Website Template Program
Community newspaper publishers who have been waiting for a full web solution to take them online or to the next stage online will be pleased to hear that the Ontario Community Newspapers Association has developed a Web site template to do just that.
As corporately-owned community newspaper groups have developed their own sophisticated and fully-functional solutions, this Web site template has been designed with independently-owned newspapers in mind. Many have expressed their concern that they did not have the expertise on staff to tackle a project like this on their own, so it was easier to do little or nothing at all. Some have said that since the vast majority of their revenues are generated from their print products, they didn’t feel a sense of urgency to invest in an online solution.
The OCNA Board of Directors gave the go ahead for OCNA to develop a turn-key solution that is both affordable and user-friendly. It’s a system that the group of users can share and grow together with as future enhancements will be available for all. The association acknowledges the financial support from Canadian Heritage’s Collective Initiatives Fund for this project.
The Web site template was developed by MediaShaker from Edmonton who has used their behind the scenes content management system to build a robust solution. Publishers can consider the template like a buffet and pick and choose the functionality and layouts that they feel are best suited to their markets.
Features:
- A clean Web site that readers will enjoy returning to
- Ability to set up and manage e-mail accounts, mass e-mails
- Electronic subscriptions
- Paywall for recurring invoicing and to manage subscriber access
- Banner ads and Google ad serving
- Create online forms and drop-down menus
- Events and Featured Business Directory
- Twitter, Facebook, Weather, Question of the Day, and other widgets
- Classifieds and Announcements that users can upload with photos
- Build pages in minutes
- Hyperlink text to PDFs, or add YouTube videos with menu buttons
- Online training videos of template functionality for your staff
- And more…
Set-up and standard customization for each newspaper is included in this project, so each site will have the look, functionality and branding as you choose, and the development cost has been covered for you! The only cost publishers will have moving forward is the $60 monthly hosting, maintenance and upgrade fee. And even better is the access to future development that will be, in part, dictated and initiated by the user group.
For more information, please contact us at 416-923-7724.