This redesign has been several years in the making, and we’re very excited that it’s finally complete. For a while now, all of us at the DTH have been wanting a website that is more modern, more accessible and better designed to help readers know the important stories and find the most interesting content.
Here are some the improvements you’ll find with the new site:
A responsive site. We are no longer going to be maintaining different versions of dailytarheel.com to accomodate desktops, smartphones, and tablets. With the new redesign, any device can be used to access the same main page and the same story from your preferred web browser.
A new information architecture. The old site was organized based on the DTH’s writing desks: Campus, City, Sports, Opinion, etc. In our early testing, we found that most users didn’t think about dailytarheel.com like that and were more interested in finding news based on topics. For the new site, we moved away from a desk-based structure in pursuit of a more topics-based one. Now you can find news by categories such as Student Life, Chapel Hill, Inside UNC, etc.
An integrated presentation of all of our content. Along with having new, more telling topics to organize our news, we are also presenting our multimedia, photos, galleries, blogs, etc. in different and more useful ways. In our testing and analytics, it was found that the majority of people don’t wander onto dailytarheel.com looking for multimedia and photos but instead select content that relates to the topics they already care about. To accommodate this, the site will now be organized so that when you’re looking for stories related to a topic (e.g. Politics), you’ll also find our blog posts, photo galleries, multimedia and everything else related to it, seamlessly.
A cleaner visual design. This redesign saw a large facelift in the way dailytarheel.com looks. We scrapped the old blue-and-gray color scheme from before to bring a newer, fresher and bolder look to dailytarheel.com. The look is more modern, much cleaner and makes browsing through new content easier and more enjoyable than before.
While we feel these improvements are a great addition to dailytarheel.com’s user experience, some users might feel a little overwhelmed by the change. Fear not! Here’s a handy guide:
The new navigation bar. One of the newest parts of dailytarheel.com is its minimal navigation bar. Under this navigation, you can browse the latest news via important topics, browse sports and opinion content, along with the rest of The Daily Tar Heel’s online content.
Just click on the stacked line symbol to open the nav.
Hovering over each topic on the nav gives you a preview of the newest stories that have been posted in that topic. You can also click on the name of the topic to get a full page of news relating to that term.
We also have additional tabs on the nav that allow you to explore our news further. The Topics tab will break our categories up even further into specific topic pages — Admissions, Diversity, Faculty, etc. This tab will change constantly to feature topics that are relevant and important to the current atmosphere and the news our readers are searching for.
Blogs, blogs, blogs. Blogs are a space where you can find extra coverage and a more personal tone from all of the writers at the DTH. Before, blogs could only be found by selecting a blog from the navigation by title — this wasn’t very useful, unless you knew exactly what you were looking for already.
The main blog page also doesn’t just display a list of blogs that we feature anymore — it’s almost a guide to our top blogs, complete with summaries and most recent blog posts.
Now, blogs are given more prominence throughout dailytarheel.com, making them easier to discover and follow. It’s never been more simple to find the DTH’s best blog content from blogs such as View from the Hill, Town Talk or From the Press Box.
Viewing other topic pages. As previously stated, topics on dailytarheel.com are the basis for the new site’s architecture. While you can always browse news by the main topics like Student Life and Inside UNC, but, on the new navigation, the dozens of other topics on dailytarheel.com are more visible than before.
With these featured topics, you can browse past stories from The Daily Tar Heel about an important subject happening locally, in the state or in the nation. You can also selected “more topics” to view the dozens of other topics available for browsing. This is a vital resource in learning all about the current events in the Chapel Hill community and all over the state of North Carolina.
We look forward to hearing your comments.
Daniel Pshock, Webmaster | Email
Paige Ladisic, Online Managing Editor | Email
