This news website used to be a section of the Institute for Southern Studies’ site, but it outgrew that arrangement, and the editors were eager for new features and a more modern look.
Editor Chris Kromm announced the new website:
“The new site includes a cleaner, streamlined look that makes it easier to find and share stories... What the new site doesn’t change is our award-winning reporting on issues that matter in the South.”
One of our first steps with any new project is to determine how best to structure the information for an optimal user experience. We challenged the Facing South team to identify a very slim group of categories to classify their coverage. The new site features five news categories in the navigation — human rights, economy, demographics, environment and politics — with a few additional categories in the footer.
The website invites users to sign up for its weekly email newsletter in multiple spots, as well as to connect with Facing South on social media.
On the technical side, Alloy built the new site and migrated thousands of articles from the legacy website through an automated process. The migration process cleaned existing content to allow it to inherit the new look and feel.