A new-look Shropshire Star website has been launched after more than half a year of development.

Shropshirestar.com has been revamped to include more content and to allow users to navigate the site more easily.

The site's homepage now contains links to many more areas of the site in response to user feedback which highlighted the difficulty in finding certain sections.

A number of new features have also been added, including an improved search facility, expansion of the discussion boards, more pages dedicated to specific sports and a daily poll, daily horoscopes and daily TV guide.

Internet editor Ian Harvey said: "Most people who have seen the new site in development have been staggered at just how much information there is on it, and that's something which is going to grow and grow.

"The site features a fully searchable database of archived stories, so people can check out stories they have missed, and many of the pictures we use are able to be ordered as prints instantly from the news and sports pages with just one click to ShropshireStarPix.com."

The changes were proposed as soon as Ian took the job in January.

He said: "We thought that it was time for a fresh look for the site. It needed a fresh direction and from feedback through e-mails and just talking to people we wanted to have the homepage as a one-stop-shop for people to make their way around the site."

The new site has been running parallel to the old one for a month to build an archive of content before it went live this week.

He said: "We've had a huge amount of hits - they have really gone through the roof. The feedback from the new site has also been good - we have an online survey and 80-85 per cent of the e-mails I've been getting have been in favour of what we've done."

The site's new design has also increased its commercial value.

Internet and new media sales manager, Tracy Mason, said: "All the advertising is now on the right hand side of the site which is the commercial arm. We are using the format of column width as in the newspaper so advertisers can understand what they are buying."