TimorToday.com was launched yesterday at the ICFJ office. Timor Today is basically a news service that will be used to feature video, radio, text and photography from local journalists. It’s something new for Timor-Leste because it puts the focus on the local media in all its various forms.

My involvement with Timor Today was to register the domains, create the website, get the content up there, make it look pretty and customize it to specifications I was given. The website uses WordPress as its content management system.

WordPress is a blog software, but it’s also incredibly versatile and can be used to power a news website. It’s easy to modify, which is why I chose it. Furthermore, this isn’t my website. With a bit of training, I’m hoping that the local journalists won’t need any more help with this.

They should be able to run it by themselves, with a little support from time to time. I’ve tried to make it as accessible for them as possible. They will be uploading videos to YouTube to then be played on the website, while audio will be uploaded to the server and played with a plugin.

There is also a lot scope for uploading text and photographs. There is still some fine-tuning to be done, but this is something that can grow.

The audio and the videos are in Tetun. I don’t expect this to change as that side of the content is produced by local people for local people. With text, however, there is the opportunity to also produce in English.