Finding Your Way in the New Forward.com
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Dan Friedman April 24, 2015
However long awaited or welcome any new arrival is, human nature makes us greet it with anxiety. In his 1925 “Resistance to psychoanalysis,” Sigmund Freud points to the rituals developed by farmers to mark the coming of spring as an example of the wariness with which we greet even the most vital and life-affirming of developments.
The newly rebranded Forward has arrived with Northern hemisphere spring (our editor-in-chief Jane Eisner explained the rationale behind our print and online changes) and it’s a welcome change. But, though all the wonderful writing you loved from the old site is still here, some of the ways to get there and some of the names are different.
At the bottom of this article is a list of our different featured topics with links to get there, and I’ll try to update this as new features become available. But, as you get used to the new look of the site — really new looks, as it’s a responsive site meaning that its appearance changes as the viewing window changes from big to small, from desktop to mobile — I hope you will find that it is intuitive to use.
First, if you enjoy the Forward and want to help keep the best in Jewish journalism alive and thriving, you can click any of the “join” buttons, or join us here.
We have streamlined our main topics into news, culture and opinion. Those are the areas you turn to us for the latest and best coverage and we have put them at the top of our pages under the Forward logo. You can get to the homepage from anywhere by clicking on the logo, and if you hover over (or tap) news, culture or opinion you’ll get a more detailed menu of what’s in the corresponding section.
The other way of getting around our site is the three lines you’ll find at the top of article pages, aka “the hamburger ” (kosher!). It has everything in it that you, as a reader, could possibly want (the footer, at the bottom of desktop versions of our site has them all too, plus more contact information and legal notices.) If you click the hamburger you’ll get a drop down menu with news, culture, opinion and — within those — a list of topic pages within each section. Also in the hamburger, under “more” you’ll find our delicious food page, now called Eat, Drink + Think, Abigail Pogrebin’s ongoing investigation into Jewish holidays (Wondering Jew), our Sisterhood page, the Yiddish Forverts and our rebranded culture blog – The Assimilator (Intermarrying High and Low Culture).
Also on each article, as you scroll down, you’ll see a thin black banner appear at the top of the page with the hamburger on the left, the title in the middle and, at the moment three gold icons there (there will be more soon). The gold Forward “F” icon will take you to the home page, the gold arrow will allow you to share the article (by email, on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter) and the gold magnifying glass allows you to search the entire website for any search term.
Our search button works and should find you what you want, but soon it will have all the advanced filter and find features that will make it even easier to navigate to exactly what you want. Our spiffy new author pages are useful resources now, and I have been using them to find pieces whose author I know. I search for the writer whose article I’m looking for and then click on his or her byline to get to the author page. For example if you go to my author page you’ll see this article at the top, then in reverse chronological order the pieces that I’ve written.
Some of you who come to the site to see what’s new might be looking for the breaking news. It’s in the black panel that says “Trending” on it (along with Most Popular Stories and Twitter) which is just below the leading stories at the top of the desktop site or at the bottom of the page on mobile. If you want to bookmark the breaking news, it’s here.
We have redesigned our comments section, changed the provider we use to display and manage the comments to a service called Disqus and added a series of new features. We will be turning that on next week, ready for more Disqussion from our readers!
The most convenient way of finding out what’s going on every day is our newsletters. At each article page there’s a box, usually on the right, in which you can sign up for some or all of our newsletters. Or you can go to our sign up page. We still have our daily morning newsletter and the four or five special ones a week that come out in the afternoon.
Some temporarily discontinued series, like The Bintel Brief, are not yet linked in the new system, but they are findable through search and will be in an “Archive” section. Fear not, that article you loved so much is still in our system!
If you want to get in touch with us for anything, our newly designed contact us page should lead you to whoever or whatever you need. Even if it doesn’t quite work the first time, you’ll soon find it easy.
Dealing with ones needs and desires is at the heart of psychoanalysis. Freud came to the conclusion that you only know that you are succeeding in helping by meeting and overcoming people’s resistances to the new. I hope that, with the help of this resource, we can all spring into success.
A List of Links to Features
Join / Donate / Support independent Jewish Journalism
The food blog, now all grown up and called Eat, Drink + Think,
18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew
The Sisterhood
The culture blog – is now called The Assimilator (Intermarrying High and Low Culture).
Search
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
