The SoGlos.com Blog

SoGlos.com’s venue directory gets an early spring clean

In addition to an array of editorial features, reviews and event previews, SoGlos.com is also home to Gloucestershire’s most popular directory of local arts, entertainment and leisure venues.

While the directory only includes a carefully-selected choice of venues, following feedback received from readers the SoGlos.com team has decided to refine the directory’s offering to an even greater extent – and around a quarter of categories were removed as of today.

Categories removed include groups and clubs which don’t have a fixed venue – and thus can’t be pinpointed on the interactive Gloucestershire map – as well as those which were duplicated across sections.

The Gloucestershire Children & Family section is the one to be impacted most, with its directory now including a more limited, and more useful, choice of Gloucestershire activity centre, Gloucestershire days out, Gloucestershire children's party and Gloucestershire soft play venues.

We hope you’ll agree the old adage ‘less is more’ holds true, and are delighted to offer readers a streamlined directory of places to visit in the county.

SEO-friendly URLs for SoGlos.com venue directory

While SoGlos.com has already set the precedent for all things search engine optimisation, it is with great pleasure that after a huge amount of hard work by our developer Simon Taylor we extend SEO-friendly URLs to SoGlos.com’s carefully-selected venue directory too.

So while you might have once come across the likes of ‘?’, ‘&’ and ‘=’ when bringing up a list of Cheltenham restaurants, Cotswolds attractions or Gloucestershire hotels, URL formats now take the rather lovely format of soglos.com/restaurants/cheltenham/venues,  soglos.com/art-culture/cotswolds/attraction-venues and soglos.com/accommodation/gloucestershire/hotel-venues. And what's more, the thousands of old dynamic URLs have all been redirected to the new format too!

Yes we admit it is all very geeky, but the new system is just one more step towards making SoGlos.com’s bespoke CMS one of the very best in the UK for all things arts, entertainment and leisure - and has significant implications beyond the realm of SEO.

Enjoy, and please don’t hesitate to link to any of SoGlos.com’s brand new venue directory URLs from your own site.

SoGlos.com at Journalism.co.uk news:rewired

We’re delighted and honoured to announce that SoGlos.com’s deputy editor James Fryer will be joining an acclaimed line-up of speakers – representing media from the BBC and Guardian to the Times and Telegraph, no less – at the inaugural news:rewired event in London this January.

Taking place on Wednesday 14 January 2010 at City University, where SoGlos.com’s editor Michelle Byrne incidentally studied the newspaper journalism postgraduate course a few years back, the event is being organised by Journalism.co.uk as an opportunity for working journalists, trainees, journalism students and academics to learn from those with first-hand experience in the industry.

The keynote speech will come from George Brock, head of City University's journalism department, with speakers then being organised into three main subject areas.

Multimedia speakers will include freelance journalism and multimedia producer Adam Westbrook, CEO of AudioBoo Mark Rock and internet consultant / media blogger Malcolm Coles.

Those speaking about collaboration including Demotix commissioning editor Andy Heath, Guardian Local launch editor Sarah Hartley and senior developer at MySociety.org Francis Irving.

While the making money speakers will be Sift CEO Ben Heald, head of digital media at Telegraph.co.uk Greg Hadfield, partner at media law firm Wiggin Caroline Kean and SoGlos.com’s very own James Fryer.

For anyone with an interest in the UK media industry, don’t delay in booking your ticket for what’s sure to prove an engaging insight for would-be and established publishers alike: newsrewired.com

Happy New Year from SoGlos.com

With Christmas just around the corner, we'd like to wish all of SoGlos.com's readers, advertisers and partners a very happy new year - and take the opportunity to say a huge thank you for your support in 2009 - before we get carried away with the festivities.

And if you still haven't planned where to see in 2010, don't miss SoGlos.com's fab guide to New Year's Eve in Gloucestershire, which has already attracted around 10,000 readers in the past few weeks.

See you next decade!

Merry Christmas from SoGlos.com

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, or so the song goes, and we can’t believe how quickly time has ticked by in recent months.

It seems like only yesterday we were unveiling SoGlos.com’s brand new what’s on widgets, now in use on an impressive 150 websites across the county, and here we are with less than three weeks until the big day.

The SoGlos.com team has, unsurprisingly, been gearing up for the festive season for many months now, and if you haven’t dropped by in a while then don’t miss the best guide to Christmas in Gloucestershire around.

If you haven’t booked your festive celebration see the Gloucestershire Christmas Party guide, find the perfect pressie over at the Gloucestershire Christmas gift guide and find out where Santa’s going to be appearing near you in the guide to Gloucestershire Christmas events.

And that only leaves us to say a very merry Christmas on behalf of Gloucestershire’s independent online magazine, and don’t forget the cranberry sauce!

SoGlos.com Gloucestershire widgets hit the headlines

Officially launched last week, SoGlos.com’s brand new what’s on in Gloucestershire widgets have gone down a treat with readers from across the county – having already been embedded on around 100 websites, blogs and social networking sites.

It’s also fantastic to see the news of the widgets – a first for regional media in the UK – being covered in some of the industry’s leading titles.

Journalism.co.uk kicked off proceedings with their piece SoGlos tackles copyright infringements with new widgets.

Press Gazette ran a story identifying Online widgets to boost Gloucestershire tourism.

While Hold the Front Page today published an article entitled Online magazine bids to reach wider audience.

And with widget-related queries coming in thick and fast from Gloucestershire webmasters and potential partners galore, we couldn’t have asked for a more successful launch.

Gloucestershire media sales professional wanted

SoGlos.com - The online magazine for Gloucestershire is expanding, and requires a full-time media sales professional to join its dynamic team. See the following link for more information: Join the team.

SoGlos.com unveils seven Gloucestershire widgets on the Clearspring platform

After six months of behind-the-scenes work at SoGlos.com towers, we’re delighted to announce today’s launch of a series of seven brand new interactive web widgets, allowing everyone in the county to celebrate local arts, entertainment and leisure like never before.

Each showing a calendar of upcoming events, widgets are now available for Gloucestershire as a whole, as well as for the county’s six main areas specifically – Cheltenham, the Cotswolds, the Forest of Dean, Gloucester, Stroud and Tewkesbury – and can be embedded on your website, blog or favourite social media site including Facebook, Twitter and iGoogle.

Developed with support from Cheltenham Business Pride (cheltenham.gov.uk/businesspride), all of the widgets are completely free of charge, are simple to use, and are automatically updated by SoGlos.com’s journalists on a continual basis – offering a great way to celebrate all that Gloucestershire has to offer.

To find out more about, and take advantage of one of the new widgets, see SoGlos.com’s widgets page - while you can also see the Gloucestershire widget in action below...

SoGlos.com autumn and winter event guides now live

Halloween, Bonfire Night and the festive season are some of the busiest times on SoGlos.com – with reader numbers expected to tip the 70,000 per month mark this year – so we’re delighted to have the 2009 guides up and running. Without further ado, check out SoGlos.com’s guides to Halloween in Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire fireworks and bonfires and Christmas in Gloucestershire – all being updated with the latest information over the coming weeks. Enjoy!

SoGlos.com unveils venue auto-predict functionality

While SoGlos.com is home to Gloucestershire's most popular directory of county arts, entertainment and leisure venues - from Cheltenham restaurants, Cotswolds attractions, and Forest of Dean hotels to Gloucester museums, Stroud pubs and Tewkesbury live music venues - readers will now find the process of digging out venue details even easier, thanks to brand new auto-predict functionality introduced across the online magazine this week.

Simply visit the section of your choice, start typing the venue name in the search box, and SoGlos.com's bespoke system will cross-reference the carefully-researched and -written database before presenting possible options.