Readers who visited The Minnesota Daily website in the first weeks of school will be pleased to find that many improvements and additions have been made. After all, we are here for you, and most of the work put into the site has been with our readers in mind.

Over the last month, the new beta version website has been evolving with new additions and design implementations being added almost every week.

New blogs

We have added Arts and Entertainment, Sports, Newsroom and Editorial Board blogs.

Each blog has its own personality and is unique from content that you will find in the Daily you pick up in the morning.

The newsroom blog, “The Newsstand,” serves to provide transparency of our news coverage and additional news that doesn’t make it into print. Some of the posts will touch on national news that is relevant to students, while others will provide a digest of news involving the University in a conversational style.

The sports blog, “Upon Further Review,” provides live coverage, notes, observations and analysis before, during and after some sporting events. Some of these include Q&A’s with athletes as well.

The A&E blog explores the arts and entertainment scene and touches on developments during the week that may not make it into the weekly section, but are nonetheless noteworthy. Some of these are announcements of shows, while others are observations of our writers while on and off campus.

The Editorial Board blog, “Unfit for Print,” will provide commentary on issues that impact students and are “unfit for print.”

More to come

In designing the site, we wanted it to be simple to navigate and easy to read the information. We did this by providing a consistent layout on the page and almost everything is linkable. We found that many websites make the mistakes of putting too much on the front page that it overwhelms the readers.

However, we do plan to add many more features to the front, which will include multimedia, front page pdf, today’s photos, a calendar and more.

There is still a ways to go, as we work to configure the multimedia page and all of its features, including slideshows, audio slideshows, videos, etc. The beta site will continue to be a work in progress through the rest of the year, and then we will likely continue to push the envelope even more.

The new media age

Why all this work to redo a website, you might ask? You mean, aside from the old site’s outdated look, poor usability and limited functions, right? Well, I am glad you asked.

Today, journalism is in a changing time of new media or the multimedia age, as some might call it.

At the Daily, we are trying to stay ahead of the curve with technology and new methods of delivering information. Our new site uses Drupal 6, a new Web content management platform, which is one of the newest systems around and has amazing capabilities for Web development.

Readers demand more content that is easy and simple to use, and they want more of it. We hope to achieve both of those aspects as we continue to shift our focus to the online world where possibilities are endless and information is available at record speeds.

Stay tuned, as there is much to look forward to and much work to be done.

—Vadim Lavrusik is the Editor in Chief of the Minnesota Daily. He welcomes comments at vlavrusik@mndaily.com.