The Source gets a little visual and functional boost

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Observant readers will notice a few subtle changes around The Source today thanks to a little update courtesy of Metro’s web team.

Here are a few of the things we added that we hope will improve the reading experience:

  • Featured posts: the most obvious addition is the box at the very top of the page that features stories we don’t want readers to miss. This week, obviously, it’s all about Carmageddon. Apologies to those who are sick of it.
  • We’ve installed a new search engine that will hopefully make finding stories from our archives a bit easier. Our old search didn’t handle special characters (quotations, percentage signs, etc.) very well, but the new system does. Give it a try.
  • The fonts and post formats have been tweaked slight for improved readability – check out the new block quotes!
  • In an effort to keep the community active we’ve added a  “Leave a comment!” link to every post and included the number of comments for each post in the “Popular Posts” sidebar box.
  • Big bold badges linking to Metro’s other blogs, El Pasajero and Primary Resources, are now part of the sidebar. Make sure to visit them!

We hope these changes are an improvement, please let us know what you think in the comments.

Categories: Inside Metro, Technology

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2 replies ›

  1. Thanks for the feedback Devin. I think it’s a good point, and we love images anyway so we’ll do our best to start including images with every article.

    Good to hear you subscribe to the RSS feed as well!

    Fred Camino
    Contributor, The Source

  2. I like all the changes, definitely going in the right direction. That said, I do think one thing The Source could do to help readability is have a headlining image with most stories. For example, the story about the free shuttle between NoHo station and BUR should include a picture of Noho station, BUR, or a SuperShuttle. Better yet; a SuperShuttle at BUR or NoHo station.

    I primarily read The Source in my RSS reader, along with many other blogs, and having headlining images is helpful when skimming articles or looking for an article I saw previously. For me at least, it’s frequently easier to remember an article visually than by it’s title.