By Scott White
Woodford Sun Staff
Report for America corps member
Do me a favor.
Open your desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet—whatever is handy.
Now, open your internet application. Type in woodfordsun.com.
CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!
We have finally transported The Woodford Sun’s website from its 2009 version, when it was first constructed, to a brand new 2026 version. I can tell you, for us here at the Sun, we are utterly gobsmacked by it.
The new website is our first tangible, public-facing benefit of moving to a nonprofit status. Last spring, the Sun won a grant to completely redesign and construct a new website. The grant partnered us with two experienced specialists: Michael Grant, owner of Get Current Studios and a web designer based in Sacramento, California, and Adam Leone, a website architect with Newspack, the Sun’s new website platform provider.
We have reviewed dozens of other newspaper and digital newsroom websites to find things we like, things we want to avoid and to figure out how our site can provide our readers with a simple way to read the news of Woodford County.
Since mid-March, Lucie Chandler and I (mainly Lucie) have been working with our contacts on a weekly basis to provide our readers with a fast, efficient, easy-to-use webpage.
We think you are going to really like it.
Some of the features include:
An updated logo.
Topic links like news, obituaries, sports, news of record, etc., which take you to the part of the paper you are most interested.
An initial launch without a paywall to allow everyone the ability to experience the new website. However, the stories will eventually be paywalled, at which point you will get five free articles a month before a subscription is required. When the paywall goes up, non-subscribers will have access to the headlines and initial paragraph of the week’s stories.
A button to take you to the digital PDF copy of that week’s paper.
The ability to donate online by clicking on a button.
Easy to subscribe or renew options, with the ability to purchase a 24-hour pass to ALL of the content.
Bright, crisp photographs and videos.
Access to the paper’s archives.
Contact information.
Policies on letters to the editor, corrections and editorial standards.
We think you are going to find the Sun’s new website is as good as, if not better than, any other newspaper/digital newsroom’s site.
This new website is also built to incorporate digital advertising – the Sun plans to open this option in the near future to advertisers to allow them to promote their services, products and businesses.
As everyone becomes adept at using this new technology, the Sun will begin to offer more options, like breaking news articles, live streaming of community events, a weekly newsletter that you can go ahead and sign up for, and many other things we are excited about.
Bear in mind, this new service is a direct result of the decision to become a nonprofit. Before this grant, we were painfully aware we needed a new website, but we could not afford to do it. Now, this new tool will make it easier for the Sun to inform you and the community of all that is happening in Woodford County.
We hope you agree. And we hope this will motivate you to sign up for our newsletter, sign up for a subscription, or even click on the “donate” button to make a donation that will help to keep the Sun publishing for years to come. Any amount is appreciated!