BU Today Gets a Makeover

Redesigned news site highlights reader comments

| From BU Today | By Art Jahnke

The redesigned BU Today has a cleaner look and is easier to navigate.

BU Today returned August 29 after three weeks off, with a new look and feel aimed at making it easier for readers to find stories that interest them and giving greater prominence to readers’ comments. The newest version of the University’s daily news website places four related stories beside the main text on its story pages and plays up the most interesting recent comments on its home page. It also puts news headlines at the natural starting point for readers, the top left of the home page, and gives more space to series of stories about things to do in and around Boston (neighborhoods, places to eat, day trips). Editor’s Picks, which are selected for their lasting interest, are given more space, and news from athletics is now a permanent fixture on the home page.

“The new site is bigger,” says Scott Dasse, creative director of Interactive Design. “It’s faster. And it does a much better job of making vast amounts of content discoverable based on natural browsing habits. This all adds up to a richer, more meaningful experience.”

The redesigned BU Today has a cleaner look, is easier to navigate, and because it is built using WordPress, the publishing platform employed widely throughout the University, it is faster and more reliable than its predecessor.

This latest version is the third iteration of the daily site, whose readership has grown steadily since it launched in September 2005. Last semester alone, the site had more than a million page views from visitors in 198 countries. Last year, BU Today won a gold award for writing in a national competition sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

What do you think? Let us know in the new comment space below.

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