Free subscription contest launched for revamped Île branchée e-newsletter and portal

Several chances to win an iPad 2

SUMMERSIDE, PEI – June 25, 2013 – The Island Acadian and francophone community’s web portal, www.ilebranchee.ca, has just been completely revamped and reconfigured to make it more modern and easier to navigate.

The organization that manages the site, RDÉE Prince Edward Island, is taking advantage of the occasion to launch a major contest to encourage francophone and bilingual Islanders to subscribe, free of charge, to the site’s e-newsletter. It’s offering an iPad 2 tablet, valued at $400, as the first prize of the contest. Other prizes will also be drawn for.

It was immediately following the RDÉE’s annual general meeting, June 25, in Summerside, that special projects officer Francis Thériault launched both the portal’s new look and the contest.

« The ilebranchee.ca portal has finally entered the 2.0 web era, » proclaimed Thériault. « Its design, which is ultra modern, can be easily compared to the best news sites of the world. Its new logo resembles the web emblem for RSS feeds – which are automatic news feeds. We colored this modern emblem in red, white and blue, with a yellow star, to represent the colors of the Acadian flag. In fact, our current subscribers picked that emblem during a recent online survey. »

The home page offers a much more modern look. The top news items are visually attractive and easy to read. They rotate automatically to the front, accompanied by photos that have been uploaded by users, if they chose to upload one. In one click of a mouse, the reader can then read the entire news item of his or her choice.

Access to previous news items and archives are also extremely simple and are facilitated by a black-dot navigation system. A section is also dedicated to job offers in the community.

These news items are automatically sent by email to those who are subscribed to the site, in the form of an e-newsletter, either once a day or once a week, as selected by the subscriber.

A « search » section, which can be identified by the small magnifying glass on the home page, is again simple and intuitive and allows advanced intelligent searches in all of the site’s publications, which are archived since 2004.

Another important section of the site offers an overview of support services offered on PEI. A large series of links and details are gathered under three general themes: community, organizations and businesses. Sub-sections allow a quick retrieval of the desired information.

« This section is specifically designed to facilitate searches for information and services, all under a single virtual roof, » explained Thériault.

« We are also offering organizations the opportunity to become special collaborators, which means by buying a promotional space for $500 a year, their logo will be posted on the site and their news items will be posted in a special section entitled Our Collaborators, » he added. « We are hoping this initiative will help the portal to pay for itself and to cover web hosting fees and updates to the site. »

A final section is a document library in which members can upload resources, such as funding proposals, reports and other documents that could interest other organizations. It will become a sort of library of shared knowledge.

Île branchée was first mounted by the Carrefour de l’Isle-Saint-Jean as an online community bulletin. In 2008, the RDÉE PEI was asked to take it over and to transform it into a provincial portal. At that time, it had been given a new look. Five years later, it was again time to give it a makeover so that it would meet new technical requirements.

CONTEST

Thériault explains that the RDÉE wants to renew and update the newsletter’s and portal’s subscriber list.

Current subscribers will receive an email from ilebranchée.ca asking them to update their profile. New members simply have to go to the site, click on « Vous inscrire » and fill out the little form, particularly to indicate their fields of interest and the frequency of delivery.

All new subscribers and all those who renew their subscription will get a chance to win the iPad, a RDÉE computer bag and other promotional prizes.

The RDÉE and its partners are asking the community to spread the news about the site to encourage a greater number of Acadians, Francophones and bilingual people to subscribe to the site. These new readers, when they register, will be able to indicate who referred them to the site. The referrer will then also get another chance to win the iPad. There are no limits to the number of references that can be given. However, a person cannot be subscribed to more than one email address.

Thériault said most people will only register to receive the newsletter. However, representatives of organizations, especially those who are in charge of communications, are being invited to ask permission to publish news on the site.

« The objective of the site is of course to offer a place where the community can publish its news, its activities and its job offers, completely free of charge, so we absolutely need organizations to provide news items for the site, » he said.

The subscription contest will run until July 31.

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CUTLINE: Gabriel Arsenault, left, president of La Société Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, attended the relaunching of the revamped edition of www.ilebranchee.ca newsletter and portal for the Island’s Acadian and francophone community. Francis Thériault, RDÉE special projects officer and mastermind behind the new version of the site, explained its operation and launched a free subscription contest, which features an iPad 2 as a first prize.

For more information:

For more information:
Francis Thériault
Special projects officer
RDÉE Prince Edward Island Inc.
(902) 370-7333
francis@rdeeipe.org