Please be aware that we’re working to fix a bug in the comments section.
When selecting ‘reply’ on certain comments, the page will scroll to the beginning of the comments section. When this happens, you will need to scroll back down to the comment box, which will appear below the comment you’re replying to.
Sorry for the inconvenience. We hope to have this issue resolved within the next 24-48 hours.
Update at 10:25 p.m. on 4/24/11 — Most features of the new site are working, but it may take up to a week to get to the point where we can turn the forums on. Please excuse any snafus with the registration and login process, as well as any site slowness. Thank you for your patience.
Update at 4:15 a.m. on 4/23/11 — The forums are not operational yet. We expect them to be in place by Monday morning.
First, I want to thank all our loyal readers and commenters, who have made this site into a real community in just over 14 months. Our 3,100 Twitter followers, 2,400 email subscribers, 1,300 Facebook fans, and 200 Flickr poolers — as well as the 42,500 article comments we’ve received since launch — are all testaments to the passion many have for Arlington and its unique neighborhoods.
Several months ago, we decided to invest in a site redesign that will help enhance the community functions of the site, while at the same time making the site more visually-appealing. I’m pleased to report that, if all goes well, the new design will be in place by Monday. Here are some of the enhancements you can expect:
Early Saturday morning, the site will go offline so that that we can begin transitioning to the new site. Please excuse any technical problems that may ensue.
Although we’re not indulging in the Silicon Valley cliche of visually labeling the new site a “beta,” it will truly be a beta version for a few months. We expect fixes and changes to be a continuous process for a couple of months after launch. Feel free to use the comments section of this article to discuss the new design, report bugs and suggest changes.
Thank you again for your loyalty. Have a happy and relaxing Easter weekend and we’ll see you back here on Monday.
Tonight’s Crystal City 5K Friday race is your last chance to snap photos for our ‘Flickr Flash’ photo contest.
Submit your shots from this race or any previous 5K Friday race to the contest’s Flickr stream by Sunday for a chance to win gift cards to local restaurants.
A panel will pick ten finalists and ARLnow.com readers will select the winners next week. Good luck to all contest participants!
Photographers: want to show off your skills and get a chance to win gift cards to local restaurants?
If so, head down to the 5K race on Crystal Drive in Crystal City tonight and get a few photos of anything race-related. Upload the photos to our contest Flickr group and get a chance to win some tasty prizes.
If you brought your camera to last week’s race and haven’t uploaded your photos yet, feel free to upload them now.
With any luck the rain will have passed by the time the race starts. The contest is sponsored by ARLnow.com, Foto DC, Crystal City BID and Pacers.
Flickr photo by Diltch1
Update on 4/8/11 — Good news for fair-weather photographers who don’t want to brave today’s rain: the contest has been extended by two weeks.
Tomorrow hundreds of runners will kick off the first Crystal City 5K Friday of the year, and we’re hosting a contest to make the evening race as competitive for photographers as it is for runners.
ARLnow.com, in partnership with Crystal City BID, FotoDC and Pacers, is challenging photographers of all skill levels to take photos of the first four 5K Friday races and upload up to five to a specially-designated contest page on Flickr. Feel free to use your creativity and take photos of anything race-related.
On Sunday, April 24, a panel of representatives from all four organizations will help choose ten finalists. Then it’s up to ARLnow.com readers to vote for the winning photos.
We’re offering the following prizes to the top three vote-getters:
The winners will be announced during the race after-party at Crystal City’s FLASH photo exhibit. Happy snapping!
As it turns out, we’re pretty talkative.
This site has been around for less than a year, and yesterday we reached our 20,000th comment. When we launched, some people questioned whether Arlington was “interesting” enough for the site to succeed. Why not write about D.C., or Alexandria, or national politics, some asked.
About 2.2 million page views later, I think we have our answer.
Thanks for the support, Arlington!
Here’s wishing you and yours a Christmas filled with joy and togetherness.
See you back here Monday morning.
Update on 12/23 — We have a winner.
When Synetic Theater offered us two free tickets to their family-friendly performance of The Nutcracker — playing in Crystal City through Jan. 16 — we immediately realized that this was a perfect opportunity for a holiday-themed contest.
Since haiku and ugly holiday sweater contests are old hat, here’s what we’re going to do instead:
Compose a poem about Arlington, in the style of a classic holiday song or story. For instance, you might work brown flip flops into Twas the Night Before Christmas.
Submit your masterpiece in the comments section, and be sure to use your real email address so we can tell you how to claim your Nutcracker tickets if you’re the winner.
Please keep your poem short and lighthearted. Mean-spirited or obscene submissions will be removed.
We’ll pick our favorite and announce the champion around this time tomorrow.
Photo courtesy Synetic Theater
A quick programming note: ARLnow.com will be up until the wee hours tonight bringing you live, on-location election coverage. We’ll be reporting from Democratic and Republican victory parties, bringing you the latest results, photos and quotes from local leaders.
With that said, I wanted to offer a quick apology for anybody who tried to access the site between noon and 4:00 this afternoon. An ARLnow.com story was linked to by the ever-popular Drudge Report this morning. The flood of web traffic from that one link caused the site to crash — multiple times.
After two server upgrades we were able to get the site back up, albeit running very slowly. After another upgrade things were pretty much back to normal.
Since we were busy with the server, the site went a while without any new posts. Rest assured that we’ll get to any planned non-election-related stories tomorrow.
Thanks for your patience.
ARLnow.com is nominated for a 2010 Arlington Best Business award, and we need your help to win it.
If you like the original news and information we provide on a daily basis, please vote for us online, under the category “Arlington’s Best Place to Learn Something New.”
Our most formidable opponent in the voting may be the Arlington Public Library (which isn’t really a business, coincidentally). The library won last year, commands considerable loyalty from the community (after all, they give away stuff for free) and has physical outposts around the community where they can post signs and such for thousands to see.
Help us defeat the big, bad library by voting. Thank you!
Disclaimer: The ABBIES are an ARLnow.com advertiser.
The nominations are in for the ABBIES, Arlington’s annual business awards. Now it’s time to cast your vote in categories like Arlington’s Best “Bargain” Restaurant, Arlington’s Best Happy Hour and Arlington’s Best Community-Based Nonprofit. (Disclaimer: the ABBIES are an ARLnow.com advertiser.)
This year, there’s actually a category that more important than the others, at least as far as we’re concerned. It’s the Best Place to Learn Something New category, featuring a take-no-prisoners competition between Arlington Public Library, Adagio Ballet, Fitness Break, Saffron Dance and yours truly, ARLnow.com.
That’s right, this site is nominated. Thank you to everybody who helped make that happen! Now it’s time to bring it home.
Go to the official voting page and, if you’re so inclined, tick the box next to our name.
The winners will be announced on Nov. 16.
