Tega Cay Talk — Big changes in the new year

As the new year begins, I have plans to increase the efficiency of my time spent online, and that means big changes for Tega Cay Talk. One of the main reasons I started this site, back in late-2009, was to address a lack of available information (especially online) about Tega Cay events and activities. Since that time, the city has made drastic improvements to its website, which now features a consistent interface for exploring city information, committees and council agendas and info, a calendar, and customizable alerts for a variety of topics (this is not to say that we should be content with just the official site ... there's always the need for independent voices, fact-checkers, and challengers), and we've all grown more connected as our communication options have expanded (we've seen several blogs cater to our area, local magazines have been started up, and we've connected increasingly on social networks like Twitter and Facebook). Meanwhile, Ning — the service I've been using to build & host this site — has been periodically raising the cost of their service, and adding new features that aren't particularly useful for this site, while neglecting to improve many issues related to existing basic functionality. It's becoming clear that the goals of this site could probably be achieved more easily through other means. So... 

This will be a streamlined, simplified experience which aims to aggregate info that's already available from a variety of sources, while still allowing anyone to contribute their own content. It will be a fresh start, though, which means any content on the current site will go away (unless I manually re-add selected items). I hope to archive the posts, so that at least I'll be able to refer to the info, if necessary. Meanwhile, I'm looking into whether there's a way for individuals to download any content they want to keep, in bulk (without having to save items one-by-one...). I'll be posting info in the TC Talk Clubhouse group, to keep you all up to date with the coming changes. 

The Facebook page will remain, as will the Twitter account, and I hope to have their activity better integrated with the new site. 

Thanks to all of you for being here and showing your continued interest in and support of our community!

Happy new year!

~

Ben Ullman

Publisher, Tega Cay Talk