Legal Insurrection Version 1.0 was the old Blogger template.
Version 2.0 was the custom designed WordPress template initiated in June 2011.
This Version 2.1 is a redesign of the home page to accomplish the following:
1. Featured Posts. Adding the ability to keep featured posts on the home page just below the banner was the primary motivation for the redesign. Given our prolific content, about 8-10 new posts a day, content moves down and off the homepage quickly. If you are away for a day or two, some of our most important and popular posts already have moved off the home page.
2. Speed. We received a lot of complaints about the speed of the homepage, and our testing confirmed that we were slow. Much of that problem was caused by our tendency to embed videos on the home page in full posts, requiring video content to be loaded even when you didn’t play the video. To achieve speed without losing content, we have lowered from 5 to 2 the number of “full” homepage posts (plus one “sticky” post when needed), while increasing the number of “snippet” posts. [Update – initial tests indicate our load time cut in half!]
3. Visibility. By reducing the number of full posts we not only increase speed, we increase the visibility of content by shortening the page. Our study of reader habits showed that people just don’t scroll down a long page.
4. Pictures Are Good. We’ve also moved to a more image-based presentation both for posts themselves and the “snippets” on the home page.
5. Sidebar. There are some minor sidebar changes, including better identification of contributors and the role various people play here.
6. Sight Unseen. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes recoding needed, more than you can imagine, but you will not see that.
While we tested the new design, there are some things that only could be done once live. So in the next day or two you may see some tweaking, but nothing major. If you encounter a problem, please post in the comments here, or email me.
Thanks to Tarin Keith at Sound Strategies for the redesign and Andy LoCascio and his programmers for the implementation.
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