The new Irish Times website is live. I rather like the layout. Popular stories has been given prominence. The choice to change background colour on a hover is … interesting. The hover on pic with text is similar to the Guardian and The Economist. They don’t seem to have included the option to comment on opinion pieces.
As for blogging it is a little cleaner, but Conor‘s categories are microscopic compared to his body text.
Overall it’s taken design ideas from all the recent newspaper website redesigns. And it’s free. Yay.
Hmm. I understand that Ireland.com would remain in existence as a separate entity, but it simply redirects to IrishTimes.com. As Damien pointed out, it would be a tad ridiculous to split the brand and traffic up between two websites. Maybe they have decided against it.
And don’t ask me why BreakingNews.ie is on a different website to my own paper‘s website. I don’t know.
Not free just yet… Unless I’m misunderstanding what “free” means 🙂
Lol
The body text on their blogs is too small.
As for BreakingNews.ie – maybe it was kept separate from the Examiner as it isn’t the strong national brand. But if that was the thinking, then you have starting a new brand Vs strengthening an old one.