The Hinsdalean's new website features an easy-to-navigate design and allows visitors to access the entire content of the print edition. Advertisers also have an opportunity to share their message online.
Visitors to the newspaper's website at thehinsdalean.com will see it has undergone quite a makeover.
Unlike the previous site, which linked only to a single story, the cover photo and obituaries, this site allows viewers to access the entire newspaper.
"We are thrilled to officially launch our new site," said Jim Slonoff, The Hinsdalean's publisher. "Enhancing our website has been a project we all have spent a lot of time studying, thinking about and planning here in the office."
The newspaper will continue to be distributed free to every home in Hinsdale (along with schools, churches and most businesses), but the site will make the paper's content available to people in neighboring communities and beyond.
The site was built using Roar, a content management system created by Lions Light Software Solutions, based in Arizona. Dan Wilcox and his wife, Lea, founded Lions Light in 2007.
"We did it because when we were looking for a website for our newspapers, we couldn't find anything that we liked," said Wilcox, who spent about 10 years working for Petroleum News in Alaska before starting the business. "There were website solutions, but it seemed like all the solutions were created for big newspapers and then they were dumbed down for smaller newspapers."
Large newspaper websites typically require a heavy investment of staff time, and Wilcox saw an opportunity to offer an alternative.
"We wanted to have a staff interface that allowed a newspaper without a full-time web person to still have every feature that the bigger newspapers had," he said.
Wilcox also wanted to design a site that was less choppy than many of the newspaper sites he visited. The site has been recognized with awards in local newspaper association contests, he noted.
"Usually I think it is the intuitiveness of it that is the most appealing," he said.
Lions Light has a presence throughout the United States, working with almost 100 different papers.
Now The Hinsdalean will have a expanded presence, thanks to the partnership.
"It's exciting to offer our advertisers a new platform to reach customers built on the strength of our newspaper," Slonoff said. "One thing that will not change is our commitment to practicing community journalism the way it was meant to be."
