Dear Hangouters,

I hope that premonsoon showers have reduced temperatures all across
India. In this past few months we have been keeping busy with a
mission to promote Himachal, its people and culture.

I am pleased to inform you that your favourite site HimVani.com has
got a facelift. We've redesigned the site and it's more a website now
than a blog. But right now I'll still say that it's BETA and not a
final version. So expect some more changes here and there.

We've been the leaders in Himachal web space for over a year now. And
we're far far ahead from our nearest competitor, whom we've taught a
few lessons on online space. And here we too have taken the lead to
give you more. And to be honest the new design had been keeping us low
for the moment on content.

So what should you look forward to:

-- The logo colours have been inversed to give a corporate look.

-- The basic colours of the site though have been retained. In fact
our survey showed that people in offices asked from a far of place if
they had opened HimVani.com just by seeing the colours. We did
experiment with some new colours, but then on popular feedback we
reverted to the old ones.

-- The blog look is out and the News website look is in.

-- We have more content on the home page and some categories have been
brought on it?

-- The Poll breaks free from the Sidebar and comes in the main content area

-- Similarly, "News from Other Sources" has come in the main content
area. (But it might go back into the Sidebar. :) )

-- The Search Result page is no longer a long long page ... Results
come as excerpts.

-- The long list of Categories has been moved from the Home Page to
the inside pages.

-- Many advertisers have been approaching us and asking for the option
to advertise on HimVani but we had refrained from advertising till now
to concentrate on the content. But now we have large rooms of space
available for advertisements, so happy news for advertisers as well
(and for us too as we may eventually be able to recover domain name
and server space costs, and may be if we earn profits we may pay some
of our
writers or put up an award for the Best Writer of the Year" or so).

-- We've added the "Print" option of the article and also added the
"Mail the story" option too.

-- What has affected negatively, however is the RSS Feeds. We've let
our blog live in the directory but shifted the domain name to the
root, that means affect to the RSS Feeds. Those of you, who've
subscribed to our earlier RSS Feed http://himvani.com/news/feed may
please change it to http://himvani.com/feed or bettr still use the
Feedburner feed, which in
future would remain same irrespective of the changes we make. So the
Feedburner Feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/himvani/news

-- The Comments Feed too has got affected. The old one

http://himvani.com/news/comments/feed has given way to

http://himvani.com/comments/feed or better still the Feedburner one:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/himvani/comments.

-- And most importantly, we'll be missing from Google News for a
couple of weeks now as we have to Resubmit.

-- But overall as the site is your initiative - citizens' effort, we
ask for your feedback how to improve it? And what changes still can be
brought in. Or what else would you like to see on the Home Page?

-- Also, trust us, we are going to get only aggressive here on, so
watch out for surprises, more content, and more features.

Send in your feedback. What you like and what you didn't.

And let me thank all who've made this possible with the ideas. I'm not
going into specific names as each one of us here has contributed his
bit with ideas.

Again, I'll ask you to please encourage us with your feedback - roses
as well as brickbats. We continue to look out for volunteers who are
willing to connect with us and participate in this endeavour.

Thanks to Nitying and rest of Shimla Hangout team for their continued
support and patronage.

with warm regards

On behalf of Team HimVani

Varun