POULSBO — Anyone who has logged onto northkitsapherald.com recently has noticed more than a few changes.

As part of an online redesign throughout Sound Publishing, we overhauled our Web sites – including northkitsapherald.com – to bring readers improved access and enhanced services.

Northkitsapherald.com now provides even more local news for online readers, including breaking news, web extras and features.

In addition to its new improved site layout, there are numerous enhancements to our Web site.

As well as providing news and photos about your community, readers can see the most read stories in Kitsap County and across Western Washington – along with the less serious side of your paper – online entertainment – plenty of puzzles, games and comics. We’ve added horoscopes, an up-to-the-minute lottery feature and weather.

Online readers can also see additional local faces and places – including online photo galleries that contain photos from our newspaper, as well as images not printed in the paper and that were previously relegated to the dark corners of our backup drives. Coupled with this, readers now have the ability to order reprints online of photos for themselves or family.

Readers can now be even better informed about their region and their state, by clicking over to PNWLocalNews.com. This news site has fresh news daily, including breaking stories provided by reporters at more than 30 community newspapers around Puget Sound.

No other news service has this area so well-covered. Nobody else even tries.

We’re not stopping there. In recent weeks, we’re expanding to include video coverage of news and features. Watch in coming weeks and months as nortkitsapherald.com and PNWLocalNews.com continue to evolve, with features soon to include blogs, reader comments, opportunity for readers to post their community events directly to our sites via an interactive community calendar, and much more. The goal is to ensure our Web site is as dynamic and changing as our local community.

As part of our commitment to our community, we have designated a fixed number of positions in our online paper for local advertisers only. Those ads from local businesses will be served on the site using the most advanced technology on the web today.

Donna Etchey, publisher of the North Kitsap Herald, said the Herald has seen tremendous traffic growth on its website. Now, with its online content frequently updated, she views the twice-weekly publication as a significant daily news resource for anyone interested in what is happening in North Kitsap and throughout the Puget Sound.

“It really speaks to the opportunities. And the fact we are investing significant resources in this initiative shows our commitment to continue to be your number one news and information source – both online and in print,” Etchey said.

Manfred Tempelmayr, president of Sound Publishing, agreed.

“We want our newspapers to continue to be the leading provider of local and state-wide news in the Pacific Northwest by expanding and leveraging our considerable news-gathering capabilities,” Tempelmayr said. “We have identified and developed strategic partnerships and relationships with the world’s leading technology companies to enhance our content and services on the web, integrating these into the northkitsapherald.com site.”

Check out our new today at northkitsapherald.com.