AnarchistNews website update 2k25

Welcome to the 2025 iteration of Anarchist News (ANews). ANews is sailing strong into the new year with a brand new necessary update to the content management system behind the website. You will probably notice some visual updates to the website and behind the scenes there have been some upgrades that we are excited about. The migration was successful, but if you notice anything that appears to be problematic, leave a comment here and the technological wizards and witches of thecollective just might be able to respond.

 

The goal of anarchistnews.org remains the same: 

to provide a non-sectarian source for news about and of concern to anarchists. It is also to provide a location for community moderated discussion about such news. The website has been online since 2004 in various incarnations. We can be reached via email at: thecollective [at] anarchistnews [dot] org

- https://anarchistnews.org/content/about-us

 

"we create the anarchy we want in the world"

- thecollective

Comments

anon (not verified) Tue, 01/07/2025 - 19:13

the summaries for the articles on the home page almost all flow past their respective images. anyway to line them up/ shorten the summaries/ make all images a consistent shape (all square for example)?

Also, I assume, you know, but there's some early feedback on this comment thread too: https://anarchistnews.org/content/anews-podcast-397-%E2%80%93-1325#comm…
^And I'll second missing the tracker/recent activity page too.

anon (not verified) Tue, 01/07/2025 - 22:49

I like the new look, at least on my desktop, haven't checked it out on my phone yet!

anon (not verified) Wed, 01/08/2025 - 06:25

Wow, this looks ugly! Congratulations on getting me to not look at anarchistnews.org ever again - it worked!

anon (not verified) Wed, 01/08/2025 - 14:57

i would appreciate if more like 20-30 recent comments showed up instead of 10 like now. the font takes up way too much space and the readibility is poor.

if they really wanna mix it up the entire page should be rendered in images so ai can't parse it as easily, huh, what would that format be called?

anon (not verified) Thu, 01/09/2025 - 16:16

Friendly suggestions to discuss at the next drupal witches coven from someone who doesn't speak the language of computers, but does look at them. (Some nitty gritty stuff because it's clear you all care a lot about this stuff.)

The impetus behind these suggestions is... decluttering, simplifying so it's easier on the eyes, removing distracting/unnecessary information, minimizing scrolling, & making it easier submit articles/ events. Most suggestions come from looking at the desktop, not mobile, version.

*Main page*

- There are duplicate links for "Submit" and "About Us." Is there a logic to them being in the sidebar and the header?

- Are the "seconds" necessary in the "Recents comments" sidebar? They are also on the "Recent content" page.

- Why is it always anon "(not verified)"- does this mean something? is there a registered user "anon" that wants it to be known it's not them? Couldn't it just be "anon" or "contributor" or "anonymous contributor?"... something less clunky, or am i missing something?

- The dates are in european format: DD Month Year. Maybe I like it, but it doesn seem strange for a US website. And also the dates in the event column are in the different format: Month DD Year.

- "Tags" is on it's own line and seems to take up too much space. What if it could be on the same line of the tags themselves. Or better yet, do you even need the word "Tags" if they are clearly tags?

- Do you need the day of the week in the event column? Maybe it's useful? Maybe it just adds clutter? I can't decide.

- Someone else suggested placing the event sidebar on top of the comments sidebar. I think that'd be more useful?... especially to prioritize face-to-face discussion over internet discussion- a burning keyboard is your logo after all!

- There are duplicate links to the RSS feed, once in the sidebar and once in the "Subscribe to" link at the very bottom. Is this duplication intentional?

- If a comment title is long, it takes up two lines in the "Recent comments" sidebar. Maybe it could be condensed to one line with a "..." like some of the other comment titles.

*Pinned articles*

- Podcast and totw could be side-by-side instead of stacked (on the desktop version at least). that way they could take up less space (less scrolling to see the newest articles below), and also to demarcate their specialness as semi-permanent fixtures.

- Maybe they don't need their dates on the homepage as they both have times in their title (the podcast date and "Week"- the info you need is all in the title, and the dates don't offer any new info, right?)

- Also, the bylines for podcast and TOTW on the homepage seem unnecessary. It's always "the collective," right?

-Even the "Read More" for those two pinned articles could be discarded if it's clear the titles themselves are the link to read more? Maybe at this point it'd be too stripped down? But maybe that'd allow you to put a very short description of what the podcast and totw are, especially for newcomers. Like spelling out "Topic of the Week" (ppl might might skip over this link because it's lingo they don't understand- unless this acronym is used a lot on the internet, and I just don't know it?)

*Article pages*

- The "skip down to comments" link at the top of each article page went away. I found it useful. But maybe it was intentional on your part to encourage reading the article before commenting on it?

*Article submission page*

- The "alternative text" is now a required field when including an image. It's an annoying extra step, but I know it's important for accessibility. Could the article title just be the default entry? Or is there some other way to automate this step (not AI)?

- It's a bit tedious to put: From a <href="website">Source</a>
before each posted article. Could that be integrated into the form itself? Just a "Source:" and you enter the website? And then when the article spits out, it looks how it normally does with "From..."

*Event submission page*

- There's no need for seconds in the event time, right? Actually maybe there's no need for the time-of-day option at all. It's usually included in the post, and if it's not, it seems to be made up by the submitter most of the time. Also, you removed the option to not enter an end date/time. This was especially useful if it was just a one day event (and also simplified the submission process).

- It's nice that the country is included in the event titles, but maybe there's a way to automate that on the submission page by having a separate entry for country (or state/region)? But maybe that makes the submission page unnecessarily more complicated?

- Is there any way to add images to events? Or at least a reason why that option is not available?

*Calendar & Recent content pages*

- These pages look great on desktop, but the mobile versions are too wide (for my phone at least) and requires an awkward zoom out.

All this being said (most of it to make the website "tighter")... it is actually really nice to have white (black) space- as it does make things more pleasant and feel less crammed/"everything is urgent!" Again, all these are just ideas for changes! If this is annoying I'm sorry. I thought you'd appreciate (user experience!) feedback, given so much thought and energy went into the re-design.

anon (not verified) Thu, 01/09/2025 - 16:57

Something seems wrong with the RSS feed link. It downloads a text file rather than leading to the rss webpage to be linked into a reader.

anon (not verified) Fri, 01/10/2025 - 19:28

I like the update. Dark mode should conquer everything. There still should be an option for the light mode tho. Am I missing it?

anon (not verified) Sun, 01/12/2025 - 08:29

The font size in the sidebar looks a little too big on my screen. Each comment in "recent comments" taking up 2 lines without showing very much info.

Otherwise looks good to me!

anon (not verified) Wed, 01/15/2025 - 08:39

The one-day events in the sidebar now look weird. For example:
Tijuana Counterculture Festival (Mexico)
Sat Jan 25 - Sat Jan 25
Shouldn't it just say Sat Jan 25? But maybe this is because there's no option in the event submission page anymore to remove the end date?

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