www.roanoke.com

Our development team is excited to share an image of the redesigned roanoke.com homepage.  Keep in mind it’s not functional, but it will give you a preview of the design and a sense of our priorities as we continue work on the new site. (It’s best viewed when you double click on the image).

You may notice the image in the center of the page is large much larger than photos on the current roanoke.com. You will see greater emphasis on photos throughout the new site. There will be more galleries and none of our photos will be displayed in Flash, so they will be viewable from tablets and mobile devices.

Another new feature is a blog called Times Square, located about midway down the homepage. This blog is intended to be like an information concierge, pointing out new features of the site, and highlighting what stories are being talked about either on our site or in social media.

You will also see all of our blogs are easier to find on this homepage (listed down the left side of the page). You will find the blogs in this same spot throughout the other pages of the site. You’ll also see social media buttons and tools for sharing news and photos throughout the site, making it easy to share content. One of our primary goals with the redesign has been to make the site more engaging and to highlight people, and these areas of the gateway are some examples of how we’ve done that.

Take a look at the page and give us your thoughts. If you missed the previous post on the new navigation, check it out,  and you will see the navigation bar in better context here on this homepage.

Your feedback is important to us as we continue development of the site and prepare it for beta.

New roanoke.com navigation toolbars

Our development team has been working hard, and here is the first peek at the navigation of the new roanoke.com. Click to enlarge the photo, take a look and tell us what you think.

What you’ll see is the main navigation (top bar) with the sub-navigation bar below. (For instance, in the first line, you’ll see that the News tab brings up the light blue bar below). These navigation bars will be on every page throughout the new site and are designed to make it easier to find and access the stories, photos and blogs you look for.

The top-level navigation bar will feature five primary news topics. If you hover over one of these sections, you’ll find a sub-navigation bar highlighting more specific content. This new navigation puts the most popular sections just a click away from anywhere in the site. For example, if you’re looking for Virginia Tech football highlights, hover over Sports and can click directly to Virginia Tech.

Within the navigation, we’ve also anchored some tools such as submit a news tip and share a photo. The search tool is also prominently positioned within the top nav bar, making it easy to access from any page within the new roanoke.com.

What pages of roanoke.com do you visit the most? As you check out this image, think of that and see if you can navigate to those pages.

We welcome your feedback.