The new website is nearing completion, and we could go live this weekend (or early next week). There are a few appearance changes, some layout tweaks, and a more intelligent sorting system. Content will be filtered into Silos to make it easier for readers to get to what they want to read.
The system is simple. The home page will continue to have scrolling content as always, but we are adding cards that feature articles in each of the silos (areas of interest).
Getting Around
From the top of the Home Page, you will see these silos as ‘Grok’ New Hampshire (Local stories), New England (regional news and both VT Grok and ME Grok), the Nation (National News), Or The World (Global news). We are also adding a podcast page for our own or shared podcast content.
Content will be categorized appropriately to get you to what you want to see first. Here’s a mock up of the New England page header.
The Header to the New Hampshire page will look something like this.
You can always scroll the homepage and interact with the content, cards or other features.
Fewer Ads
We will be dumping our old ad vendors and switching to something else sometime in May—no more edge ads or mobile ad clutter. We are also doing away with Disqus, so that annoying out-of-our-control ad package (under every post) is gone with the update.
Comments, Etc.
We will be using the WordPress commenting system moving forward. Disqus comments will be archived and kept with past posts (I’m not clear on the logistics of this, but that’s the plan).
We are also making the site lighter and faster (so they tell me), and the mobile experience should be much improved.
VIP?
Once the site is up and deemed stable, and we’ve tweaked it a bit more to get it right where we want it, we will move forward with the Subscriber/VIP update. This feature will include premium content not included in the free version. The option of including an ad-free experience for VIPs will depend on how clean the new ad package is – it looks to be very unobtrusive, but we’ll see. I also still need to generate revenue for operating expenses, updates, and my living.
Mobile App?
Once we are happy with the site update, an effort can be made to develop a ‘grok app specific to mobile to improve that experience further. We have funds to start it, but given the changes, I need to make sure we have the operating budget to keep everything else running before pulling the trigger on that one. I still want it, so we’ll get there.
It’s all been a long time coming, but it looks like we’re here. I will announce when we plan to take the new site live so you’ll be aware of the likelihood of disruption. These things never go as smoothly as you’d like, but this time next week, we might be up and running on Grok 4.0. I think it’s 4 – or maybe 5.0. As if that matters, right?
