Welcome to the shiny new M&G Online!

The M&G Online set the bar for innovation by being one of the first news websites to launch worldwide as far back as 1994. Now, in 2008, we continue to innovate by launching a completely renovated website, packed with features and enhancements.

The new M&G Online is a result of months of planning, research and development stretching back to mid-2007 and conceptualised as far back as 2006 (The first mockups were leaked early 2008). The site's many improvements include world-class design, intuitive navigation and a more spacious and sophisticated layout for your browsing pleasure. You should also notice that it is faster to use. The social media functionality that is part of this new site is a result of months of prototyping on the Thought Leader, Amatomu, and news in photos sites.

Have a look here at some of the feedback we have received from readers.

Key features

There are many exciting and fun new features to enjoy on the M&G Online. Many of these can be accessed once you have registered with us. Don't worry, though -- registration is free of charge, quick to do and comes with many benefits.

Registration and dashboard

Save clippings of your favourite articles
Use advanced article printing functionality.
StoryPredictor, accessed via your dashboard, suggests articles according to your interests.
StoryHistory saves articles while you browse.
Comment on articles and debate with other M&G Online readers.
Receive special announcements and invitations from M&G.

New features

Topics A-Z: A list of people, places, subjects and organisations covered by the Mail & Guardian Online.
See who is viewing which article on the M&G Online in real time with NewsSwarm.
Articles are integrated with Google Maps.
The beefed-up Zapiro and Madam & Eve cartoon sections are now searchable and tagged.
Advertising formats have been optimised.
Explore five major e-commerce areas: jobs, cars, dating, property and shopping.
View related articles from other, outside news websites.
We now offer a basic video feed of world news from AFP -- the start of more to come!

Semantic tagging

(What are tags?)

We've included tag clouds of subjects, people and places on the home page and news sections, making it easier for you to find content.
Articles are regionally organised and can be viewed by country or city.
You can now view South African news at town, city or provincial level.
Articles are tagged with names of cities, countries, companies or organisations, and people, which can be viewed in the Topics A-Z section.

For the geeks

We built our own content management system from the ground up.
The site was built using PHP5 and MySQL5, on a Fedora Core OS.
The site is grinding away on four dual quad-core servers (32 cores in total, 16 gigabytes of RAM).
Frameworks that we used include J-Query for Ajax, CodeIgniter was the application framework.
We are being hosted at Internet Solutions.

People power

The people involved in the creation of the new site worked weekends, public holidays and late into the night. They survived on beer, pizza and pure passion for the project. The whole M&G Online team -- editorial, technical and advertising -- came together to make the site work, including (and not listed in any order of beauty):

strategy & development team: Vincent Maher, Joseph Misika and Tumelo Mphafe;

editorial and business team: Matthew Buckland, Riaan Wolmarans, Keith Nicholls, Matthew Burbidge, Nic Haralambous, Valencia Talane, Thembelihle Tshabalala, Zahira Kharsany, Imke van Hoorn and Lisa van Wyk; and

online advertising team: Bryan Khumalo, Mamo Moadira and Velly Bosega.

(See photos of us developing the website.)

We owe a big thanks to Jaxon Rice from Agilisto and Martin Dudek, who developed the NewsSwarm under quite a bit of pressure from "Macent" team. We also relied on many outside parties to complete the project, including the team at 24.com -- JP Farinha, Genine Stoltenkamp, Farahnaz Thompson and Satish Byrow. We relied heavily on Colman Murray (AFP), Jenny Briggs (McCarthy Call-a-Car), Justinus Adriaanse and Paul Ten-Bokum (Privateproperty.co.za), Rob Fisher and Nic Papadopoulos from AAT Technologies, David Burstein and his development team at DatingBuzz, Jason Elk and the Zoopy team, and Michael Walker and Michelle van der Toorn (Kalahari.net). We'd also like to thank Rory Judd from Miway and Jacqui Boyd and her team at Acceleration Media for coming to the party with the new ad formats so quickly. It also would have not been possible without the assistance of the clever people at Internet Solutions, Mimmos Pizza in Rosebank and the Vida e Caffé in Parktown North (thanks, Bheki!).

Feedback and bug spotting

If you have any feedback, positive or negative, please email us. If you spot any broken links or anything broken, let us know too.

The Mail & Guardian Online team

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@NicDawes - M&G editor Nic Dawes
@ChrisRoperZA - Editor, M&G Online
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