Just about one year ago I took the reins as publisher at Shore Publishing. Just five months after that, we decided it was time to update our website. With our research showing that approximately 50 percent of you were coming to our website via your mobile device, we knew we could do better with the pinching and zooming needed to read a story. So the conversation with our web editor (or web ninja, as we call her) began.

“Just renovate, or blow it up and start from scratch?” she asked.

Like any good leader, I asked her (the expert) what she thought.

So blow it up, we did.

Sure there are some basic similarities—we didn’t want to scare our regular visitors away! But the new Zip06.com is now extremely mobile-friendly. We’ve cleaned up the top of the page, and our basic navigation menu is at the top left, with the contact one at top right. If you’re trying to submit events, news, letters or announcements, the handy “submit” button at the top of the page makes it easy.

There are many features that I’m excited about, but three were truly part of our initial reason to update. One is our Living content. We have robust local arts & entertainment sections—but our previous site was not quite doing it justice. Now, if you hit the navigation menu and go to Living, you’ll see a tiled layout (very much like Pinterest) of all of the stories, sorted by most recently published first. This page also allows you to filter out what you want—food, house & garden, etc, and then those filters even allow filtering below that! We want you to read what you’re interested in, so making this easier and more customizable was very important to us. If you choose not to filter, you can just scroll and scroll to your heart’s content.

The second of my favorite items is our calendar. With many of you submitting your events to us, this now allows you to get more attention by including a photo with your event listing. If you go check out the events right now, I can guarantee that the ones with photos will get your attention more than those without. So if you’re submitting, use a photo! That’s not the biggest feature though—on our calendar page you can sort events by date, by town, or by category! I just searched the “Kids/Family” section and saw events from now until July!

My third favorite feature is the photo galleries. Our photographers go to so many of your events, sports games, and more. They take dozens of photos, but typically only one ends up in the paper. The photo galleries allow us to share all the good photos they take, and are there for you to share, to buy, to put on a coffee mug…you get the idea. Plus, on your phone, you can swipe through the galleries intuitively.

I think I’ve bragged enough for us. I hope you get to check out and enjoy the site that allows you to get your local news more quickly, share more easily, and get both sides of pressing local issues. Zip06.com is your neighbors, your news. See you around, neighbor.