Awards, Changes, and a Poll
I’ve got a lot of things to report on this, our Redesign day.
First, The Independent won an award for Best Website this past weekend. Woohoo! And three days later the website underwent a complete redesign from the ground up. Time will tell if the new look helps us win again next year.
But speaking of the redesign, It’s nearly ready for the Big Switch later this evening. It’s a really big change. Really, really big. It might annoy some of our regular readers. Or, it might make them over the moon. It’s up in the air and that’s what makes something like this so exciting. it could go either way 
I’m laying odds that the new website will make our readers happy as long as everyone understands that there will be a bit of a learning curve.
The Online team at the Independent is available from 8am to 5pm CST if you have questions or need help. You can also, contact me via email with questions. You can also check out the reader’s guide that will be in tomorrow’s paper and use it as a reference. I will also set up a live chat here on Wednesday and you can come in and ask me your questions.
I think you’ll like the new site though.
One last change for those of you who participate in our daily poll question on the Editorial page: The poll question has moved to this blog. You can check it each day over there on the right and submit your vote. Please be patient if the question hasn’t changed for the day yet. I will need to find a routine that works with the Editorial folks for getting the question updated so there may be some kinks at first.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Come back tomorrow and jump in the live chat with me if you have a question about the site. Thanks!
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:25 pm
What’s this 8 a.m.-5 p.m. stuff!!!!!
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
That’s when all the cool kids are around
April 25th, 2008 at 10:04 am
I grew up in Grand Island but have lived in a different state for the past 30 years. I have depended on your website to keep me up to date with the news from Grand Island. At times when I might miss a day or two, it was always easy to go to your archive, click on the date that I had missed and catch up on the news/sports stories. However, with your new format, I have been unable to find the archive. Having to click on “Show next 10 stories” several times is much more inconvenient. One of the reasons your previous web design won an award was possibly its convenience. Please make it much easier again for us to access archived stories.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:16 am
I mentioned in the Live Chat yesterday that there is going to be some downtime with our archives. I’ll be making a post shortly covering some of the big questions that came up in the chat. Please check back to find out what’s up with our archives.