photo by: Lawrence Journal-World

LJWorld.com has a new look.

For the first time in more than a decade, LJWorld.com has been completely redesigned.

“We’re confident our users soon will find the new site easier to use and a more appealing way to stay up to date on all the latest news and sports information in the Lawrence area,” said Chad Lawhorn, editor of LJWorld.com and the Lawrence Journal-World.

Some of the features of the new design include:

• A more robust home page that includes more articles and more photos, making it easier for users to see our most important and most interesting content at a glance.

• Easier navigation and more attractive presentation of news and photos for the growing audience that accesses LJWorld.com via mobile devices. The new website features a responsive design that will better adjust content to fit the screens of smart phones, tablets and other popular mobile devices.

• Better organization of articles. The new site includes more prominent sections for local sports, state politics, national news, health and several other categories. Rather than having to dig several layers into the site to find such news, the redesigned homepage will allow users to browse headlines and quickly get to the news that matters most to them.

Lawhorn said the new site also has a more flexible design, which will allow for new ways to present articles, photos, videos and more.

“We’re looking forward to having more options,” Lawhorn said. “Compelling content will continue to be the most important part of our website, and now we’ll have more ways to showcase it.”

The redesign does require a change by some users who comment on LJWorld.com articles. The new site requires anyone who wants to leave a comment at the end of an LJWorld.com article to have a Facebook account. LJWorld.com has used a type of Facebook registration previously, but the new system will remove the need for a separate username and password through LJWorld.com. Users who do not wish to have a Facebook account will not be able to comment on articles.

The Journal-World launched LJWorld.com in the 1990s, becoming one of the first newspaper companies in the U.S. to begin publishing all of its content on the internet. Today, the website routinely attracts more than 30,000 users per day. The company also operates a separate site, KUsports.com, that attracts a similarly sized audience. Work to redesign KUsports.com will begin in the near future.

“We are more committed to improving the experience for our website users than ever before,” Lawhorn said. “It is vital today, and will be even more so in the future, for a community to have a strong digital news provider. We’re very excited about what this new site will allow us to offer our readers in the months and years ahead.”