Happy Birthday to The Lebanon Voice!!!

It was two years ago today that The Lebanon Voice was born kicking and screaming like a newborn babe.

The old website – still viewable with all its warts under the Archive tab on the current site – was a drag and drop affair that took as long to place a story on the page as it did to write it.

Every stick of type had to be lovingly placed in a separate action, then often manually justified.

Folks complained about the width of the viewing area and how it wouldn’t fit on their computer screens. Trying to see it on a smartphone was a disaster.

Still, those were heady times. The president of The Lebanon Voice and me would look at the visitor count and oooohhh and ahhhh as it went up to 100 visits a week then to 150.

I think it was Roger Tessier of Tessier Electric who first called me up and said he wanted to put an ad on the site.  Or perhaps it was Alan Therrien. We can’t remember, and it doesn’t matter.

All we know is we finally had a hobby to spend a few hours a day on while working as a correspondent for the Weekly Observer, and working regularly as a substitute teacher.

Pretty soon Lebanon advertisers were getting on board, taking a chance and supporting a fledgling Lebanon business that had no track record, no proven success and a teeny, tiny, infinitesimal staff.

Today, there’s got to be 50 or more advertisers who regularly use The Lebanon Voice, which added Milton to its readership area in July 2012 and Rochester last summer.

We switched to a newspaper-friendly website last April right around this time. The logistical headache it used to be to place a story on the website has been reduced, freeing editorial staff (me, myself and I) to dig up and write more stories. Right now btw, we have about 145 in the hopper waiting to be done. It’s gone from working a few hours a day to – let’s just say – a bit more. But it’s more than a job: it’s a passion, a pastime and a pleasure.

We never stop trying to improve the newspaper and we welcome any and all suggestions. We recently added a weather link and changed the For the Record page to just Obituaries. Arrest reports will now be available on the individual towns to which they apply.

Yesterday, on the most beautiful day of the year, we had nearly 1,000 visitors. The highest daily visit count was 1,500. More than 13,000 unique visitors view The Lebanon Voice during any given month.

I cannot tell you how good it makes me feel when someone I don’t know sees me in the little blue Voicemobile, waves at me and gives me the thumbs-up. It happens all the time but I never get tired of it.

- HT