Happy birthday to the new capitalpress.com

It was one year ago this month that we relaunched the Capital Press website with a new look and a ton of new features.

We still think of it as our "new" website, but as of Aug. 1, it is now 1 year old.

The site continues to grow and evolve as we find new options we want to provide for our visitors and based on suggestions we hear from visitors to the site.

While you can find all of the ads and stories you would find in print editions of the Capital Press on our website, it is, in many ways, a very different information service. Our print editions only come out once a week, but we update the website at least five days a week. Some of the things you will find on our website are only available there.

It is a work in progress. We hope you like the progress so far and find some, or all, of the expanded features helpful. But we would be surprised if anyone is taking advantage of all of the features. There are so many, sometimes even those of us that work for the Capital Press lose track of some of the features our website.

The website is designed so you can get news and advertising in a manner that best suits your needs. If you haven't checked out the site, here are some of key features of the site:

Search stories and ads at the same time — From the search box in the top right corner of every page you can type in what you want to find and search across all of our site's current stories and ads to find your search word or search terms.

Searchable archives — If you are looking for story from a past edition of Capital Press, you can search our online archive of material dating back to 2002.

Download PDF copies of the print editions — If you want to see how a story looked in print, or want a color copy of a page that appeared in our paper, but someone recycled your copy, subscribers can download a PDF of an entire edition and print out any pages they want.

A la carte options for non subscribers — If you can't have a subscription to the Capital Press, but want access to all the features of our website, you can buy access by the day — or longer — right from your computer.

Mobile-enabled pages — Smart phones and other mobile devices make it easy to access websites when you are away from the computer, but they are not always convenient to read on a small screen. If you want to view web stories from pages designed specifically for use on mobile devices, you can check out our mobile website:

E-newsletters — We offer multiple options for electronic newsletters that can be sent direct to your e-mail on your computer or mobile phone. We have a daily newsletter, a weekly newsletter of our top stories, California and Idaho newsletters, a dairy newsletter and one for livestock news. All you have to do is register on our site, and tell us which newsletters you want sent to your e-mail. Pick one, pick a couple or pick them all, that's your choice.

SMS text alerts for breaking news — When big news breaks, we can send you a text alert with a link to the story delivered right to your cell phone. You can sign up for this service by registering in the website. And don't worry. We won't bombard you with text messages. We average less than one SMS alert a week.

Multiple RSS feeds — If you want to monitor ag news on specific topics or based on geography, you can monitor a selection of RSS feeds. Click here for the full list of feeds we offer.

User forums — This is perhaps the most underutilized area of our site, but one which offer great potential. Registered users of our site can post question and comments for each other, share information or ask questions of us here at the Capital Press. It's your forum. You can make it whatever you want it to be.

Online classified ad placement — As always, you can call us at the Capital Press and we can you build a line ad to sell a piece of farm equipment, tools or anything else you are trying to sell. But if you want to to build the ad yourself, you can place your line ad online through our online ad placement system.

State-specific weather — On our California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Montana pages, you can find state-specific weather information, including weather radar maps to see what Mother Nature may have in store for you.

RSS feeds with headlines from our sister papers — Capital Press is part of a family of newspapers, and we can give you access to some of the top news headlines from our sister papers throughout the Pacific Northwest at this link. Through our site we can give you a peak at what's happening in other areas where East Oregonian Publishing Company has newspapers.

Social media integration — We know that everyone wants to get their news specifically from a news website. So if you prefer to monitor developments through a Facebook or Twitter account, you can like up with us on those services. You can also keep an eye on what people on Twitter are saying on agriculture topics on our home page and other pages on our website's home page.

Put your events on our calendar — Have an upcoming event you want featured on the Capital Press online calendar? You can post your calendar listing directly to our calendar on the website with as much detail as you want to include.

Support services — A new service we launched this summer can help you improve your online reach and customer connections. You don't have to be a digital marketing expert. Let Capital Press Digital Marketing Services help you improve your online footprint.

Those are just some of the things you can find on our website that's celebrating it's birthday this month. Thanks for checking it out and for telling us the things you want an need in an agriculture information site. Your suggestions pushed us to expand our offerings. Thank you for your suggestions over the years. We appreciate them and hope they have come back to you in a site that is more useful to you.