Survey: your opinion on a new website design

Bill Gabbert
November 23, 2019

UPDATED at 6 p.m. PST November 24, 2019

The poll below about alternatives for modifying our website home page has closed. The final tally was 44 percent favoring a change to a magazine style or tiled home page, and 56 percent wanting to retain the format that we have always used, multiple full-length articles that you can scroll down through. At the bottom of this article is a screenshot of the modified trial version of the home page showing the experiment with the magazine tiled format. We have converted the format on Wildfire Today back to the original version.

Thanks go out to everyone that voted or left comments. We’re going to consider the input and make a decision about what our next step will be.

Originally published at 9:27 a.m. PST November 23, 2019

We are experimenting with a new website design on Wildfire Today. For the next couple of days (as this is written at 9:25 a.m. PST on November 23) we will try out a rough draft of a new style on the Wildfire Today home page (here). It’s called a magazine theme. The home page has one photo for each article (usually), with a headline and a sentence or two. You can click each one to read the entire article. After you go to the full version, you can click on the left or right arrows at the bottom to go to the next.

The previous style is still being used at Fire Aviation (click here), where the full versions of eight articles can be seen as you scroll down the page.

This version of the home page is a rough draft, using a standard out-of-the-box style, or Theme. The left side bar will be eliminated, the right side bar will be prettied up, and there will be a header graphic at the top smaller than what is now at Fire Aviation. And less empty space.

What I’m most interested in is how folks feel about converting from what we see on the home page at Fire Aviation — where the full versions of eight articles can be seen as you scroll down the page, and changing to a magazine format where we see tiles with a sample of each article.

Let us know which style you like better, the home page on Wildfire Today or the home page at Fire Aviation. And, it would be helpful if you tell us why in a comment.

Thanks!