www.roanoke.com

The Associated Press Managing Editors association recognized The Roanoke Times/roanoke.com with its Online Convergence award for the "Age of Uncertainty" series. This is the third time in four years the site has been recognized with the convergence award. Previous awards were given to the series on Bantu refugees living in Roanoke (2005) and coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings (2007).

This year's series focuses on the the rising elderly population and looks at the challenge of providing care from several viewpoints. Beth Macy and Josh Meltzer, who provided the coverage for the Bantu series, have spent the past several months telling the story from the perspective of family members, doctors, health-care providers and caregivers.

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The new look of roanoke.com

After several months of planning and testing, we've begun implementing a new design on roanoke.com. The first round of sections featuring the new design will be rolling out within the next couple days. We're hoping to have the entire site featuring the new design up and running by the end of June.

The new design was created after discussions to update the current look of the roanoke.com mast. As we've heard from readers and users, there's a lot of stuff on our site, but it's sometimes not always easy to find. We've added a "Check this out!" box to spotlight new features and additions to the multimedia database. We're hoping that a shift of elements within the new design will also make things easier to find.

Late last year, we asked a search engine optimization firm to evaluate our site and recommend ways to improve. We've incorporated some of the firm's findings in the way templates are developed. Those changes are reflected in the new design. Making those changes should improve the search engine results, on our internal site search as well as Google, Yahoo! and other engines.

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