AustinDailyHerald. com hit a milestone in February, cracking 1 million pageviews for the month.

The Herald’s website finished February with 1,070,043 pages viewed by 81,725 different viewers — known as unique visitors — which was also a record. The Herald also set a record for most pageviews in a week — 252,406 from Feb. 20 to 26 — and most pageviews in a day, with 88,939 on Feb. 27.

The Herald continues to set the pace with more breaking news — and big stories readers will find here first — than any media source in Austin. In February alone, a small number of the stories that readers of the Herald got first included: “Lansing Corners to become an event center,” “Two dead in one-car crash,” “First Spam Queen remembered,” “Oh, sweet: Chocolate shop to open in mall,” “Packers hire new football coach,” “Adams nursing home blamed for choking death,” “Wells man wins $1.29 jackpot,” “Snowplow drivers save local man from burning car,” “Child-chainers fight for parental rights,” and “Driver dies after head-on collision with semi.”

The Herald’s website — which provides all of its content completely free — has been steadily breaking records. The 908,247 pages viewed in January was a record at the time, and so was the 70,242 unique visitors that month.

The Herald continues to be the first to post Austin Packer and other area sports news every night, has as many as 20 calendar events per day — which are free to submit — provides school closings and delays, and features photo galleries, video, blogs, opinion, obituaries, classifieds, and a comment section on every story for reader interaction.

The Herald also offers a free daily news email, prizes on Facebook and a live Twitter feed. Look for the 92-page Progress 2012 — which won first place among all daily newspapers’ special sections in 2011 — on newsstands now.