This is the first edition of a regular newsletter to keep you informed about what's happening on the Landcare Gateway and how to get most out of its features for your group or network. Over the coming months we'll be bringing you useful tips and 'how to' guides in the form of web tutorials hosted on YouTube.

Since launching in September 2016 the updated website has had 47,600 users who clocked up 65,400 sessions, and 150,900 unique page views. Currently 28 per cent of users access it by mobile phone and 9 per cent via tablets. Of online readers of the Victorian Landcare magazine, 15 per cent access it by tablets, 12 per cent by mobile phones, with the rest reading it on their computers.

The site’s most visited pages are those to find a group and view current projects.

Keep your group information up to date

As the Gateway is where many new Landcarers go to first for information about Landcare in their area, it’s important for groups and networks to keep their contact details current on the website. Logging in to update your group or network page is simple. If you don’t have editing permission, email us at landcarevic@gmail.com and we'll sort you out.

Sharing resources

The Gateway is a great place to share Landcare-related resources and the more that are posted on the Gateway, the more effective the website will be as a store of Landcare information and a pathway for the Landcare community. If you have a really great document that offers ongoing benefit to readers, such as a report or a vegetation guide, you can upload these as a resource via your group or network page.

To eliminate clutter and start afresh, attachments uploaded to the old website, such as meeting minutes, newsletters and photos were not migrated across. We can provide you with these files if you had not stored them elsewhere. Please contact us (landcarevic@gmail.com).

It's better to store documents like minutes and newsletters on online document storage platforms, such as Google Drive and Dropbox. You can then share the links to these documents on your Gateway group page.

Likewise, if you have an event where you took a lot of photos, you can choose one or two really great images to post on the Gateway to showcase the event and keep the rest in an album on a platform like Flickr or Facebook, which you can share the link to.

These storage platforms give you better control over sharing and privacy, work well with different devices and help keep your data backed up. For more information, read our guide to storing documents (https://www.landcarevic.org.au/resources/online-document-management/) .

Magazine page improvements

You'll notice some small but obvious changes to the online magazine. The front cover of each edition when browsing issues is now shown for easy recognition, as is the main image from each story when browsing for articles within an issue.

Finding a group is now made easier

We've made a simple change to the way groups will be displayed when you search by location. Instead of a list of groups, you will now see the map as the default view. This makes it much easier to see where the nearest groups are in relation to your search location.