The Ironton Tribune will launch its redesigned Internet site —

www.irontontribune.com — today.

Besides featuring a new look, the site will now include daily photo galleries, reader-submitted photos, reader comments on news stories, online condolences, a daily Web poll and a variety of other items meant to promote interactivity.

“We feel that this will be a step in the right direction to allow The Ironton Tribune to serve our community in a more comprehensive, 21st century way,” publisher Michael Caldwell said. “These changes will continue to allow this newspaper to cover Lawrence County better than anyone, although some of that may be in new ways.

“Our number one goal is to provide relevant and timely information to the community and we feel this redesigned site allows us to do that. This doesn’t mean we will not put just as much emphasis on the printed product. In fact, we will be working to tie to the two together more so that they complement each other.”

The Web site will continue to be offered for free, thanks to the support of local advertisers that see the opportunity to take advantage of nearly 5,000 local visitors each day.

Plans call for the Web site to continue to be updated around 11 a.m. each morning Monday through Friday and around 1 a.m. Sunday morning. Plus, the online content will be updated throughout the day with breaking news, photo galleries and previews of the next day’s top story.

“All of these changes are big improvements but we aren’t going to stop here,” Caldwell said. “This is just the first part of an overall plan we have to evolve the way we provide information.”