THE Gazette and Herald's website has won top honours at the prestigious 2005 Newspaper Awards.

This is Wiltshire was jointly awarded the Best Weekly Newspaper on the World Wide Web award, alongside the Ham and High in London.

Judges praised the Newsquest site's ease of navigation and rich content, such as its tourist section.

The awards, run in association with the Newspaper Society's Production Journal, were held at the Hilton in Park Lane, London, and Absolutely Fabulous actress Joanna Lumley presented the prizes.

Web manager Lisa Flynn said: "The site has been nominated in these awards twice before and not won anything, so it's an honour to finally take the trophy.

"There's lots more to come from This is Wiltshire though, as we have a major relaunch planned for later this year which will see a range of new and exciting features for readers both in Wiltshire and beyond."

Since its launch in 1998, This is Wiltshire has grown rapidly and in April attracted 1,575,116 page impressions and 149,506 unique users. It covers the entire county and is split into 17 towns including Devizes, Malmesbury, Marlborough, Calne, Chippenham, Corsham and Pewsey.

In addition, the sites feature a range of sub-sites on Wiltshire topics, including an extensive Weird Wiltshire site and the extremely popular This is Swindon Town FC.

There is an online community network called CommuniGate, where we have helped more than 500 local non-profit organisations create their own website for free.

Other interactive features include: find a friend; virtual cards; agony aunt; lost and found; competitions; shops and polls. Users are also able to search vast databases of homes, lettings, cars, jobs and classifieds, powered by one of the UK's biggest online brands Fish4.