Dear people who post on CHS Capitol Hill Seattle,

Thought I’d post this out here in the big wide world instead of restricting to e-mail. Haven’t bothered you all in awhile so, first, let me again thank you for doing so much to make the site a great source of information and entertainment. Let’s get to the meat of the matter.

• First, we have rolled out some new code here and there. Those of you participating in our revenue sharing program will now see better reporting on your Your Page. We now show you how much money you’ve earned in the current month and how many impressions your posts have generated to produce that advertising revenue. You’ll also see your current account balance. You will receive a check from Instivate HQ when your total reaches $50.
• Next up, we finally have a good solution for allowing you to embed videos and polls in your posts. It’s based on a special permission setting that I need to change so please let me know if you would like to have that ability. As for the embedding. To add your embed you’ll need to disable the Advanced Editor Beta and edit in HTML mode (look for the link above the post field). You can then paste your embed code in. You won’t see anything in the editor but when you publish, your embed will be there. Let me know if you have any trouble or something is a huge drag and I’ll see if we can make a quick improvement.
• You can use the above to drop in Google Street View maps. Just click the link tool on any Street View map and grab the embed code. Let’s not go too crazy with them, though. They’re best on posts about a specific location or when there’s been a crime or accident.
• Our image tool is also improved. You have been able to drop in images for some time now but it’s been a little wonky. We’ve removed the wonky. You still need to save the posts to draft after uploading the images to make them available to insert inline, however.
• Finally, a request. I’d really like us to think about alternative and truly local news outlets as much as possible when linking. I’m as guilty as anybody of choosing a KOMO story and forgetting about the neighborhood blog in an area that might have also been following the story. But let’s try to emphasize the independent sites in the city when choosing links and stories to embrace and extend.

That’s it. Happy December. Thanks for being part of the fun!