Today I am excited to announce that after a number of years of lying dormant, History Rhymes is finally getting a new lease on life.
New Design
The first thing any returning visitor will notice is the significantly different design. With this new design, History Rhymes has lost some of its traditional look, but brings with it several new features.
First of all, it is much more smartphone- and tablet-friendly than the old design was. In the world of web design, this is referred to as “responsive”. The reason I chose to design it this way is because a significant amount of traffic comes from mobile devices and that number keeps increasing.
The website has also gotten wider even though the content of most pages, like this post, appear in a centered column. This was intentional so that pages like the World Map work properly. I also have many more plans for interactive pages that will require the full width of the browser which means a full-width design was the only way to go.
A New Writer
But enough with the technical stuff. Another new and exciting change is the addition of a new regular contributor to the blog: my brother, Kyle Seifert. He will be posting regularly, and I am excited to see what nineteenth-century topics he decides to cover. He has free reign to choose what he would like.
Maps and Interactive Content
Some of you may have noticed a new link in the menu at the top of the page: World Map. When you click on it, you will be taken to a large map that shows locations from some of the featured articles on History Rhymes.
Clicking on the location will zoom into the marker, tell you what it is and show you a preview of the related article with a link to read the full article. This should make browsing articles by location easier and hopefully more fun.
Additionally, articles appearing on the world map will have their own maps when you visit the article itself. These maps will only contain markers relevant to the particular article which should help contextualize it. Clicking on a marker will tell you what it is and zoom in on it.
I am also planning more interactive content for the website. I have several ideas, but it takes time to create them, so they will come as I can do them.
Tons of New Ideas
Of course, the core of the blog is still the articles. We have a ton of new ideas for content that we want to write about from the old American Wild West to European royalty and secret societies.
Now that there are two of us writing, we should be able to produce more content more quickly and regularly. I am excited to see where the journey takes us and what all of you think of it.
If you have any feedback about the new content, the world map or the new design, please feel free to let me know in the comments below or by using the contact page.
