The comprehensive breaking news, sports and entertainment coverage you’ve come to expect from us at lehighvalleylive.com will take a new shape on our homepage Tuesday morning.
A clean, single stream of content will allow us to share more of our top stories with you right when you get here. It will include all of the news, entertainment and sports coverage that appeals to a wider audience.
There is more space dedicated to these top stories on the homepage, so you’ll be able to see an accompanying photo, the writer's byline and the number of comments already posted.
You'll also be able to customize your search for news by topics and places that matter most to you.
Our redesigned homepage is the first step in advances planned for lehighvalleylive.com. Consider it the cover on a book that’s being rewritten. A real-time commenting platform will be available Thursday.
Next up for remodeling are topic-specific pages as well as the mobile and tablet apps and websites. All of these changes are the latest rolled out across other Advance Digital websites to create a Web product that's simpler to use across all of your devices.
View full sizeThe new navigation bar collects all of the links previously spread on our homepage into convenient drop-down menus. Atop our new page is a navigation bar with links that were previously spread across the homepage.
The main tabs on this navigation bar will let you easily jump to the section you’re most interested in viewing. When hovering over the tab, you’ll be presented with top and recent headlines from that section as well as links to more specific pages.
In addition to the news and business tabs, there are two sports options to accommodate both professional and high school sports. Find your favorite food posts, concert reviews, TV bloggers and local events under the Entertainment tab.
Special to lehighvalleylive.com is the Local tab. This is where you’ll find our editorials, columns, local bloggers, contests and forums. Lehigh University’s Brown and White newspaper will also be linked from here.
View full sizeNavigation filters on the homepage allow readers to select what content they see.Below the navigation bar, your eye can easily follow the feed of top stories in the content river. This area will be updated as new stories post throughout the day.
We may also highlight stories to you in promotional boxes above and to the right of that feed. These give us the chance to offer you more links and information in an organized space.
To get you what you want faster, there is a customizable navigation filter just above the river of stories. Select the type of content you seek -- entertainment, news or sports -- and even select the area you're most interested in reading about. Your choice posts will be in the feed for you to peruse right on the homepage.
Whatever you choose to see in this stream, you’ll be able to see more with this new design. If we have a compelling photo to share, it’ll be there. You can also check out what posts people are talking about by looking at the comment count.
You will find more by scrolling. This feed doesn’t have to end at a dozen stories: Clicking the "load more" button will allow more to flow onto your screen.
You are here for more than reading the news.
Under our Community Center, you’ll find search boxes to pick restaurants, movies or events near you. There are also simple searches for our classifieds database.
Farther down that right side of the page, find the Photo of the Day and links to other photos and videos from the Lehigh Valley.
Next, stay in-the-know by checking stories with the most comments and a new most-read headlines box on the right side of the home page. This is your go-to spot for what's popular now on lehighvalleylive.com.
From the streamlined navigation to the customizable filter, we've tailored this page to our Lehigh Valley audience. It's the first step in a series of upgrades to improve your experience here.
The upgrades come as lehighvalleylive.com, which is part of Lehigh Valley Media Group with The Express-Times, continues to grow and expand its reach. In July alone, page views grew by more than 80 percent over July 2011. We are making these changes to better serve that swelling audience.
The goal here is to create a simple interface for our readers over many sections and platforms. As you become accustomed to the new layout, I hope you'll join in the discussion in the comments below this post.
Readers' desire for -- as well as the means by which you consume -- local news, entertainment and sports is ever evolving. We're growing to keep up with those changes.