Community news sites get a fancy new look
It’s likely that the Richmond Internets were filled with a resounding “AWHAHHHHH?” this morning as its users made their customary visits to their community news sites. Today marks the official launch of the RVANews Network epic redesign.
It’s likely that the Richmond Internets were filled with a resounding “AWHAHHHHH?” this morning as its users made their customary visits to community news sites favorites like Church Hill People’s News, Hills and Heights, and Oregon Hill (among others). Why the confusion? Well, things are looking a little different in those parts. That’s right: today marks the official launch of the RVANews Network epic redesign.
Some of you might be saying, “What is the RVANews Network?” Let us take a minute to explain…
When you read RVANews or one of the community news sites* we feature down there on the bottom left of the homepage (down…keep going…to the left…you’re other left…there!), you’re reading a site that’s part of the — you guess it! — RVANews Network. It’s pretty simple: when the RVANews staff isn’t busy working their sweet bippies off bringing you fantastic original content, they’re taking care of the business end of these 10 community news sites you know, trust, and love — that means hosting, general upkeep (beyond the day-to-day posting), and advertising.
The fact that some of you might not have even realized that all of these sites are connected was a main motivator behind this redesign (other than the desire to improve the overall user experience). We’re hoping the redesign will make the RVANews Network brand more cohesive, better highlighting this joint, multi-site effort to provide comprehensive coverage of issues important Richmonders and their beloved neighborhoods.
When it came to redesigning these community news sites, the main goal was to visually relate them to each other and RVANews. We’ve incorporated a standardized layout and logo, but many of the features of each site are left up to its publisher — think colors, widgets, and so on. As Ross The Publisher puts it, “Even though the bones of the sites are the same — the “skeletons”, if you will — each site will have customizable elements to make them their own.”
But enough of us yammering on. Click on the links below to scope out the goods:
- Byrd Park
- Church Hill People’s News
- Fan of the Fan
- Greater Jackson Ward News (formerly known as Carver Jackson Ward News)
- Hills and Heights
- Near West End News
- North Richmond News
- Oregon Hill
- Shockoe News (formerly known as River District News)
- West of the Boulevard
If you’ve got congratulations, criticism, or hate-filled vitriol we’d love to hear from you!
*A couple of the sites we aggregate in our community news section are not part of the RVANews Network. Those folks are just nice enough to share their feed to better enable us to create a one-stop shop for all of your Richmond news.
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Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
For what it’s worth, this site looks OK in chrome (when it loads—it was crashing a lot before this week), but the other sites are using a font that does not play nice with Chrome, the Google Browser. They look really fuzzy and are difficult to read.
Beautiful. Whoever built those must be some kind of genius or something.
Looks AWESOME!
Dig it.
The RVANewsNetwork site looks great! Will those pretty little images eventually link to their respective blogs? That would be awesome. Right now they don’t take me anywhere.
They look fantastic! Good work y’all.
I believe the correct term for the redesign(s) is “high falootin'”.
Damn, it feels good to be… alphabetically #1. Also, the font for our logo is the only one at a slight angle, and… is that italicized? Tre-unique.