Westword's new home page a lot better than these embarrassing past designs

Looking at Internet page design from years past has an almost high-school-prom-like photo quality to it. That color scheme! Those buttons! Why is that blinking?! Westword's gazillionth new redesign, which just went live, will look like one of those prom shots a few years from now. But right now, it's...

By Nick Lucchesi

December 7, 2011

[
        {
          "name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Inline Content - Mobile Display Size",
          "component": "12017618",
          "insertPoint": "2",
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "2"
        },{
          "name": "Editor Picks",
          "component": "17242653",
          "insertPoint": "4",
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "1"
        },{
          "name": "Inline Links",
          "component": "18838239",
          "insertPoint": "8th",
          "startingPoint": 8,
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "7",
          "maxInsertions": 25
        },{
          "name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Combo - Inline Content",
          "component": "17261320",
          "insertPoint": "8th",
          "startingPoint": 8,
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "7",
          "maxInsertions": 25
        },{
          "name": "Inline Links",
          "component": "18838239",
          "insertPoint": "8th",
          "startingPoint": 12,
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "11",
          "maxInsertions": 25
        },{
          "name": "Air - Leaderboard Tower - Combo - Inline Content",
          "component": "17261321",
          "insertPoint": "8th",
          "startingPoint": 12,
          "requiredCountToDisplay": "11",
          "maxInsertions": 25
        }
      ]

Looking at Internet page design from years past has an almost high-school-prom-like photo quality to it. That color scheme! Those buttons! Why is that blinking?!

Westword's gazillionth new redesign, which just went live, will look like one of those prom shots a few years from now. But right now, it's a lot better than the embarrassingly bad -- but kind of cute -- home pages of the past on view below.

About the New Home Page: The new design (all interior parts of the site will look the same) promotes six big stories of the day and replaces the rotating set of four stories on the right and the headlines list you used to see on the left of the home page.

The most recent featured blog posts from all of our blogs (Latest Word, Backbeat, Cafe Society and Show and Tell) are listed in order, freshest first, below the six big stories. Below the list of blog posts are featured stories from that week's print edition on the left and on the right, and national stories picked by Westword editors.

There are other evolutions in the works, too (slide shows, navigation), which we'll be debuting over the next few months.

If you like this new design, or hate it, let us know below.

The Old: Now go down memory lane with these images, courtesy of the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. In all, there have been about ten home-page designs since the mid-'90s, including tweaks and likely hundreds of code rollouts. Amid all these digital fluctuations, there have been only four Westword logo iterations, notes editor Patricia Calhoun.

Travel with us from Monday all the way back to December 26, 1996:

Monday, December 5, 2011:

June 15, 2010:

March 15, 2008:

November 16, 2006:

January 31, 2006:

October 1, 2004:

March 29, 2003:

November 29, 2001: January 25, 1999:

May 21, 1998:

December 26, 1996:

Become A Member

BEFORE YOU GO...
Can you help us continue to share our stories? Since the beginning, Westword has been defined as the free, independent voice of Denver — and we'd like to keep it that way. Our members allow us to continue offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food, and culture with no paywalls.