Isn't it wonderful? Over the last few months we've worked hard to review, reorganize and refresh our entire online presence, bringing you the streamlined version you see here. We sincerely hope you will find it easy to use, navigate and engage wtih us. Click around and explore, or read on for more about the functionality.

Overall, we really wanted to simplify both the site's look and its architecture. Thus the basic black and white with SFF-themed accent colors setting off the really important stuff: our films, events and outreach programs.

Check out the new navigation at the top of the page, too. To the far left you'll find general info under the "About SFF" drop-down menu. Want to know more about this year's Festival including the films and events to be featured? Chose the "2012 Festival" drop-down for lots of options related to our annual festivites in April. The "Outreach" menu has info on our education department and community partners and the "News" tab holds info for press as well as the link to our in-house blog, a great source of constant updates on all things SFF. If you want to donate to, volunteer for, or sponsor The SFF, you'll find all those options under the "Support SFF" tab. Feel free to contact us to learn more about anything if browsing the site still leaves you wanting more.

In addition to the new design and navigation setup, our web solutions team, Destiny Group, built our new site using a content management solution called Joomla that gives us the ability to administer the site ourselves. That's right, we can change, manage, move and even create pages on the site using a simple visual editor just like what you see in a word processor. It's wonderful. And because we have the ability to push out our own info as it's happening, we can give you more of what you want and need: the latest news and announcements, as they're happening. We're especially thrilled for how we'll be able to use the site during the Festival itself, announcing where you can meet a director or a late-breaking screening, for example.

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the helpful buttons and options over on the right hand side of each page: social icons for connecting with SFF, buttons for commonly-used actions like donating and (in March) ticket sales, a newsletter sign up and a site search.

Another cool feature that's integrated into every blog post (like this one) is a full suite of social sharing icons, so you can send this to Facebook, Twitter or your social network of choice with one click. Comments are integrated with Facebook so it's easy to tell us your thoughts! Go ahead and share this or comment here to let us know you're reading and how you like the new site, or if there are any other features or changes you'd like to see.

You can also look forward to a new ticketing system for 2012, available online when tickets go on sale on March 23, 2012. We're working hard to make this year even better than all the previous ones (hard to top, we know) and we're starting from the ground up with our new online home. Many thanks for Destiny Group for accomodating literally our every request with good humor and prompt service, and the entire SFF team for pitching in and getting the new site going! We're so pleased to share it with you.