Besides making the news of its four daily editions available via the Internet, the Sun Journal Web site also will allow visitors access to years of archived news and feature stories.

“There’s a demand for it,” said David Costello, the newspaper’s vice president for technology.

More than 1.16 million page views were recorded on the existing ESJ Web site in May, a 28 percent gain over a year earlier. The Sun Journal’s online Marketplace, where people can access local advertising, showed a 110 percent increase in May when compared with May 2003, added Jeff Haggerty, Internet sales manager.

He credited Web editor Eric Kaiser with doing “a phenomenal job in developing the site.”

Haggerty said sunjourna-l.com will offer interactive features and “flyout ads” that give readers information by passing a cursor over them, then downsize once the pointer is moved.

“They’re not obnoxious the way pop-up or pop-under ads can be,” he said.

Costello said the expansion has been planned for about a year. New computer equipment allowed for its implementation now. The equipment automatically post stories to the Web site once writers and editors have finished with them and they’ve been assigned to pages.

The newspaper’s archives of stories dating back to the mid 1990s will be made available through the site gradually, he said.

A popular existing headline service delivered via e-mail will continue to be offered as part of the Sun Journal’s Internet-based programs.

Costello said sunjournal.com will be free for Sun Journal subscribers. That will allow readers of one edition to check news of the other three as well without an added cost.

Non-subscribers will be given unlimited access until September, he said. After that, they’ll be allowed to read up to four stories daily. He said that means that people will be able to check the top news stories of the day or review obituaries of friends or relatives.

People will also be able to subscribe solely to the Web product, or purchase a day pass to access stories. Web-only subscription information will be posted on sunjournal.com before full access payments take effect in September

The Web site also will allow people to send letters to the editor, submit news releases, manage their newspaper subscriptions and post classified advertisements. The latter, said Costello, will be an advantage to people who find themselves unable to visit the newspaper offices during regular business hours.

“They’ll be able to put an ad online right away and then get it into the next day’s newspaper as well,” he said.

Advertising content is popular among Web visitors to the existing site, said Haggerty.

“People are checking the job listings in particular,” he said. More than 123,000 visits to the online classified section were recorded last May.

Also popular, he said, are real estate listings and eMaineAutos, the newspaper’s online listing of automotive offerings.

Kaiser said Web visitors have told him through feedback that the newspaper’s site is particularly popular with area people who have moved elsewhere but who want to keep in touch with events in their hometowns.

“I expect the new site to be even more popular,” he added, since it will offer full content from the City, Franklin County, Oxford Hills and River Valley editions.

Costello said the enhancements are part of the Sun Journal’s ongoing efforts to better serve its readers. More and more people, he noted, are using computers to access information, and that’s what the newspaper is: a source of information.

More upgrades are anticipated, he added, and other forms of delivering the newspaper’s content are likely to come as technology evolves.

“Next might be news by cell phone,” he said.