With the rise of the Internet has come a new way of receiving our news.
The digital newspaper has become an adjunct–sometimes a replacement -for the printed version to which we are all accustomed.
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
Regardless of how your newspaper fits into your daily routine, one thing is certain, many more newspapers are also becoming available online.
Providence Business News joined the pack in October 1994, when PBN.com first went live.
The decision to put the newspaper on the Web was made “to maintain dominance in the business to business information niche,” says Roger Bergenheim, publisher of Providence Business News.
And, for several years, the site, designed by Newport-based ad agency America House Communications and maintained by PBN’s advertising coordinator and production staff, sufficed. However, “things change,” said Bergenheim. “We wanted something simpler and more interactive.”
The result of that desire for a simpler and more interactive site culminated in October 2000 with the new pages, designed by Providence-based Newfangled Graphics, went live.
The process for the new PBN.com began in the spring last year. Newfangled Graphics’ president and creative director, Eric Holter, and his staff began working on a prototype, focusing on the structure of the pages before delving into the actual appearance of them.
As part of the PBN.com project, and in conjunction with a project to design a site for Boston’s Highland Capital Partners, Newfangled created a back office content management program–Webtop–that could be used to manage Web page content. According to Holter, PBN and Highland Capital had similar needs for Web content management, and Webtop was created to both accommodate those needs and to be used for future clients.
Webtop, says Holter, is unique because clients can use it to access and update just about all of their Web site’s content — without affecting the design and architecture of the site.
Clients log on to the Webtop program and enter text, images and documents into individual records, which are broken into fields that determine where that information will appear on the Web pages.
“We believe strongly in good design and architecture of a site,” Holter says. Thus, Newfangled maintains control of the design of PBN’s pages, occasionally making changes to so-called “static” pages that are not kept in the Webtop database. These include the page containing PBN staff information, and the PBN copyright statement.
Newfangled continues to develop Webtop to provide more features to clients, Holter said.
The revitalized PBN.com features more breaking news (updated several times a day, Monday through Friday), a more comprehensive, timely events calendar, financial calculators, a near-real time stock watch of Rhode Island’s publicly traded companies, PBN stores, international trade resources, and a daily poll (Monday through Friday). As part of the revamping of PBN.com, PBN hired this writer as full-time web content manager, ensuring someone would maintain the site on a daily basis with easy access to the newsroom and breaking news.
