The Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror’s website, Zoutnet, received a major facelift during the past fortnight, which also reflects the future role of this online publication.

The website, found at www.zoutnet.co.za, is one of the oldest fully fledged newspaper websites in the country. It was first published at the end of 1997, long before most of the major newspaper in the country had a presence on the World Wide Web. Right from the start, the website did not try to be a mere duplication of the newspapers, but rather an interactive experience with a unique identity. Back in 1998, the website even experimented with online chat rooms and features not available in the printed editions.

Throughout the years, the website proved to be a valuable communication tool for people in other parts of the country and abroad. It became well-loved by ex-Limpopo residents in places such as London, New York and in countries such as Australia.

For the past two years, the website remained fairly static with little or no development in terms of content and new features. “We reached a point where we had to decide what to do with the website,” says Anton van Zyl, manager of Zoutnet Publishers. “It was never seen as a commercial venture, at least not over the short term, but we couldn’t continue pumping money into a project without getting some sort of value out of it,” he says. This led to a change in approach and the emphasis shifted to getting value out of the website. The first step was to add background counters to the different stories. “In this way, we could start collecting information about what is popular and what not, and change our recipes when necessary,” says Anton.

Still, this did not entail any extra value for the website’s visitors. The website relied mainly on news content derived from static HTML pages. In layman’s terms, it can almost be compared to a pile of newspapers lying on top of each other. Should you want to search for a specific story, you need to page through the newspapers one by one. It would be much easier if you could simply ask for a certain topic and all the articles relating to that topic are handed to you. A database-driven site works mostly in this manner. Information is supplied on demand and you can search through the archives by using keywords, and narrow it down by specifying certain dates.

To develop a fully fledged interactive and database-driven site is time consuming and requires specialised programming skills. “The cost involved simply outweighed the advantages,” says Anton. Help arrived about a month ago when William Stam, a local independent website developer, approached the newspaper and offered to redesign the website as an exercise and also to show his abilities in this field. He was briefed on the site’s requirements and set off to combine his own ideas with those of the newspaper staff.

“The final product turned out to be much better and more exciting than any of us could have wished for,” says Anton. New features, such as online polls, immediate editing and updating facilities and an attractive “look and feel” were implemented.

“People often expect a newspaper’s website to be a mere duplication of the paper, which is definitely not what it should be. It is like comparing radio to television. The internet is just a totally different medium with new possibilities and boundaries. The newly designed website allows us to tap into these possibilities and explore new horizons,” says Anton. According to him, it allows the publishers to continue doing what they are good at – supplying up-to-date information about local events. “The difference with the website is that we can do it much more comprehensively and a lot faster,” he adds.

In line with this philosophy, the future development on the website will concentrate on these aspects. “Much more emphasis will be put on results, especially from the local sports clubs,” says Anton. The idea would be to serve as the reference for any information search.

The one aspect that received very little attention in the past was the commercial side. “To start off, we would like to use the website as a value-added extra for the newspapers’ advertisers,” says Anton. Soon, they will start listing the regular advertisers on the website, free of charge, to allow them to tap into the large amount of traffic the site generates. “The last log files showed that the site lures over 75 000 page views per month, which is worth targeting,” says Anton. Closer co-operation with other websites focusing on the Soutpansberg area is also envisaged.