Blog

Truthdig Hits Bedrock, Launches

December 6, 2005

Truthdig LogoWhat a humdinger of a week.  Last Monday we helped launch Truthdig, a Web magazine 11 months in the making.  I’ll let the site explain itself:

Truthdig is a Web magazine that provides expert in-depth coverage of current affairs as well as a variety of thoughtful, provocative content assembled from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major “digs,” led by authorities in their fields, who will drill down into contemporary topics and assemble packages of content—text, links, audio, video—that will grow richer with time and user participation. To offer frequent change and surprise, the magazine will also present a diversity of original reporting and aggregated content culled by the site’s editors and staff.

This is without a doubt the most complex site we’ve launched this year (well, that’s not true in every respect—we’ve launched sites with more complex CSS or programming requirements—but it is a huge site).  It’s got a significant number of sections and has a feature list as long as my arm:

  • print version of each story
  • multiple authors and access levels
  • announcement list and mailing list
  • moderated comments on each article
  • a beautiful, elegant layout thanks to Susannah
  • RSS feeds tracked by Feedburner
  • Web traffic tracked by Statcounter
  • a huge number of visitors just in the first week (I’m not supposed to tell you, but it’s six figures of page views already, and less than 1% of their traffic is from search engines, so that number is going to grow and grow and grow.)
  • Really snazzy layouts that format themselves dynamically depending on what elements are available
  • Staff pages that integrate with the articles on the site
  • an affiliate exchange called the Bazaar
  • intense security against hackers
  • and of course, plenty of room for growth

    Though it was a long time in the making, we’re particularly please with the favorable comments that have come in regarding the site.  Other, similar media projects have launched this quarter, and the consensus is, Truthdig blows them away.

    Posted by Travis Smith at 3:14 PM

    Add Your Comment

    Please enter the word you see in the image below: