Introducing MP1st Phoenix, a Completely New Look and Feel

It has been quite a while since the last major website update for MP1st. The roots of the current theme go back to just a few months after the site launched back in August 2011. Things have changed and evolved but the basics have remained the same.

A few months ago I started writing down some ideas on how to improve the site. Our current theme is also starting to show its age, so I decided to throw it all out and start from scratch. Today, I am proud to finally be able to show this to you! I called this new theme “Phoenix”: As this console cycle is coming to and end, so is MP1st, but only to be reborn and better than ever!

“So what exactly has changed, apart from everything?”, you might ask. The most important change would be a fresh new responsive design. This means no more mobile site and no separate tablet site. There is only one version, but it’s a special one! It will react to how much space it has and change the way the page is structured to best fit in that space.

The second most obvious thing is infinite scrolling. Whenever you are on the homepage or an archive page, just scroll down and keep going as long as you want. On top of that, it will also keep track of where you are. For instance, if you scroll to page 30, click an article and then press the back button, it will take you back to page 30 so you don’t have to scroll down all the way from the top. Some people don’t like infinite scrolling, so I have provided an option to turn it off.

scroll

Next up: a sidebar with related items for news articles. In case you missed a previous post or just want to keep reading about the same topic, just take a look in the sidebar and it will be all right there!

sidebar

One of my main design goals was to put the content in the first place. You come here for the content, so I have added several new post designs with more to come. Features like opinion pieces, reviews and interviews will now be able to use the full width of the page. This will give the writers and editors a lot more power to make their posts look less like a blog post and more like something you will find in a magazine.

wide

These are just a few of the many new features and optimizations you can look forward to. What I’m really excited about is that you get to try it today. I have put online a beta site which you can find right here:

dev.mp1st.com

Bookmark it if you wish, and check it out for yourself (just keep in mind news posts won’t get synced immediately)! Everything is still a work in progress and very much subject to change, so we want to give you guys a chance to try it out and leave us with some of your thoughts.

To make sure everything goes smooth when the new look goes live, I also suggest trying it out on your mobile devices. If you come across any issues please report them to me in the comments here or on the forum post with development plans and updates.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter or Facebook with any comments as well!

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