After a little over two months of experimenting with the new theme that debuted on July 2, Steven and I have come to the conclusion that the category-based organization of the front page gave us little of the anticipated upside and quite a bit of unanticipated downside.
While I like the idea of highlighting substantive posts while relegating the Open Forum, Tab Clearing, Photo for Friday, and the like to their own space, it made folks more likely to skip over them. Similarly, while our WordPress consultant thought that having sections for our main categories (US Politics, World Politics, National Security, etc.) would highlight older posts and keep the conversation going on them, it didn’t really do that but made the front page more confusing, as the result was quite a bit of duplication.
So, I went ahead and blew all that up. Now, with the exception of the most recent substantive post, which retains the big spot at the top left, the remainder of the page is simply the newest posts in reverse chronological order—the way blogs have been from the beginning.
Nothing will change if you’re accessing the site from your phone, as we’ve simply served all posts in reverse chronological order from the start.
