Web development continues at Capital Press

Shortly after I came to work at the Capital Press in June 2005, I became involved with working on our Web site. Not long after that, this blog was started.

This became a place for testing ideas, experimenting with things that we could not do on our main Web site, and getting comfortable with my new role as an ag journalist.

Late last summer, when the Capital Press website was relaunched with new software, the new Web site became to focus of our Web development.

It is sadly ironic that as agricultural involvement in online tools, like blogging, has exploded within the last few month, the Blogriculture blog has sat fallow. I don't know what the future of the blog will be. While I have been the most active user/poster on this site, it was never intended to be a one-person operation. Maybe this fertile ground is merely resting for a future season.

There is no doubt that this site has been the most important digital contributor to the growth of our other Web offerings, which have expanded to include Facebook, Twitter and now, a mobile Web site.

It's that mobile Web site which has gotten much of my attention in recent days. There is still much work to do there. But I am a firm believer that mobile access is the next digital frontier for agriculture users who need information, whether in the office or on the go. Even those farmers who have been slow to embrace computers and website rely on their cell phones as a lifeline to the people they do business with on a daily basis. The phone is already a key tool for them, whether tucked in a shirt pocket or clipped to a belt.

Here at the Capital Press, we can already deliver information to your mobile phone via mobile apps that can access our Twitter and Facebook posts, mobile web browsers that can view our main Web site and now through our mobile-enabled website, which you can find at m.capitalpress.com, or www.capitalpress.com/mobile/, depending on your phone's browser.

Another way this blog has been important to us at the Capital Press, is that it has been a place where people have commented on our posts and provided feedback to us that we have used to shape our efforts. So, please, tell us what you want and need in the form of information delivered to you, wherever you are -- whether the method of delivery is a printed newspaper, one of our family of computer Web sites, or a mobile Web site or apps that provide particular types of data.

We still have much to learn in this never-ending journey. But we won't know what you need if you don't tell us. Feel free to comment here, in one of the forums on capitalpress.com or by e-mail.

Gary L. West
Associate editor
Capital Press