From the Editor: The Cord’s new online presence

Anyone who’s read a newspaper in the last five years, knows that the future of media is on the Internet. Yes, I realize the irony in that statement.

It seems these days you can’t turn on a TV, read a magazine, refresh a page, scroll down a Twitter feed, troll through Reddit, or (insert medium that will be invented tomorrow here) without being bombarded by the fact that if “traditional” media want to keep a place in this changing landscape, they need to understand their online presence and make it as effective as possible.

And I have to admit that — and I suppose I can only speak for my four years with The Cord — our current, or I suppose now former, website has been anything but an effective online presence.

Believe me, we knew it was ugly. We knew it wasn’t very functional. We knew how annoying it was when you click on a photo and it wouldn’t’ bring you to the story, and you’d have to click specifically on the headline, and then all of the sudden the slider had advanced to the next story, and there was nothing you can do except smash- sorry, old wound.

Oh, and apparently sometimes it would italicize every bit of text on the homepage. We’re still scratching our heads over that.

There was a host of other problems I could get into with our old site, but this paper is only 20 pages long. So I’ll just get right into how happy it makes me, on behalf of everyone at The Cord to announce that we’ve launched a brand new website.

The address is the same (thecord.ca, go check it out now, I don’t even care if you don’t finish reading this column), but the site is on a completely different level. It’s gotten rid of just about every problem the old site had and will offer a more visually-appealing, user-friendly experience as more and more of our readers begin flipping through our stories on an iPad, rather than on dead trees.

I want to thank WLUSP Web Developer Adam Lazzarato for being the brains behind the entire operation and putting together an absolutely fantastic product. Seriously, the design process was essentially me saying “I want to do X, is that possible?” and almost invariably receiving a “yes” as Adam stared at a screen full of code (one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen).

So we hope you enjoy our new face on the web, please go and check it out, we’re all ears for any and all feedback.

There will inevitably be some kinks to work out, but once we’re going full steam in September, I think we’ll have earned a spot as more than just my parents’ homepage.