Finally, we’re live

At long last, the Wired News redesign is visible to the world. We launched the site around 10pm PDT time last night. And what a relief it is. Despite numerous setbacks, delays, bugs, and technical difficulties, we pushed through to the other side and found success. Are all of the bugs and errors fixed? No. But the major problems which were keeping us from launching last night have been solved. And now it’s live for all to see.

Why is this significant? Why should anyone care? Why did we fight to get a press release issued by our parent company just to cover a redesign of a technology news site? While the design on the surface may look different, admittedly, we haven’t added many new features. So what’s the big deal?

Take one of the Web’s longest-running daily content-producing sites which gets millions of pageviews, redesign the site with a noticeable facelift, convert the markup of thousands of pages to follow strict XHTML 1.0 rules, make those pages rely entirely on CSS for every design, format, and presentation detail, and don’t look back. Our Executive Editor, Jon Rochmis wrote an article about the redesign, Wired News: A Site for Your Eyes. I took a slightly more technical approach with my explanation: Behind the Wired News Redesign.

We believe this is a huge deal, and a significant event in the development and evolution of the Web. Wired News is not the first website to make this leap. But it remains a highly visible beacon among the influential techno-savvy creators, inventors, and developers who are building and shaping the Web. It’s our hope that Wired News can be a powerful example of the what can be achieved when following W3C endorsed standards. Articles and documentation discussing the nuts and bolts of the redesign will be posted on this site soon.