You may have noticed that it’s been a few weeks since my last letter — and that since then, we’ve rearranged the furniture around here, capping off months of preparation and hard work with the debut of the new and (if you ask us, anyway) improved Popdose. At least I hope you’ve noticed the redesign, ’cause it’s what I’m here to talk about today.
Not long after Popdose launched, we realized that the old design, while functional, exposed a fairly serious (albeit awesome) flaw, which was that we had too much content. Most weekdays, we were publishing a new post every two hours between 7:30 AM and 3:30 PM EST, which meant that nothing stayed on the front page longer than a day — and prevented us from effectively promoting “event” posts, like interviews and staff collaborations. The only way we could really get around this was by “pinning” posts to the top of the site, which had the unfortunate effect of making it look like we weren’t updating, or making everyone take a vacation, as we did when the Popdose 100 and Mellowmas ran last year.
Being that I read just about everything the site publishes, this design flaw has pissed me off for months, and patching it was my top priority when I set about redesigning the site. Taking inspiration from Salon — not, as a couple of snarky fucks have suggested, the AV Club — I spent a few months coming up with a new look that would allow for more content, more effective promotion of that content…and, well, open up more real estate for ads. Thanks to the coding wizardry of our pal Rahul, I’m happy to say that Popdose 2.0 accomplished all of those goals.
Of course, progress comes with a price, and our new digs have not escaped criticism, either from the writers who constantly pester me about putting the pill back into the site logo or from the aforementioned snarky fucks who have accused us of trading a “colorful” design for a pale imitation of the AV Club. I know we’re never going to be able to make everyone happy at once, but I am very interested in how our readers feel about their browsing experience here, so now that everyone has had some time to explore the new design, I’d like to open up the floor and get your thoughts on what you do or don’t like about the new look.
But before you give me your gripes about the way the site looks, I’d appreciate it if you could cast your votes in a poll. In the constantly changing stream of content Popdose produces, we’ve seen a lot of series go by the wayside during the last year. Some of them had to be put down — sorry, Cassingle Vault and Cutouts Gone Wild! diehards, they’re gone for good — but others have taken unplanned trips to column limbo, and I’m curious how you feel about that. Take a minute to check a box or six, and I’ll meet you in the comments!
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