A couple of weeks have passed and the sidebar battle has finally ended, for now.

Outside of the main content area, the right side of this blog is comprised of 2 sidebars; one containing outside information and another with an internal content focus.

The third column or far right sidebar used to contain our post categories and a robust blogroll. No longer is that the case.

Blogs and categories go hand-in-hand only if they’re used for the benefit of the site and the readers. Most tend to think of categories as navigational beacons for visitors but in reality, they should be tools that empower a dynamic experience.

With that said, we are now using categories to power 3 new sections to the right sidebar:

1. Our Freshest Content – The last 5 published posts other than the most recent article.
2. Most Popular Posts – Top 10 posts with a lot of user participation, clicks via our RSS feed and/or amongst the top content in Google Analytics.
3. Political Coverage – Our Knox County government coverage has been high in traffic and we wanted a designated place to showcase the last 5 posts. This section may vary as elections come and go and new topics rise to the top.

Having blogroll withdrawal? Leave us a comment about it.

Photography by mikou07kougou

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