Articles are obviously the bread and butter of your paper, but now you can add some flavor. Flexible and extremely easy to create (export from Word or type directly in the Admin using a rich-text editor), your articles will now be even better. And just like most content created with Flint, you can enable comments on each article (or disable them if you choose) to allow for reader interactivity.

You can also create a variety of article types. For example: Special Coverage articles. So if you want to have a "master" article about the 2008 Presidential Campaign, which will index all the other content across your site related to that topic, you can do so with a few clicks.

Another great feature with the articles is the Recommending and Clipping features. Each article can be recommended by readers with one click. This is essentially a thumbs-up vote.

Blogging, it's so in right now. Even the mainstream media is all about the "blogosphere." Seriously though, blogs are in fact a great way to deliver opinion-driven content that showcases the unique personality of your paper. The problem is that setting up a blog can sometimes be a pain. You can use a third-party service like Blogger, but that means less integration with your site. If you want tighter integration, you have to use something like Wordpress; which is a great tool, but it also requires more technical overhead in order to install and customize it to match your site's look and feel.

But luckily for you, adding blogs in Flint is extremely easy and ready right out of the box. You just create a new page in your sitemap, designate the content-type as a blog, give it a witty name, and start posting. You can even add a custom header image to give it a unique brand.

If you want to make the most of the web as a medium, you really need to add multimedia to your content. Whether it's audio, photo slideshows, or even video, rich media is a great way to engage your readers and better tell your stories. If you've been intimidated by the technical side of adding multimedia to your site, Flint is your solution.

When writing your articles, you have the ability to easily add multimedia to accompany the content. Writing about the latest city budget? Want to include the full PDF of all the budget data? Easily done with just a few extra clicks. Doing an interview with a local politician? Want to include the audio, or even the video of the discussion? Done. Covering a local festival? Try compiling all your photos into a slideshow, it's easy, and your readers will have a much richer experience as they browse your content.

One of the most important parts of any alt-weekly is the Events Calendar. But translating that to the web has not always been easy. There is software available, but it's not the most usable, and it doesn't always easily integrate with your site. Flint is different. Our Events Calendar is full-featured, easy to use, and ready out of the box. Your calendar editors will save a ton of time, and they'll probably have less headaches too.

Even better, your readers will love your new Events Calendar. They can easily browse, search, and even submit their own events. They can also select the events they are attending so that they show up on their profile for all their friends to see. Now it's easier than ever for your readers to be plugged in to what's going on in the community. It's not often that there is a central place to go to look for things to do, this tool can help your paper become that gateway.

What are Directories? Well, think of this Directories feature like an easily searchable and interactive YellowPages. Whether it's local Restaurants or local Venues, the Directory feature allows you to create a database of all the hot-spots in your community. We have default templates for Restaurants and Venues out of the box, but you can technically create a Directory for any type of business, service, or location.

But, if each Directory was just a list, that would be pretty lame. That's why we've added another layer of interactivity. Your readers can review and comment on each item in a Directory. So, for example, if you have a Restaurant Directory, readers can give each Restaurant a star rating and lament about the mushy french fries or the amazing salads. This makes the entire Directory more valuable since data is always being generated and aggregated.

Local artists and musicians in your community are always looking for ways to connect with local fans. Now you can make that happen. The Artist feature allows musicians to create a profile, upload songs, photos, and videos, and add dates for upcoming shows. Fans can then leave comments and stream their music. It's a great way to tap into the local music community and then to help it grow. A win for everyone involved.

For artists, creating a profile is simple. A quick signup to create the account, then within a few minutes they will have their own page displaying all their content. They'll also be able to link to other sites they may have (myspace.com for example). For you, moderating the artist directory is easy. You'll be able to manage all the artists profiles across your site, and even delete them if necessary (but we wouldn't suggest that, it's censorship man).

We're not sure if movie reviews were a big part of your site before, but we're willing to bet they will be once they are powered by Flint. Why? Well for one, your movie reviews can now pull in data from IMDb. So if you write a review for There Will Be Blood, Flint automatically grabs the synopsis, rating, runtime, writer(s), director(s), the movie poster, and provides a link to the movie's IMDb page. We also include link to the trailer at Apple's trailer site. This basically gives you full movie pages, not just simple reviews — just another valuable resource you can provide readers.

We're also willing to make another bet: you spend way too much time and energy updating movie showtimes. Well, with Flint, you'll have to find something else to fill that time. We pull in movie showtimes automatically — in real-time. They are completely searchable too, both by zip code and by movie title.

The Community feature is definitely one of the cooler parts of Flint. It also is kind of the core for a lot of the other features across the software. The Community feature contains three parts: User Profiles, Groups, and Discussion Boards. All of these features allow your readers to be a part of your site and participate in the discussion.

The User Profiles feature is basically a mini social network within your site. Each user can have their own profile page and their own blog (what we call their "column"). Additionally all their activity from across the site will be collected on their profile page (unless they choose to keep it private). So if they review a restaurant, or make a comment, or whatever, it's all tracked in case they want to access it later or share it with their friends — or what we call "followers" (think a Friends List without the annoying "Johnny has added you as a friend..." notification emails).

If you currently use an ad inventory management tool like OpenAds, that will work just fine with the Flint templates. But we have also included our own Ad Management feature. It's not as full-feautered as OpenAds, for example, but it works great for someone who doesn't currently use ad management software or needs an intermediate solution. It will still help you get paid, and that's the most important thing.

If you do want to use Flint's built-in Ad Manager, you will be able to easily upload ads based on the different sizes you have set up within your template (either upload the file directly or provide a link). You can then select specific areas of your site you'd like the ads to show up in (for example, only the News section, or only the Arts section). We also track a impression and click-through data for each ad, information you need for determining your CPM rates.

We want to give you as much control over your site as possible. One of the ways we do this is with the Sitemap Feature. This feature allows you to update your entire sitemap on the fly, with just a few clicks. Say you want to change the order of the sub-sections within your News & Opinion section. Done. Say you want to add a new Blog to your site to cover the Presidential Elections. Done. Want to remove it later? Easy.

You can also edit almost all of the settings for each page within your sitemap. You have control over the name, the URL, the template it uses, what type of content it loads, whether it shows up in the navigation, whether it has Comments enabled, if it publishes an RSS feed, if Polls are enabled, and so on. You get the idea. The point is, if you want control, you got it. No need to call someone just to change the name or location of a page on your site.

Photo Galleries, RSS Feeds, Interactive Polls, Google Maps Integration, Comment Spam Filters, User Management, Activity Logs, Control over all your site settings such as URL Structures, Metadata, Titles, and on and on. The devil really is in the details. We pride ourselves on giving you control and not overlooking the little things.

But with all that being said, and although we could rattle off lists of features all day long, they don't mean jack unless they are well executed. They are worthless unless they are easy to use, unless you and your readers both benefit. We don't want to make things more complicated, we want to make things easier. We want to make you more efficient. And that's really the main objective of Flint. We don't just add these features because they are buzzwords that sound nice, we do it because we think they will improve the quality of your content and help you compete online.