A word to the worried about our site redesign

A word to the worried about our site redesign - American Thinker

www.americanthinker.com

We’ve been hearing from readers about the site redesign we launched yesterday. Some of you love it, some of you hate it, and some of you are just wondering why we did it. While we can’t change your visceral reactions to the new look, we can explain why we had to upgrade the site. (And we are still working on tweaking things that didn’t make the transition too well.)

Thomas Lifson, the founder of American Thinker, set up the site in 2003, in the early days of the internet. The design occupied only half the screen, which was how things were done then. At the backend, it was cutting-edge coding for 2003. The site was a sturdy little workhorse...right until it wasn’t. While our design didn’t change, the internet did.

Image created using AI.

Some of you may remember that a few years ago, we were forced to perform a back-end upgrade to the site because it could no longer cope with the technical demands of the modern internet. That was a fairly glitchy transition (as such transitions always are), but we got through it.

However, once the dominoes start falling, they don’t stop. With the back-end updated, the front end started crumbling. The two were no longer pulling in the same harness.

That didn’t affect readers, but it was often a problem for the editors and our tech team. A bigger problem for readers was that the old site design couldn’t handle the volume of ads we’ve been forced to run for the past many years.

As long-time readers recall, we didn’t use to run so many, or such obtrusive, ads. That all changed because of two things. First, Google (or, I guess, Alphabet) controls a huge percentage of digital advertising (around 25-30%). During COVID, it lowered its compensation scheme. Suddenly, we needed more ads to make up for that lost revenue.

In addition, as you all know, the Democrats launched a massive—and very successful—campaign to boycott conservative websites under the rubric of “misinformation.” This may have started with Keir Starmer’s political circle and appears to have made American Thinker one of the explicitly targeted sites.

The effect on our revenue was devastating. Even with more ads, we suffered badly and are still clawing our way out of that economic ditch. (That, incidentally, is why subscriptions are so important to us. Moreover, subscribers get an ad-free experience, the ability to comment, and our subscribers-only e-newsletter with unique content from the editors.)

Unfortunately, the old 2003 format, which covered only half of the available real estate on a web page, wasn’t equipped to handle the plethora of ads necessary to keep the site functioning. We were getting more and more complaints about how the site was unreadable. That, too, forced a site redesign.

We’re very sorry that, for many long-time readers, the new format is jarring. This change, though, wasn’t a whim; it was a necessity. We hope, though, that everyone remembers that it’s the same great American Thinker content you’ve always loved...and that we needed to do this to keep that content flowing. So, please, keep trying and see if you get used to the new format.

One more thing: This is a work in progress. For example, for those who are not subscribers but like to read the now-vanished comments, they will come back. That’s just a glitch from the new format, and we’re working to fix it. There are other technical and design tweaks we are continuing to make, too.