A few weeks ago, I men­tioned that we’re get­ting close to fin­ish­ing the next ver­sion of Pacif­ic NW Por­tal, code­named “New­port”. Our plan is to have it ready to go live next month — most like­ly the week before Christmas.

We are in need of peo­ple to help us test out the new Por­tal, so we can more quick­ly iden­ti­fy any bugs or glitch­es that need to be tak­en care of pri­or to launch. If you’d like to help us beta test New­port, please drop us a line and let us know.

New­port’s major theme is speed. When we set out to mod­ern­ize Pacif­ic NW Por­tal sev­er­al years ago, we made opti­miz­ing per­for­mance one of our biggest pri­or­i­ties… and the results real­ly speak for themselves.

One of the things you’ll prob­a­bly notice about New­port right away is that the site has faster, more pre­dictable load times. The dif­fer­ence is espe­cial­ly notice­able if you’re using a DSL, dialup, or 2G/weak 3G mobile connection.

We’ve also improved usabil­i­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty, and com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. Inter­est­ing­ly, New­port is the first ver­sion of Pacif­ic NW Por­tal to have been joint­ly devel­oped from the ground up on mul­ti­ple oper­at­ing sys­tems, includ­ing Win­dows, Mac OS X, and Kubun­tu. New­port is also the first ver­sion of the Por­tal to have under­gone thor­ough test­ing on mobile plat­forms, includ­ing iOS and Black­Ber­ry OS.

New­port is also jam-packed with new and use­ful fea­tures that we think you’ll enjoy, which make it eas­i­er to stay up to date with the news that mat­ters to you.

Again, if you’d like to be among the first to try the new Pacif­ic NW Por­tal, we invite you to drop us a line and let us know you’re inter­est­ed in help­ing us beta test.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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3 replies on “Want to help beta test Pacific NW Portal 5.0?”

    1. We actu­al­ly have test­ed for com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with Android. I did­n’t reel off very last brows­er and plat­form we’re test­ing on in the post… most of us are either iPhone or Black­Ber­ry users, so those are the mobile plat­forms that came to mind first. 

      The new Pacif­ic NW Por­tal should load just fine in the default Android brows­er and Fire­fox for Android. We haven’t test­ed any oth­er Android browsers yet, like Dol­phin — but maybe you could help us. Are you inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the beta testing?

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