Miami Herald redesigns Web site

Posted: September 29, 2008

I went to the Miami Herald’s Web site this week, and much to my surprise, it was completely different from the last time I visited the site.

I visit the site daily, so I was surprised when the change snuck up on me the way it did. I personally like to be given fair warning that things are going to change.

Miami Herald redesign

Still, overall, I really like the redesign. It looks slick and immediately seems easier to use than the old site. This is the eighth version of the site since 1998, according to the Miami Herald site. The paper refers to this version as “more than a facelift.”

This time around, the navigation has been simplified, multimedia has been given a more prominent place on the home page (videos can be expanded to full screen) and the layout is just plain better.

I could go blow by blow about what’s different, but they do a really good job explaining it in their tour of the new site.

There isn’t much I can say I don’t like right off the bat except that the multimedia sections seems to take some noticeable time to load up and populate. I also didn’t like that one of the front-page advertisements in the multimedia section is for Barack Obama. I wouldn’t like it any more or less if the ad was for John McCain. The paper may be misleading it’s readership by having a political ad on the home page.

Other than those two things, I couldn’t find anything else that caught my eye immediately. Over time, I’ll look through some of the new features and their kinks.

Quickly though, speaking of new features, the area to sign in as a member to the site has been made more prominent. The new location on the page was enough to get me to log into the site with my user name and password. In the “Member Center,” I found that members of the site can now blog, send messages and keep track of where they have contributed to the site – I assume they mean in comment form.

This is a feature I really want to look into more because it seems to be a truly valiant effort at creating a community on the newspaper’s Web site. But alas, more another day!

What do you think?