We’re back – mostly.

For those of you who only read the print version of this newspaper or the e-edition, you’ve likely noticed nothing wrong. But if you’ve gone to our website – chaos.

Our parent company, Clarity Media, switched to a new content management system. CMSs are tricky. They are written to accommodate a very broad range of users. You then must customize it to do all of the tasks unique to your needs.

For a newspaper, the customization is usually daunting as we operate simultaneously in the print, electronic and digital worlds. For Clarity Media, it’s even more so since we publish The Gazette, The Denver Gazette, Pikes Peak Courier, Tri-Lakes Tribune, Colorado Politics and Out There Colorado along with a multitude of magazines out of the same system. We all have access to the content of the others (you may have noticed some of our content in The Gazette and vice versa).

So what happened on the website?

Most of our most recent content hadn’t shown up and some content dated back nearly a decade. Content that should be only in the Voices or Pulse tabs had instead filtered into the main news feed while other content that’s intended only for the print edition had found its way to the website.

You notice I say “had” and “hadn’t.” That’s because I’m hopeful that by the time you read this column, all of these issues will be a thing of the past. As I’m writing, I’m still looking at a sports story from 2018 on our home page.

I’m confident because we have an outstanding team working on the customization. That team is led by Lisa Walton, who took my previous role as The Gazette’s digital director when I was offered the opportunity to become the editor of the Courier and the Tribune. Lisa is a consummate problem solver.

While we’ve been transitioning for a couple of weeks now, the paper you may be holding right now is the first print edition that’s been created entirely in the new CMS. If it looks like the papers you’re used to seeing, that’s because Kailee Hayden, our page designer, is awesome.

It’s nice to be able to acknowledge Lisa and Kailee. You don’t see their names attached to stories but what they do is just as essential as the people with the bylines. The same goes for Yvonne Ramos, Jacki Stambene and our other advertising representatives. We can’t write, publish or distribute without advertising.

And the biggest thanks go to the advertisers themselves. I hope our partnership is beneficial to you.

This has been different than our last big change, which was when we switched from what’s called a tall tab to the current standard tab for our print editions. That change was forced upon us because our printer shut down and our new printer didn’t have the machinery to accommodate the old format.

This change has been done with an eye on the future.

While you couldn’t see it, the previous system was a spider web of patches, fixes and endless workarounds. In order to make it do what we needed it to do and operate with other essential programs, we were obliged to create workarounds.  They became so common that the workarounds became the workflow.

We were burdened with process limitations and endless duplication. Our new CMS is infinitely more customizable. Getting it from where it is to where it will be is going to take time. Hopefully, all the inconvenience will be invisible to you, the reader, once the website issues are solved.

In the meantime, we plea for patience. The future is bright and we want you all to experience it with us.