What happened to PopSci.com?
John Kuehn
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New look, same great taste.
New look, same great taste. John Kuehn

If you’ve come to PopSci.com at all the last three years, you’ll see that the site looks, um, completely different.

Redesigns, especially for a loyal audience like the one Popular Science enjoys, can be super wiggy. Don’t panic; this new site was built for you. It’s easier to navigate, and your favorite stories are so much simpler to find. It’s faster, cleaner, and more secure. It highlights what we do best: science and tech journalism. Period.

You’ll notice that, aesthetically and functionally, we’ve toned things down quite a lot. One of the goals for this new version of PopSci.com was to design for the reality of our ad load, so that means stripping things down, speeding things up, and incorporating as few barriers to read our stories as possible. We know what we’re good at—real reporting, authoritative answers, a lively approach—and we want that stuff to be easy to access. The goal is to let the work of PopSci’s brilliant editorial staff shine.

That being said, a lot of the site’s new features encourage you to go on a little adventure. We want you to stray off the path that brought you here and into a pleasant bramble of science and tech stories that are odd and entertaining and eye-opening.

The highlights tour:

  • Channels for subjects you like! In addition to one giant feed of everything, we’ve got a lot nooks and secret meadows to explore. So if you’re the type who only cares about space or animals or military tech, you can start there. You can move to different channels using the horizontal nav bar, which we’ve brought back because I like it.
  • Roll the Dice! You’ll notice there’s a clickable bit in the nav that encourages you to play roulette. Tap it, and you’ll be taken to a random PopSci story. Some articles date back decades.
  • Recirculation! We’re going to be smarter about suggesting stories you may want to read next.
  • Testing! PopSci’s spirit is all about experimentation, and we’re not shy about testing features we think will make our site more navigable or interesting. This should be fun. Or weird. Fun and weird.

What you’ll see this month:

  • #sputnik60! Starting today, we’ll be celebrating the 60th anniversary of Sputnik 1 and 2 with a variety show of Space Race articles, videos, and conversations. Come back throughout October for more.
  • What came before the big bang?! This is just an amazing feature about the beginning of our universe. Well, actually, not everyone thinks the universe had a beginning. Read it.
  • Best of What’s New! Later this month we’ll be dropping our biggest project of the year, our list of the most incredible innovations in categories like gadgets, security, and entertainment. It’s PopSci’s 30th year highlighting, as former editor-in-chief Scott Mowbray once put it, “whizbang design and visionary engineering.” Make sure you come back Oct. 17.
  • New newsletters! Sign up here to get the latest news straight to your inbox.

OK that’s it! Go have fun reading about rockets and eyeball tattoos and giant, dinosaur-eating frogs. If you have any questions or concerns you can find me at amy@popsci.com. Bye!