Newspaper website design

One of the main areas that I have blogged about over the last couple of years has been the design and information architecture of news and newspaper websites.

Topics I've covered in recent months include the user experience of external links on news sites, watching user feedback on the BBC News redesign in real-time and 5 things the news industry can learn from Google Wave.

The vexed issue of how to improve the comment threads on general news sites has provoked a couple of posts: "Real name comments on news websites - the up and the downside" and "Why tone and context are crucial to better newspaper website comment threads".

You can find several older series of blog posts devoted to aspects of news website design. "Wireframing the front page" looked at the different ways the front pages of print and web editions of newspapers are laid out.

"How 'Web 2.0' are British newspaper web sites?" looked at the implementation of blogs, RSS feeds and social bookmarking amongst other features, and I've also written a series looking at the contextual help around social media elements.

Other sets of articles have examined topic and keyword pages, the design and content of 404 error pages, and accessibility.

"Navigating newspapers" was a series that argued that, in news, 'we are what we label', comparing the primary navigation schemes of the major UK newspaper websites. I also recently blogged specifically about changes to the BBC's navigation scheme: News, sport, weather, TV & radio - sensible BBC global navigation at last

I've written in depth reviews of redesigns of thelondonpaper in 2009, and The Mirror, Telegraph, Independent and Daily Mail re-designs (and beta redesigns) in 2008.

I'm particularly interested in search over news content, and in 2006 wrote a lengthy series to survey search across British online newspapers, including homepage search box placement. I subsequently devised my Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown" in 2008.

For Inside Guardian, I've specifically blogged about my contribution to projects that redesigned guardian.co.uk site search, and The Guardian's 404 error page.

And of course, when thinking about newspaper website design, there is always The Daily Star's unique approach to promoting RSS feeds to consider...