Today, we’d like to introduce you to the newest member of the Roanoke Times blog family: Times Square.

The new blog is meant to be a hub of information about The Roanoke Times and the stories we produce. It will be managed by our social media editor Stephanie Ogilvie, who plans to keep it fresh with everything from our most popular story of the day to sharing news about our website redesign.

Here’s how Stephanie explains it: “We see this space as a community gathering place to help you connect with us — and other readers. We envision a bustling, digital public square (which helped inspire the name) — and a place to speak directly with you about why we do what we do.”

Times Square will be the new go-to place for newsroom information, and so it will absorb the From the Newsroom blog, which will be retired.

And it will also absorb this blog, whose goal had been to tell readers about new offerings from The Roanoke Times. Now that will be within the realm of Times Square, which the RefreshRT team will help populate.

So as we gear up to introduce our new website, please head to Times Square for the latest updates. We’re looking forward to seeing how readers will use the new blog and to the next step in the evolution of roanoke.com.

You may notice the image in the center of the page is large much larger than photos on the current roanoke.com. You will see greater emphasis on photos throughout the new site. There will be more galleries and none of our photos will be displayed in Flash, so they will be viewable from tablets and mobile devices.

Another new feature is a blog called Times Square, located about midway down the homepage. This blog is intended to be like an information concierge, pointing out new features of the site, and highlighting what stories are being talked about either on our site or in social media.

You will also see all of our blogs are easier to find on this homepage (listed down the left side of the page). You will find the blogs in this same spot throughout the other pages of the site. You’ll also see social media buttons and tools for sharing news and photos throughout the site, making it easy to share content. One of our primary goals with the redesign has been to make the site more engaging and to highlight people, and these areas of the gateway are some examples of how we’ve done that.

Take a look at the page and give us your thoughts. If you missed the previous post on the new navigation, check it out,  and you will see the navigation bar in better context here on this homepage.

Your feedback is important to us as we continue development of the site and prepare it for beta.

New roanoke.com navigation toolbars

Our development team has been working hard, and here is the first peek at the navigation of the new roanoke.com. Click to enlarge the photo, take a look and tell us what you think.

What you’ll see is the main navigation (top bar) with the sub-navigation bar below. (For instance, in the first line, you’ll see that the News tab brings up the light blue bar below). These navigation bars will be on every page throughout the new site and are designed to make it easier to find and access the stories, photos and blogs you look for.

The top-level navigation bar will feature five primary news topics. If you hover over one of these sections, you’ll find a sub-navigation bar highlighting more specific content. This new navigation puts the most popular sections just a click away from anywhere in the site. For example, if you’re looking for Virginia Tech football highlights, hover over Sports and can click directly to Virginia Tech.

Within the navigation, we’ve also anchored some tools such as submit a news tip and share a photo. The search tool is also prominently positioned within the top nav bar, making it easy to access from any page within the new roanoke.com.

What pages of roanoke.com do you visit the most? As you check out this image, think of that and see if you can navigate to those pages.

We welcome your feedback.

USA Today's beta site

It’s always exciting to see how another newspaper handles a redesign.

In this case, it’s USA Today, which launched its redesigned beta website and newspaper (follow this link for a front page look courtesy of the Newseum) last week.

For those of you familiar with iPad’s Flipboard, you’ll notice some similarities in the way USA Today’s beta site presents entries into other sections. It’s also a very visually driven site, and note the bar at the bottom of the page, with icons directing you how to “get the paper” or leave feedback.

Overall, the beta site feels very tablet/small-screen-focused.

What do you think of the redesign? What aspects do you like or dislike? And what do you think of the redesigned newspaper?

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We will continue to moderate all comments. You can also report a comment. To flag a comment, click the flag symbol at the bottom of the comment.

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Keep up with the conversation.

You can see what others are saying by subscribing to the thread of comments on a story, and receive email notifications when someone has replied to your comment. To do this, when you are in Disqus, go to account settings—edit profile—notifications.

Check out this new commenting tool. Once you sign up through Disqus, you can adjust your personal settings within your account to subscribe to threads, post to social sites and much more. Check it out and tell us what you think. If you’ve used Disqus on other sites, let us know what you like and dislike about it.

That’s why we’ve launched our Best Of Holiday Shopping poll.

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday season, we want to know things such as: What are your favorite local shops, and what’s the best local holiday event? Where do you go to find the perfect gift for that person who has everything? And in the hustle and bustle of the season, where do you turn to for a massage or hairdo?

From today through Sept. 30, visit www.roanoke.com/bestof to write in your nominations.

Here’s a quick Q&A on how it works:

Q: Who is eligible?

To win, businesses must have a physical store located in Southwest Virginia — anywhere from the Hot Springs and Lexington area to Lynchburg, from Smith Mountain Lake to Wytheville, and of course the Roanoke and New River valleys.

The “hitting the road” category is an exception to this rule.

Q: How many businesses can I vote for?

We encourage you to check out all the categories and vote for your favorites in as many of them as possible.

However, we know that you may not have a business to nominate for each category, so all that’s required for your vote to count is submitting at least two votes per category out of the eight total categories (see list below).

Q: How are winners selected?

It’s all about readers’ choice. In each category, the top nominees are calculated based solely on votes submitted by readers. We will name a gold, silver and bronze winner in each category.

There also may be honorable mentions.

Q: When will winners be announced?

We will publish the results in a special section inserted into The Roanoke Times on Sunday, Nov. 11, just in time to help you plan your holiday shopping and activities.

Q: Have another question or suggestion?

We want to hear from you. Email us at bestof@roanoke.com.

SHARE AWAY: Once you’ve submitted your brilliant shopping suggestions, please share our poll with all your Facebook friends and Twitter (#bestofswva) and Pinterest followers. The more nominations we get, the better the guide will be.

PRIZES FOR VOTING: Each week during the submission period, we will offer a special prize to a voter who also leaves us his/her email address. The prizes are different each week, and the winners will be drawn randomly from the email addresses we’ve collected.

The prizes for this first week of voting are two season passes to Broadway in Roanoke shows at Roanoke Civic Center.

The five shows in the season are “Shrek The Musical,” “A Chorus Line,” “Elvis Lives,” “Dreamgirls” and “West Side Story.”

And if you own a business or know someone who does, make sure they know about Best Of Holiday Shopping — they could be nominated! Find promotional materials and more here.

Thank you to the nearly 190 readers who responded to our poll about your news source during the massive power outage last month.

You shared really valuable information and ideas about how we can better cover and deliver news in such a situation. We found it interesting that the printed newspaper and social media were equally important sources for updates during the outage.

Almost 42 percent of those who responded said that without power and a smartphone, they relied on the newspaper for information. About 32 percent said they turned to Facebook and 22 percent followed Twitter.

“Since all communication, including cell, internet, TV, land line, etc., etc. were out, I went to a local restaurant on occasion and bought a newspaper,” one respondent wrote. “This storm just proved with all of the technology available today, everything was cut off in a split second.”

A few responders even suggested we put out more papers. “There weren’t enough Roanoke Times newspapers to go around.”

The results reaffirm our approach to pushing news out via as many channels as we can. One thing we’ll keep in mind in the future is possibly repurposing some of the online content for print. For example, one person said that we should have printed a list of places where you can get ice. We had something similar on Facebook, where we asked people to post what businesses were open or closed. Maybe next time we could consider also publishing that information in the newspaper.

The poll also revealed that people depended on mobile news sites (40.5 percent) and websites (21.5 percent). Several gave kudos to one of The Roanoke Times community sites, thebotetourtview.com, to social media updates from Botetourt View reporter Cathy Benson and to weather guru Kevin Myatt for keeping them connected.

“Kevin Myatt on Twitter is awesome. Keep him happily tweeting and you’ve done all I can ask.”

Finally, we realized from your feedback that we omitted from the poll a critical source of information during the outage – radio.

Many commented that radio was their primary – and often times only – source when the power was out. Some suggested that radio stations should consider interrupting their regular programming with frequent updates during an outage.

“Please put updates on the radio!!!! I had nothing else. My internet and land line phone was also out. How do expect me to look at anything on facebook, twitter, mobile news site? (I do not have a smart phone),” one responder wrote. “Go back to the radio especially at night when people are more worried and concerned. I listened to the radio as much as I could but basically heard nothing.”

“I used a battery operated radio, but stations were not giving out info but at regular news times….and then info was limited….they should have been updating/repeating info for shelters, etc. every 15 minutes,” another responder said.

To recap, here are some of the key takeaways and opportunities:

• More frequent updates on the radio.
• Better advertise The Roanoke Times text alert system (some reader said they didn’t know we offered them) and consider more text alerts.
• All news organizations should use social media to provide frequent updates.

Do you have other suggestions on ways we can better deliver news and information during similar situations? Please share with us. 

JEANNA DUERSCHERL | The Roanoke Times On July 2, David Robertson and Steve Jones removed juice from the Mick-or-Mack IGA shelves in New Castle. The store had no electricity, but was still serving customers by using generator power to use their cash registers.

Now that the derecho has passed and the power is back on, we want to hear from you about how you stayed connected to news throughout the storm and the days following.

We realized that many of our readers were not getting the news the way they normally did because of power and Internet outages and many were bunking with family and friends or staying at hotels, where access to computers was more limited or non-existent. Very quickly we started using as many channels as possible to share storm and storm recovery-related news — especially mobile channels.

The night of the storm, we sent a rare text message, directing readers to our mobile website, m.roanoke.com, for updates about the power outages and storm damage. We sent another text alert on Saturday with the same message.

During the weekend, we used Twitter and Facebook around the clock to give updates on when power was expected to be restored, and even what businesses were open. Our use of Facebook that weekend might have been one of our most successful (and useful) examples of crowdsourcing: We asked our fans to report what businesses were open or closed, and that post received almost 100 comments full of helpful tips our newsroom couldn’t have produced alone.

To make it easier to find storm-related stories, we organized all of that content in one area, and those links were prominent and accessible from pages on roanoke.com and m.roanoke.com.

Later in the week, we hit the streets and captured Roanokers sounding off about the derecho in this video.

These events are hard to plan for, so we strive each time to better understand what worked and what we can do differently to keep you better informed and connected. So tell us how you stay connected and any suggestions on what we can do next time by taking the poll below.

And if you have ideas on how we can continue to harness the power of social networks for public service, please share them in the comments or in the poll.

Today’s theme is oldies but goodies.

As you think about outdoor activities this summer, please check out our hiking and biking guides to the Roanoke Valley and beyond. We built these guides some time ago, but they’re still relevant and useful. For instance, you can search for a hike by difficulty or a bike ride by location.

In the redesign, we plan on giving these guides a more prominent and permanent home. Until then, don’t let them go to waste! Happy trails!

Interns Emily Mosh and Evelyn Rupert covered the preliminaries Thursday, and will return tonight and again Saturday evening, when the next Miss Virginia will be crowned.

Earlier this week we used live tweeting to cover Mitt Romney’s visit to Salem. Using social media allows us to publish news as it’s happening . We also had four bloggers capturing reactions to Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling: Blue Ridge Caucus, MedBeat, Dan Casey and RoundTable. The format allowed a variety of venues for different conversations to occur quickly after the release of the ruling. Check it out here.

If you don’t use  Twitter, you can still see our coverage of the pageant in the The Roanoke Times and on roanoke.com.

Have you checked out our @RkeTimesLive twitter feed? Let us know your thoughts.