Note from the Publisher

Good morning! You might notice we're doing a little remodeling around here. The goal of the new design was to make our Gothamist content easier to read, and to make the site as a whole easier to use. The content area is now better visually defined (with borders!) and we've moved all the important site functionality to the top of the page, where it should be easier to find. Additionally, we've migrated Gothamist to the newest Movable Type software. That should make the site faster and more stable, and allow us to add new features over the next year. A big and well-earned thanks is due to Neil, who has been working on this relaunch for several months, and to our friends at Six Apart Services, who assisted him on the project.

The new design you see before you is a work in progress-- we'll be making tweaks to it over the next week, and we welcome your feedback in the comments on this post.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jake Dobkin in Miscellaneous on December 28, 2008 9:21 AM

Comments [rss]

Lautaro

I was a bit lost at first, but now that I've adjusted to your adjustment, Gothamist, I like it. Keep up all the great work!

Coruscation

The URL of this page is 'editor'

http://gothamist.com/2008/12/28/note_from_the_editor.php

but the title is 'publisher'

Note from the Publisher.

The layout looks good. The content area is now better visually defined indeed. Would like more links and help for browsing the archives, though.

Jen S

I'm scared of change too, but we'll get used to it.

My old home comp is taking forever to "think" about things (pardon the lay term). I'm waiting a few minutes for a page to fully load.

Amanda Harletsch

The scripts (java) are sooooooo overwhelming!

Leave my processor alone!

glennQNYC

The RSS feeds don't seem to be functional. :(

sainsbury

sigh. I can no longer email articles. Even tried different browsers.

It's annoying to sign-in each time.

Otherwise, the content arrangement and layout are a great improvement for filtering.

Felix Hoenikker

My netbook and wireless are not happy with the busier content and bandwidth.

chuzzlewit

the red is the pits, your eyes want to hopscotch all over the page because there are dabs of an "alert" color everywhere. you can still visit shanghaiist to compare - look at how the whole layout has room to breathe, and a clearer hierarchy. Also the convention was that anything clickable was underlined - that had a certain single system clarity that is gone; and the tags and links at the bottom were elegant in grey...sigh.

slappy

The red is awful. Other than that, OK.

zodak

are all links going to be red?

MFer

All right. I blew my wad on an later post about the design. But let me reiterate. It really sucks. Come on. It's embarrassing. Really unprofessional. Are you guys trying to appeal to the out-of-work IT crowd?

Let me give you some hints. Verdana instead of Arial as default. Please. And make the entry title bold, unless you go with all-caps. Too much space (margin-bottom) under the entry title. It looks like a mistake.

And how about throwing in some -webkit ..., -moz ..., -khtml ... border-radius action. Not all browsers support it, well only idiot browsers don't support it, but for the rest of us, a little class is welcome. Tastefully done, of course.

And PURE RED as the some rollover? YELLOW on FULL/SUMMARY. This is just sick.

kinglearsjester

Well, Gothamist pretty much copies and pastes their news into this site, so might as well copy other's idea and sites -- like Gawker and HuffPo.

NannyState

Why did the 19th Century ever have to end?

Jen Chung

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! As we mentioned, we're tweaking the design, so things will change over the next week or so.

longacre

I like it a lot. Nice work, guys.

HughGass

But it's got no spinnin' wheels or nothin. pfffff

S.D.

Nice work, I like the new look and feel.

Ace

My only comment would be to use bold links in the articles instead of red and increase the the font size by a point.

fakenewyorker

i agree with the font size. it needs to be increased or changed to a more legible typeset. it's too small and condensed.

nicemarmot

Make the headlines bigger and/or bolder.

Alex

Good work gothamist. Keep it up!

You guys are one of my favorite websites and it's great to see you guys growing and improving.

chuzzlewit

gaak! i hate change.

Pull My Finger

this is a test post

RatherBeBiking

Looks nice. Good work.

tien

yay! great job, neil!

Pull My Finger

the reply thing is good but to my eyes the site seems to cluttered now

Mags

I agree, Tien. (I really just wanted to try out this reply thing.)

Neil Epstein

Glad we agree!

Jake Dobkin

I think the reply thing is cool-- that might make the conversations more organized.

David Topping

How deep can the threaded comments go?

snoopydog

I had to change my name because it wasn't taking my old name. Well I guess this new crew is the same one that keeps f'king up ebay with their weekly changes.

Billiamsburg

ya looks good! nice work. fast transition too

Steven

The new layout looks great!

I notice when you click a link it doesn't change colors or go darker like before.

Also maybe have a little more white space between each line. The lines are too close together.

jaycjay

Yeah, visited link color should be changed... basic web usability.

Personally, I hate the red link color, but I suppose I might get used to it.