We’re working on building a new buffalorising.com and we anticipate we’ll be ready to launch it before the holidays. It’s been nearly 2 years since we launched the current site and it’s time for a change. And we’re hoping it’s change all of our users can believe in.
Why The Change? The current site is built on a Movable Type publishing platform with a number of proprietary add-ons. With current traffic levels, the site’s infrastructure is too slow and cumbersome for users so it needed to be changed. Yes, we’ve heard your feedback.
Beyond technology, however, we also wanted to change the site to allow for more content in more categories. With the new site, we’ll be moving to a different channel structure. Instead of City, Events, Arts & Leisure and Yum, we’ll have an expanded list of channels including City, Regional, Dining, Entertainment and Real Estate. We’ll still have our self-service Events listings and self-service Classifieds channel. After our initial launch, we’ll also be rolling out a new restaurant guide and an online store. The restaurant guide will provide users with a snapshot of as many area restaurants as we can cover while the store will allow users to buy Buffalo products.
Given the additional content categories we wanted to introduce, the new site has more of a newspaper feel than the current site. But we’ve tried to bridge the design divide between the content structure of a newspaper site and the overall look and feel of a dynamic blog.
The new site will also allow for increased functionality, including:
– Upload your own picture to show next to your comments and user profile
– Follow chosen authors and commenters
– Promote exceptional comments to their own posts
– New events posting system which allows each event to be displayed more attractively
One thing is certain – the new site will be much, much faster than the current site and should eliminate the technical glitches we’ve all dealt with for so long (double comments, etc). We hope the vast majority of our users like the new site look, though we recognize not everyone likes change.
A snapshot of the new design is above. We’re still refining and testing the new site to ensure as smooth a launch as possible. As with any launch, we anticipate users will find some glitches and we’ll work as diligently as possible to correct any problems. Once the new site is battle-tested, we intend to roll out the new restaurant guide and the store.
Feel free to post a comment on the design or content structure of the new site. We know you’re an exacting crowd and we aim to please.
Buffalo Rising
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