Welcome to baltimoresun.com
Maryland's leading news and information site is changing its name and its look after seven and a half years as SunSpot.net.
Our new name better reflects what this site is - and always has been - the Web site of
The Baltimore Sun. Since our launch in September 1996, we've brought the news from Maryland's most trusted daily newspaper to a large and growing online audience. In 1999, we began updating and augmenting that news throughout the day, with increasing depth and frequency.
Today, the site is updated 24 hours a day, seven days a week with follow-ups and breaking news, as well as original reporting, traffic, weather and sports. And our traffic has grown accordingly. Currently, an average of nearly 1 million readers visit this site every month -- many more when there is breaking news.
As we update the name, we're also enhancing the design, to make it even easier to use. To create the new design, we convened several panels of frequent visitors to SunSpot, surveyed hundreds of our readers and looked at the best practices among news and information sites throughout the Web. Among the features we added:
- Better search, anchored at the top and bottom of every page on the site. With just one search, you can find articles, photos, video, audio and other multimedia, places to eat, things to do and archived article text from
The Sun back to 1990.
- Google search. Now, you can also search the Web from the convenience of baltimoresun.com. Following links from Google searches will take you outside of our site.
- More Maryland coverage. As we continue to increase our live and updated coverage of stories in Maryland, we've made our "Maryland" coverage more prominent, positioning it at the top of our home page (previously, it could be found under "News.") This will make the most important and highest-interest stories even easier to find.
- Simplified navigation. We've pared down the number of choices in the left column of section categories to those choices most users need. You can always find the full selection of choices within individual sections, or on our site map.
- Bigger photos on the home page and section fronts. Photos continue to be among our most popular features and we will continue to increase their prominence on the site.
- Redesigned story-level pages. We've widened the content area on story-level pages, allowing both article text and ads greater breathing room, making the reading of both a more pleasant experience for our site users.
- New ad sizes and positions. Maryland's No. 1 news site remains free to users thanks to the support of our many advertisers. Moving forward, we will continue to try new ad sizes and styles as the site, the Internet and Internet advertising evolves.
- Faster-loading HTML. We've streamlined the coding of our pages to make them launch even more quickly than before.
- Better wireless support. On many modern handheld devices, such as Pocket PC and Palm, you'll find baltimoresun.com pages load more cleanly and quickly than ever before.
We hope you like what you see. Of course, as is the case with any change, sometimes things don't work exactly as expected. If you are having any problems, or see a feature you wish we'd add, please contact us at
feedback@baltimoresun.com.
And, if you haven't already discovered the benefits of registering - including your own customizable news page, free e-mail alerts and access to many archived articles -
click here to become a registered member of baltimoresun.com (If you've previously registered with SunSpot, you don't need to re-register; just login with your existing username and password.).
Thanks again for visiting baltimoresun.com.
baltimoresun.com and The Baltimore Sun
Baltimoresun.com is an online service of The Baltimore Sun, a newspaper with a more than 160-year history of serving its readers.
In this section, you'll find information about
baltimoresun.com
The Sun
Tribune Co.
Subscribing to The Sun
SunSource, the Baltimore Sun's online store.