Welcome to Cult of Mac’s new look.
We redesigned the site’s front page to better display the day’s most important stories, make it easier to find content, and to surface parts of the site that are sometimes not easy to find.
We hope you like the result.
Bye-bye, blog roll
For the last 10 years or so, Cult of Mac used the standard blog format, a reverse scroll of stories with the newest posts published at the top of the site.
It served us well, but we became frustrated that stories don’t remain on the front page for very long. Posts often scroll off the front door pretty quickly, often within a few hours (and sometimes even faster than that).
The standard blog format also makes it difficult to highlight the most important stories of the day. The new design, inspired by a classic newspaper layout, allows us to put the top story of the day at the top of the site. We can surround the top story with related posts or other important stories.
We will now be able to dedicate the whole of the top of the page to breaking news, or news devoted to a particular topic, like Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, making it easier for readers to follow a breaking story or event that’s dominating the day’s or the week’s news.
We also have several templates for highlighting different kinds of stories or events. For example, if there’s a really huge story, we have a template that will display only that one big story. It looks ace, and we’re excited to try it out.
Apple news, reviews, how-tos and more
If you scroll down the page, you’ll see different sections devoted to the main parts of the site — news, reviews and recommendations, and how-tos. We think it’s a big improvement to be able to see a selection of the latest reviews, for example, or the products we’re recommending.
Other sections showcase the latest videos posted to our YouTube channel, as well as our popular podcast, The CultCast, the latest killer deals and giveaways, and the current issue of our App Store magazine.
The new design also helps us to better showcase our one-stop-shop Apple Watch store and our well-reviewed buyback program, which helps readers trade in their old Apple gear for cash.
And finally, at the bottom of the page, you can sign up for our weekly news recap newsletter, The Weekender.
Thank you, thank you
I’d like to extend big thanks to San Francisco-based designer KC Bradshaw, who created the new look, and Marius Veltan of HipMill, who coded the design. Thanks also to the heroic efforts of our fantastic website hosts Presslabs and our advertising partner Ezoic. And thanks, as always to you — the loyal Cult of Mac reader.
We really like the new design and hope you do, too. We will continue to tweak the design in coming weeks, in the hope it serves us — and you — well for the next decade or so.
Oh, and if you don’t like it, there’s a link at the top of the site, just below the header, to revert back to the old design.
But trust me, it’ll grow on you!
Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
