Get the Ink Out: Please have patience with our new website

I‘m in love.

Well, that’s what I keep telling people when they ask how work is going. As some of you have probably noticed, we here at Times Community News launched a redesign of our six websites last week.

The new Independent site is sleeker and cleaner. The modules, or groupings of stories, are better organized. No more clicking through drop-down menus just to find the section you want.

We also have better slideshow and video capabilities, just in time for graduation.

As in love, there are some rough patches. I’m hoping you can look past them and see what a bright future the site has.

Our comments, archives and calendar are missing. They will come back in the next few weeks. Obituaries don’t have their own page, but that will change soon.

If you have a little patience, www.hbindependent.com will become a better site to find your local news.

The look of the site accounts for only a fraction of my infatuation.

We are using a new content management system called P2P, which will help us post news online faster. We will also be able to connect stories to slideshows and videos, unlike before. And just to make my job easier, we’ll be able to post stories across all of our sites with just a few clicks of my mouse.

So if something happens in Laguna Beach that has relevance to Huntington Beach or Fountain Valley, I’ll be sure to post it to www.hbindependent.com.

But it’s a new system, so we are still learning just how much it’s capable of and what its defects are.

So far, we have the beginnings of a beautiful relationship.