portager Forum where you can leave comments and talk about it. (For instance, you can find the topic for this article here.)

Top comments also appear at the bottom of each article on our website. You can scroll to the bottom of this one to see. 

You can also post new topics of your own on the Portager Forum, whether you’re organizing a bake sale, sharing your opinion about a news event, or looking for local advice. Almost any topic is welcome as long as it's productive, interesting or helpful. And you’ll find a friendly community of Portager readers willing to engage with you. 

The forum has moderators, but interactions stay positive primarily because of the trust-based system built into the platform. Good comments rise to the top and bad ones get suppressed or deleted by active community members who earn the ability to maintain the forum.

The Portager Forum will replace the Feedletter tool we use to gather feedback for the Mailbox feature in the paid version of The Portager email newsletter. If you post a topic or an interesting comment in the Portager Forum, there’s a good chance I’ll promote it to all our readers in the Mailbox.

How to use the Portager Forum

Anyone with a Portager account can post topics in the forum and comment on topics posted by others. You’ll need to log in at theportager.com using the email address for your account. Then visit the Portager Forum and click the Log In button at the top right. You will then be automatically signed in to the forum.

To post a topic, click the New Topic button. 

Then write a title and select a category, such as Events or Random, from the dropdown menu. Once you’ve finished writing your post, click the Create Topic button.

Faster, more flexible website

The Portager’s website has been rebuilt from the ground up in ReachOut and redesigned to give you a better reading experience. It’s faster and lighter, so pages load more quickly on mobile devices, even if you have a bad internet connection. And you’ll find that it’s much easier to find past articles using our improved search feature.

At the top of the homepage, you’ll find a link to the Portager Forum by clicking on Forum. And you’ll also find a link to our improved events calendar. If you’re logged in, you’ll be able to click the New event button to publish your event on the calendar. (Your submission will be sent to our team first before it’s published to prevent spam.)

We also updated our font to make it easier to read. I really loved our old font, Playfair Display, but research shows that sans serif fonts may be better for people with reading impairments. We’ll still use the old font in certain situations as a way to connect to our publication’s roots.

New for advertisers

With the new website, you’ll also notice some new ad positions. The most important one is the big banner on the homepage that currently says “Grow with your community.” That entire banner is an ad, but not just anyone can buy it. That space is prioritized for nonprofits and other organizations with a social mission.

While other publishers might charge more for its most prominent ad, at The Portager it’s our most affordable. We’re calling it the Social Banner, and we’re renting that space out weekly starting Jan. 1. The cost is $75 per week. We’ll share more details about how to reserve your spot in the coming days.

The new web platform also gives us the ability to track impressions and clicks more easily. Soon we’ll be able to generate a monthly report for our advertisers so they can see how their investment is performing.

To learn about advertising, get in touch.

What’s coming next

This is just the first phase of our digital transformation. Here’s what we’re working on next:

• Bug fixes: There are still several issues with the new website, which is inevitable any time you migrate from one platform to another. You can help by sharing your feedback with us at editors@theportager.com.
• New email provider: We’ll be ditching Mailchimp and moving our newsletter to ReachOut as well. You won’t notice much difference after we make the switch, but it might allow us to add new features in the future and it will centralize our ads management on a single platform.
• Ditching Memberful: I love Memberful and the people who work there, but it doesn’t make sense to manage subscriptions on a third-party tool. We’ll now be able to run our subscriber list directly in ReachOut. This will give you a much smoother sign-in process and reduce the number of technical glitches due to using so many different platforms.

We’ll keep you posted as we launch new features. And we look forward to hearing your thoughts. You can share your comments with us by email or by commenting on this topic in the forum.

Thank you. Your support is helping to build a better Portage County through ideas and action.