Around town last week I was given the opportunity to officially unveil The Greenville Advocate's new web site to the Rotary Club. I am hoping to get around to everyone who cares to see it, so if anyone needs a guest speaker to come entertain a group, consider giving me a call.

The new web site offers something for everyone, and although it has been quite a lengthy process in the development of this project, it is something the entire community can be proud of.

The Internet has become the most popular communications tool ever, and while there are a lot of businesses and organizations around the area with a presence on the web, up until now there hasn't been a single web site were Internet users could go to find out everything they want to know about Greenville.

That is exactly what we at The Advocate are hoping this site will become, a community showcase, that not only gives the most recent news and information contained in The Advocate, but also provides the outside world a place to look around and find out what goes on in our town.

Some of the more useful features include: the message board, the front page poll, the community calendar and the classifieds page. Although there is a lot more to do at www.greenvilleadvocate.com than just these pages, I am sure users in the area will want to return to these sections time and again to catch up on what's going on in Greenville and Butler County.

The message board gives us the opportunity to sound off about a particular issue. To start with, I am trying to gather information about what the readers of the printed edition want to see covered in The Greenville Advocate. We are hoping, however, we can use this board to let people in the community know how each other feels about issues that face the town, and let them respond in kind. It is very simple to post a message, so simple in fact that I am sure everyone will figure it out, and once the message is submitted it takes about 24 hours to be posted to the site.

From time to time I will be posting new topics, so if anyone has any suggestions I can be contacted via e-mail through the site.

The front page poll is another way for us to gather opinion in the community. If anyone logged on today they would see the question "what is your favorite section of The Greenville Advocate." However, later readers may find questions like "who do you support for mayor in the coming election?" or something to that effect. It gives us the chance to see what readers are thinking.

The community calendar is one of the most popular pages in the printed edition of The Advocate, and we are hoping it will be on the web site too. Right now users can log on to the calendar page and find any kind of event happening in Greenville listed by date. Eventually (because this is a work in progress), users will be able to post calendar events for both the printed paper and the web site directly through this page.

The classifieds are now online and searchable, which helps people looking for just about anything. We plan to continue free classified listings and hope to expand into real estate and help wanted ads in the near future. All of these ads are searchable by topic, and updated

twice weekly.

Soon we will start developing a local business directory that will not only list business names, addresses and phone numbers, but also direct links to e-mail and web addresses.

So, if you can't get to the newsstand this week, log on to www.greenvilleadvocate.com and check out the latest news and information. Make it your homesite because its there for everyone.