Beacon Hill Blog

Beacon Hill Blog has a new self-serve advertising system

Please forgive this momentary promotional interruption. We wanted to let you know that we’ve recently gone live with a new self-serve ad system here on the BHB. To advertise on the blog, just go to http://beaconhillblog.instiads.com/, click “Create Your Ad”, and follow the steps, including uploading your ad art and paying online. It’s quick and easy. You can also click the various “Advertise Here” links you see on our website. We have several ad positions available, including text-only ads and image ads of varying sizes. This is a great way to target Beacon Hillers and other folks in Southeast Seattle!

Now, back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

Tags: advertising

BHB changing servers to reduce outages

You may have noticed periodic outages of the blog in the last couple of weeks. We do know about it, and we have been struggling trying to solve the problem. At this point we believe it is a problem with the server itself and so we are moving to a new server at our ISP. You may see some more down time while the move is occurring, but we hope that will be the last of it. Cross your fingers!

Tags: down time

Deadline to send us your grad photo and announcement is today

Last week we invited Beacon Hill graduates of high school or college to send us their names and pictures so we can feature the happy graduates on the blog. Today’s the deadline, folks! So far we have only one graduate. We know there are more of you. Email us.

Tags: graduation

Beacon Hill graduates, send us your names

Back in the day, community newspapers used to publish announcements when local residents graduated from high school or college. We’d like to do that, too. If you are a Beacon Hill resident and graduating from high school or college this year, please send us your name, school name, which type of diploma or degree you’ve earned, and a graduation photo by June 15. We’ll post the graduation announcements we receive shortly after that.

Tags: graduation

The BHB wants YOU

Do you have something to say that is relevant to Beacon Hill (North, Mid-, or South)? If so, the BHB wants you. We are looking for guest writers on a variety of Beacon-related topics, and particularly for folks who live in Mid-Beacon or South Beacon. Living toward the north end of the Hill, we know we don’t always hear about what’s going on further south as well as the people who live there do. We are committed to covering the entire Hill, and we are glad to feature other voices than our own.

Don’t be shy — you don’t have to have perfect writing skills to do this. We can polish up your prose if needed.

Here are some potential starter topics, though these are not the only ones, and we welcome your ideas:

• Raising kids on Beacon Hill
• Voices from the various cultures represented on the Hill
• History of the Hill
• Restaurant reviews on the Hill and nearby
• What to do on the weekends
• City political issues as they directly affect the Hill
• Land use and development
• South Beacon Spotlight
• Mid-Beacon Spotlight
• Crime
• Gardening on the Hill
• Schools and education issues
• A Greener Hill: environmental issues
• Beacon by Bus: Life here without a car
• BeaconBike: A cyclist’s life on Beacon Hill (Bike-On Hill?)

Interested in a regular writing slot or just a one-time opinion piece? Either way, email us.

Tags: mid-beacon, south beacon, writing

Keep an eye on the BHB forums

If you haven’t visited the Beacon Hill Blog’s forums, you might want to check them out! They are a good place to have ongoing discussions, or post about things you want to buy, sell, or barter.

Here’s what’s currently happening in the forums:

• Knitters are organizing a stitch ‘n’ bitch
• Steve has a queen size futon to sell
• We have a 3 cup rice cooker and a tv to give away
• Heidi is organizing a toddlers’ play group

…and more! Please check the forums out, and have fun!

Tags: community, forum

Merry Christmas from the Beacon Hill Blog!

We wish you all a very peaceful, safe, warm, and happy Christmas!

– Wendi and Jason

Tags: christmas, holiday

How this blog community can work for you

We’ve got a lot of stuff going on at the Beacon Hill Blog these days, and I wanted to post a quick reminder of the various features you can use and some of the ways you can be part of the community.

• The Beacon Hill Blog photo pool at Flickr is an ever-growing collection of Beacon Hill photos. Have you taken a photo of the Hill? If you add it to the pool, we might feature it in the blog.
• The forums are brand new this week, and they are a great place to post requests and recommendations, Help Wanted listings, rants and raves, and more. Currently in the forums: a request for veterinarian recommendations, and a query about organizing a knitters’ stitch ‘n’ bitch on the Hill.
• The events calendar shows upcoming events that we’ve posted about in the blog. Is your upcoming event not listed? Send us the info so we can add it!
• If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow our Twitter feed. It includes announcements of our posts, as well as other comments and some behind-the-scenes info.
• We also have a Beacon Hill Blog Facebook group!
• The mailing lists are the original inspiration for this site. The Beacon Hill neighborhood list began in 1999 with a small group of neighbors and now has more than 325 members who get neighborhood-related discussions and announcements in their email boxes. The list does not mirror the content of the blog; sometimes you see the same things in both places, but often it differs. The list tends to be more conversational, and less newsy. If this sounds like your type of thing, join us! You can also join a very low-volume announcements-only list if you prefer.

Thanks for being part of the blog community so far! We’d love to hear your comments and feedback.

Tags: blog features

Do you have something to say?

I’ve added a forum to the blog (against Jason’s better judgement, I might add). This will give us a place where you can post classifieds, story ideas, job listings, and so on. There will now be a Forum link on the menu at the top of each page.

Please try it out. We want to make sure that the software we are using doesn’t slow down the blog too much or cause any other problems. I’m not particularly thrilled with the user interface (it’s awfully busy), so there may be changes ahead.

Of course, you can still comment on each blog post without using the forum. That won’t change.

Feedback is welcome, as always!

Tags: forum

New Beacon Hill events calendar is up!

In our continuous quest to make this blog more useful, we’ve added a new feature: an Events Calendar. Any of the events we post about on the blog will be listed in the calendar as well, so if you are wondering what’s going on in the neighborhood over the next few weeks, that’s where you should go. The link to Events will be permanently located in the upper right menu of every page on the site.

If you really want to be on top of the neighborhood activities, you can subscribe to the calendar using a feed reader or iCal-compatible software:

• Feed link
• iCal link

Of course, for events to be listed in the calendar, we need to know about them. So please let us know by either emailing us directly, or posting the events to one of the mailing lists. Thanks!

Tags: calendar

BHB on Twitter

The Beacon Hill Blog is now on Twitter; follow us here. You can also see our latest tweets in the sidebar here on the blog. The Twitter feed will contain notifications whenever we post to the blog, and also quick blurbs and comments that might not be fully blog-worthy. See you there!

Tags: twitter

Commenting made easier

Hello, all. We’ve made some changes that I hope you will like.

The blog no longer requires you to register to post comments. So if you tried to comment and were discouraged by the registration requirement, please try again. Comments are moderated the first time you post, but once you’ve had a comment approved, the rest of your comments aren’t moderated, unless they have multiple URLs or other “possible spam” triggers.

We have our own photo pool now at Flickr: the Beacon Hill Blog pool. Please add your Beacon Hill-related photos to the group, and we might feature them here in the blog. (This is similar to what most of the other local blogs and publications are doing with their Flickr pools.)

Tags: commenting, flickr, photography

Hello Beacon Hill!

Welcome to the Beacon Hill Blog. We’re just getting started here, putting together the pieces we hope will become a useful resource for our neighborhood. In the meantime, we encourage you to join the neighborhood mailing list(s).

The blog may be a little rough around the edges for a bit — we’ll be adding and improving things as time goes on. We hope you like it!