For the past 12 months, I have often asked you, our community, how we could improve the site — how we could make it better, cleaner and simpler to use. And each time, you have responded with great suggestions. We took all those suggestions and passed them on to the folks at SilverOrange, the design firm that has done the Mozilla and Digg sites, to come up with something simple, utilitarian and classy.
Of course, the new redesign had to reflect some of our business realities — incorporating content from our network sites, for example, and including advertising without being too suffocating. It took a while, but we finally got it done.
The new, two-column design features our new, more formal logo, designed by Arno Gelfi, a friend of ours from Red Herring and Business 2.0. And it addresses our readers’ biggest complaint — that the main content block was too constrained and narrow.
A couple of points about the new look: We have created a featured posts block right at the top, which allows us to showcase some of our long-form writing. Readers kept telling us that trying to find these stories was quite frustrating. Of course, we as writers want to get read, and we think the new design makes it easier for you to find these “featured” stories, which are also available via a featured story RSS feed. The new design is also — at least in my opinion — open and airy, giving me an opportunity to put up shorter posts, quick links or random musings.
The GigaOM network stories are available at the bottom of the page, and hopefully you will sign up for our network RSS feed to get the latest from what our diligent team of writers is crafting throughout the day.
The focus of this redesign is simplification. Hopefully you agree. Of course, your feedback is invaluable and we eagerly await your suggestions.
(We are going to be tweaking it over the weekend, so bear with us while we make the changes and perfect it. Of course, let us know if you capture any bugs. Also check out the new look WebWorkerDaily)
