Digital Spy, the UK's largest TV and Movies website, just had an exciting new look and bespoke design overhaul. It's the most significant change to the brand in three years and we really hope you like it as much as us.
Now that the new site has been live a week (since Wednesday, December 5), we want to thank you all so much for your feedback – I've been trying to respond to every email personally, and our social team has been active on Twitter and Facebook. There's been some great conversations around the site from some really long-time readers and, thankfully, lots of praise – which is nice.
However, as with any change, there are teething issues and some cool new things get a bit lost, so we thought it would be helpful to interrogate where we're at, what's still to come and answer some frequently asked questions we've had about the new site.
If anything you'd like to know isn't answered below, please drop us a line at feedback@digitalspy.co.uk.
1) Why did you change the website?
Well, the old site went live in November 2015 and three years is a long time on the internet. Back then we had 11m unique users a month, primarily in the UK; now we have a global audience of 24m.
The new-look homepage offers a new stylish, dynamic design to better serve our increasingly mobile audience, with improved site search and functionality for video, social and e-commerce, increased security (HTTPS) and a whole host of new editorial features that offer us more flexibility and possibilities.
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It utilises Hearst's premiere CMS that powers Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar and our other sister sites, so enables us to benefit from planned updates throughout the year (our 20th anniversary year, no less) and have better all-round technical support.
But also it allowed us to build custom functionality specifically for Digital Spy and our future plans that wasn't possible on the old site.
2) Where did the Latest News sidebar go?
It's here, with its own dedicated page at digitalspy.com/news. If all you want to do is browse the latest news, I suggest you bookmark that link, as that's where all of the news articles Digital Spy has written are, in reverse chronological order – with infinite scroll and no hard limit, so you can browse till your heart’s content.
There's a direct link to it in the Hamburger Menu, too (the three lines next to the Digital Spy logo on the nav bar) and an update is coming very soon to add a direct link to the Latest News homepage heading. The latest eight news articles will always be displayed on the homepage module.
3) How I navigate the site has changed – where is my favourite content?
It's all still there, don’t worry – you just need to get familiar with the Hamburger Menu, those three lines next to the Digital Spy logo on the navigation bar at the top, and your new portal to everything on the site, whether on desktop or mobile.
In there you'll find direct links to all the main pages and their sub-sections (but the ones below go there, too):
There are also direct links from the section and sub-section headings on the homepage through to their respective pages, so you can get there from everywhere.
4) Where can I find the soap spoilers?
As with the old site, we recognise that Soaps users make their way around Digital Spy in a slightly different way than the rest of our audience. That's why you get a bespoke show carousel at the top of the Soaps homepage, giving you direct access to your favourite soap's news stories, features and, yes, spoilers.
Spoilers are the first boxout when you scroll down each show page, and if you click the headline it will take you through to the dedicated spoilers page. The shortcuts for them all are here:
5) Where are Tech and Gaming?
Tech is here – you can get there via the nav bar, via the homepage or via the Hamburger Menu.
Gaming was merged with Tech more than a year ago, so all Gaming articles now appear here, too.
6) What's that big story at the top of the site?
That is one of the site's new features called Cover Story, which allows us to give emphasis to promoting compelling and topical content above the nav bar, much like a magazine front page. It's a feature we will use sparingly for standout pieces.
7) The website isn’t loading properly for me and images look a bit weird.
The new Digital Spy is optimised for Google Chrome and Apple Safari specifically, but whatever browser you are using, you should update to the latest version as recommended to get the full DS experience.
8) The website isn't loading properly for me on my iPad or tablet.
If you are viewing on an iPad or tablet and it doesn't look great, check as with no 7 that your OS and browser are up to date. If these are fine, there's an outside chance you are being served the mobile version rather than the tablet one – please email us here with a screenshot of the issue, the tablet you're viewing it on and the OS number and we'll endeavour to get it sorted.
9) Why have the Forums not changed?
The Digital Spy Forums are hosted on a different system back-end to the main site and are therefore not affected by the relaunch. We will be looking to make design changes and upgrades here in the New Year.
10) Is the site redesign finished and is this its final form?
Broadly yes, though we do consider it a work in progress and we are monitoring over the coming weeks, taking on user feedback, analysing site journeys and looking where we can improve. While the response has been largely very positive, we want as many people to be at home with it as possible, so there may be more tweaks in the New Year.
We will continue to update this article as we go through the process with further information. While we love you letting us know what you think on social, emailing the feedback email is a more focused way to get things addressed.
As ever, DS's readers *are* Digital Spy, so your feedback is very important to us and will help shape future updates. Thanks for coming on this journey with us.
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Instagram and Twitter account.
