Welcome to the first phase of the Towleroad redesign which includes our new logo; a cleaned up design from top to bottom; the addition of channels and other ways to better navigate the depth of content in the site; and a more organized site structure that reflects our staggering growth over the past 12 years.
Towleroad has transformed from Andy’s personal blog into the more sophisticated news site produced by our team of more than 25 employees and freelance contributors.
A lot of thought and work went into this, and we had the benefit of the expert mind and design sense of Tadeu Magalhães, a New York-based graphic designer and art director who was already a part of the Towleroad team as one of three founders of the house music collective Occupy the Disco, whose OXD Mirror column inspires us every week.
Said Tadeu: “It has been a pleasure and honor to be involved in the redesign as well as being a collaborator in such an important website for the gay community…I truly hope the redesign of Towleroad is well received as a major improvement to a website that constantly works to keep our community strong, united and up-to-date.”
We’ve wanted to change many things for a long while but have been held back by our legacy technology platform. So, we finally bit the bullet. A huge part of this redesign you can’t see — a migration of the whole site to the industry-leading WordPress platform. And while it was far from trivial to move the 50,000 posts and close to 1 million comments, it means we can now be more agile and responsive going forward. (Though it also means some features may take a few days to update. Patience. Thanks.)
Since the two of us joined forces to become business partners almost 10 years ago, we’ve come a long way because of your intense and ongoing support! And we still need it…
As online media consolidates, it’s harder and harder to publish independently, especially maintaining the journalistic, eclectic, quality, and safe-for-work mix we are committed to. (Rest assured that while we’re updating the look, we’re not changing that.)
It really does makes a material difference when you share our posts on Facebook and elsewhere. Please do when you like a post. (And please, like our page on Facebook if you haven’t).
And you’re in good company! Towleroad continues to reach more gay influentials than any other. You are more engaged, more social, and more involved than the audience of any other LGBT site.
We hope you’re as excited about the new directions and opportunities as we are.
Andy Towle and Michael Goff
