For the first time in nearly nine years, we’re debuting a sitewide redesign of Streetsblog.
The last time we overhauled the site, few people were reading news on their phones, Twitter was just finding a mass audience, and no one thought of Facebook as the world’s most important media platform. Streetsblog was a single non-profit with reporters covering three cities and federal policy on Capitol Hill. Today we’re a collective of four organizations, with staff covering five cities, a state capitol, and the national streets and transportation beat — plus content-sharing partnerships in four other regions.
Our old site design had a good run, but it was clearly time to implement a modern interface better suited for the breadth of coverage that Streetsblog reporters and editors now produce. This year the team at Alley Interactive has worked with us to put together a much-improved technical platform and reader experience, so Streetsblog can continue to grow our audience and make an impact well into the future.
There were two main goals we wanted to accomplish with this redesign: creating a portal for quick access to important recent stories across every Streetsblog site, and upgrading the front end of the site to work well on the full range of devices that people use to consume media.
The new homepage, located at the address formerly occupied by Streetsblog NYC, will be updated daily with posts from around the Streetsblogosphere. Our reporters are producing compelling stories across four time zones, and readers can finally see that work all in one place. (With the new site structure, some readers will have to adjust their routines, especially people who follow Streetsblog NYC and Streetsblog.net — read up on those adjustments here.)
For the first time, Streetsblog now features a mobile-responsive design that’s easy to read no matter what type of screen you’re using. The new template should be more legible on desktop browsers too — but especially on mobile devices. Images and type will be larger across the board. These changes should make the reporting and commentary we produce more accessible, enjoyable, and pleasing to the eye.
While we’ve cleaned up the look and feel and introduced some content hierarchy on each Streetsblog site (you’ll notice major stories stick at the top longer than they used to), we’re also staying true to our bloggy roots. Below those top three stories, you’ll still find a reverse-chronological flow of content, and you’ll still be able to check Streetsblog at 9 a.m. every weekday and see a fresh stack of headlines.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be working through some kinks and graphic tweaks in need of further attention. We have our own list of things to take care of, but if you spot something buggy, please tell us about it — except images that are acting funny (that’s probably a temporary effect of the migration to the new platform). You can send your troubleshooting notes and other suggestions to tips@streetsblog.org. (We’re still configuring Disqus on this particular domain — it works on the others — and will have that up and running tomorrow.)
We’re indebted to all Streetsblog readers and donors for supporting our work and making this critical upgrade possible. I especially want to thank The Summit Foundation, which has been a bedrock partner for many years and gave indispensable support to the site overhaul, and TransitCenter, which provided a final boost that enabled us to wrap up this big, complex undertaking.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the new Streetsblog.
