Herald Sun gets a new look

The Herald Sun, one of Australia's best selling papers, has launched a new look website.

Advertised as "a virtual lick of paint", the new site doesn't offer the depth of rival news sites like The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, which were recently redesigned.

The new heraldsun.com.au is only really a logo change with some styles. 

There is a prominent new video and multimedia section, something which is becoming more popular with online news sites.

The other main change has been an increasing focus on blogs and user contributed content.  A "Latest Reader's Comment" now prominently features on the homepage.  Additionally, there is a new "Submit Comment" icon on blog pages and an increase in Google Adsense ads.

New look Herald Sun website (above)

A key difference between the Herald Sun site and The Age site is the Herald Sun's commitment to social bookmarking as a means to increase the prominence of articles.  While both have "Email a Friend" for articles, the Herald Sun articles can easily be submitted to Digg, Delicious and NewsVine

Today's Most Popular is a feature which isn't new, but is increasing in use.  It features the Top 5 stories from networked sites such as AdelaideNow, PerthNow, Daily Telegraph, The Australian and News.com.au some of which also share articles and content.  The Age also has this feature, however it does not show as many top stories or as many networked sites from different cities.