myFOXWebTeam Blog

  It’s a sad day in Maplewood and across the St. Louis area.
  A suburban St. Louis firefighter was killed and two other emergency workers are wounded after a gunman opened fire during a standoff at his home in Maplewood. Maplewood city officials identified the slain firefighter as 22-year-old Ryan Hummert. Officials said he was shot to death as he got off the fire truck.
   Hummert was the son of former Maplewood Mayor Andy Hummert. He began his career in August 2007 after graduating from paramedic training. He graduated from the St. Louis County Fire Academy in March.
   The thoughts and prayers of those of us here at FOX 2 and with the community of Maplewood today. If you'd like to leave your thoughts, please do so in the comments section below.

Incase you missed the Fair St. Louis fireworks display Friday night July 4th, it's online for you to watch over and over again.


Happy Fourth of July everyone!

CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK TO THE VIDEO

And thanks to the hundreds that watched the fireworks display Friday night online on our live feed #1 and #2 and chat rooms. It was a "blast" ha ha

We've had some e-mails recently about the live stream.  Some people new to the site have not been able to easily find the link.

The link is located on the bottom of the home page ... look in the bottom row, in the middle "Watch FOX 2 News Online & Chat."

Click on this link.

You can toggle back and forth between Live Stream #1 and Live Stream #2.

Newscasts and special reports are usually fed through #1.  Doppler Radar and SkyFOX are usually streamed through #2.




-- The Web Team --

An issue has occurred with the blog software that is preventing the extra pages of comments from showing up.  The software team is aware of the problem and is working to fox it.

For now ... you can still go to the extra comment pages and read the comments.

Here is what you do ... at the top of your screen where you see the address line (with the http:// ...) ... go to the end of the line in the blog you want to read extra pages on and type the following ...

?page_no=2

If you want to read page three ...

?page_no=3

... and so on.

It's a temporary fix, but it will get you to the extra pages until a permanent fix is made.

Thanks!


-- The Web Team --

As our regular visitors to myFOXstl.com know, we had 2 different chat rooms on our site.

We installed a standalone chat room back in November that only allowed you to chat if you logged in, and then we added another chat room on our live streaming pages just after Super Tuesday.

Over the past few weeks, we let these two chat rooms "duke it out" and see which one would be the best for our site. It seems that the live feed chat room has far outweighed the first chat room. It allows viewers to chat about the news or breaking news events, it gives viewers a chance to add their own avatars, and the webteam has the ability to delete chats or ban bad chatters. And as far as popularity, the live feed chat room had 5x more page views than the standalone chat room.

So, we will be using the live feed chat room for news issues from now on. You can find a link at the bottom of the home page, or by clicking this link:

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE LIVE FEED CHAT ROOM

Bookmark it! Thanks everyone! Patrick

We just upgraded our Live Feed pages and included Chat rooms.  This give you a chance to chat with people while watching the newscast. 

Bookmark these pages below! We will use them when we have breaking news, press conferences, breaking weather  and normal newscasts and the Digital Doppler XT2.


Screencapture of what's on Live Feed 1 right now.
Click here to see Live Feed 1


Screencapture of what's on Live Feed 2 right now.
Click here to see Live Feed 2

The webteam is wondering if any of our bloggers knows anyone at Union University. Their dormitory was destroyed by a tornado yesterday. It's a horrible story.
If you know anyone, are they okay? Where are they know. Sound off. We'd like to hear from you.

In a few weeks, the popular Body Worlds exhibit will be leaving St. Louis. But some visitors want to join the show when "they" leave St. Louis…so to speak. Monday night on FOX 2 News at 9, Paul Schankman has the story of local people donating their bodies to Body Worlds. 

We'd like to hear from you. Vote on the poll below, then share your comments with the community.

Shoplifters swoop in, and in seconds, they can clean out a store. The stuff ends up being auctioned or sold online.. The problem is so bad, a major store has its own forensics lab.  On Thursday night’s Contact 2 on FOX 2 News at 9, Elliott Weiler shows you the crooks in action and reveals how investigators use cutting edge techniques to crack the case.

So the question we have for you is: Have you ever shoplifted?  Feel free to comment below after you vote.

Several bloggers have brought up the question of what category a blog should go in to ... and wonder why we change a category on blog occasionally.

As we review blogs each day, one of the things we do, along with checking for staying within the FOX blogging policy, is whether the blog is in the category best suited for its content.

Many times a blog could fall within several categories, and sometimes there is not a category that best fits the blog.  When we can, we will move one of the blogs that can go into several categories into a category that is less frequented, in order to spread the blogs around to all the categories.

This also gives the blog more exposure longer when it's featured in a less popular category.

The "News" category is the first thing many bloggers come to when writing their blog, so they just stick it there.  You'll notice more blogs in the traffic section today.  Because of the highway closing, we have moved some of the news blogs over to traffic.

News and entertainment are the hands-down winners every day.  More posts go in to those categories than all the others.  When we see a blog that can also fit in another category we'll often move it.  If we feature you in one of the other categories, you'll stay there longer.

Hope this answers some questions.



-- Jill --
The Web Chick

Earlier, we had discovered a technical glitch that had not enabled comments or RSS Feeds to your blogs after you became a new user.  This glitch has been fixed. 

So, if you see a blog that doesn't allow you to comment on it, the blogger is most likely not aware that they had to click on the check box to enable comments.  We're trying to notify everyone we can to let them know they have to check that box.  But the good thing is that future new bloggers do not have to worry about that problem.

Please let us know if you have any problems with this glitch.  Patrick

We finally have the go-ahead to show off our new chat room! The features are pretty impressive, and you can use it whenever you like! Plus, you never know when someone from FOX 2 may log on and start chatting with you!

Some of you like using Glenn Zimmerman's "Song of the Day" blog in the mornings, but now chatting can be much easier since you don't have to refresh pages constantly.  You can also create your own rooms and sent private messages if you want. 

 Go play....

 Click here and bookmark the FOX 2 Chat Room!

 
You may have to install the latest Java software, but most computers have it installed already.  Let us know if you have any questions!  Patrick
 

We have discovered a technical glitch that has been unintentionally "hiding" some of our new bloggers! The software team is working on a fix and we will let you know when it has been applied.

In the meantime, if you are a new blogger, or if you hear from a new blogger with this problem, please leave us a message below and we will read through your blog and feature it. Sometimes this gets the new blogger "unstuck" and their posts show up after that.

We are currently searching the system for new bloggers and featuring their blogs ... which is why you will see some older postings over the next several days ... we are "unsticking" them.

>> We also want to let you know the software team is working on a fix for the e-mail issue. We know many of you have not been receiving your e-mail notifications on both your own blogs and those where you comment. We will let you know when we hear from the software team on this, too.

Thanks for your patience and keep on bloggin'!

-- The Web Team --

Hello, friends. We know we originally told you we would be doing maintenance Thursday night ... but that has been pushed back until tonight .. FRIDAY!

We just want to give you this heads up. The network maintenance will begin at 11 p.m. on Friday and will last for approximately 6 hours. During this time you will be unable to blog. Sorry about the inconvenience and thanks for your patience!

--Patrick & The Web Team

The hottest thing right now is also the coolest…and it’s here on myFOXstl.com.  The FOXe Energy Team started this week, complete with a variety of useful and fun facts to help you “get green”!

• Get all of the national FOXe videos and stories
  

• Grow Your E-Tree Quiz: How good are your "Green" smarts? Take our trivia challenge and see if you have what it takes to help out Planet Earth.
  

• FOXe Blog: Different topics will be featured so users can comment and interact.  Here's a link to that blog.
  

• Printable Checklist: Not sure what you can do to help? Check out our list of simple things you can do to start making a difference.
  

• Links: Links to resources, organizations, and other valuable items will also be available.

Visit the FOXe page here! What do you think?