Over the past year or so, a talented team of editors, designers, programmers, and thinkers has been working on a new website for Astronomy magazine. The improved version of Astronomy.com goes live this Wednesday. The new site, modeled after the architecture of the site used for a longer time by our sister publication, Discover, will not only modernize Astronomy’s web content, but will expand and improve it dramatically.
First and foremost, the site will now be optimized across multiple platforms. It will work smoothly, graphically, on computers, tablets, and smartphones in an elegant and sophisticated way.
The content will also be improved. The site will feature a new visual layout with much more information organized in a dramatically better way. Important stories are highlighted in a sliding graphics bar near the top of the home page, and we feature alerts on breaking news and developing stories that you’ll want to keep an eye on. The site’s search feature will now be dramatically improved.
Users will now be able to find related content easily by tags that exist on stories, videos, podcasts, and other elements. Various multimedia elements are now integrated far more effectively into the stories they accompany.
Take some time to explore the site starting on Wednesday. You will find the greatest collection of astronomy-related materials on the Web, both relating to science discoveries and to sky events you can observe and other hobby activities.
As always, we hope you will register on the site, which will afford you greater access to stories and features. Subscribers who log in will obtain full access to everything on the site, including substantial stories, articles, and bonus content not available to non-subscribers. But those who simply register, even without subscribing to the print magazine, will receive added benefits and access. We also hope you currently subscribe to our weekly newsletter, which contains a summary of the week’s big stories in astronomy. You can sign up on the website.
I want to thank the Kalmbach team that worked so diligently on this process over the past months: Jeff Felbab, Karri Ferron, Alex Gaudynski, Craig Kuhlow, Ken Meisinger, Rob Oberheide, Craig Schneider, and Jeanne Wieland. Please let me know if you have comments about the new site, and I hope you will enjoy it.