We've had a busy week here and wanted to share a bit more about some of the sites and projects we've launched this week.

Largo 0.5.5

Earlier this week we announced the latest release of Largo, our WordPress framework for news websites. We've been hard at work on that release for about the last nine months and it has some significant improvements to things like photo galleries, byline formatting and social network integration as well as a number of bug fixes, smaller improvements and features for developers. You can read the full release notes for all the details.

We've also started the process of updating all of the member sites we host to this new version and making some important infrastructure changes that we hope will make your sites even more stable and easier to work on. More on that shortly and we'll be reaching out to you individually to set the timeline for updating your site to the latest version in the coming weeks.

As the launch release noted, this will be the last major release for the current Largo codebase. We've reached a point in the project (now four years in, believe it or not) where we feel like we need to step back, re-architect and redesign a lot of things in the project to make ensure we're able to keep up with the rapid growth and demand we've seen for the tools we build. We'll be sharing a lot more about that process as it unfolds and we're excited to share that work with you in the coming months!

Mississippi Today

We also launched a redesign (using Largo) for Mississippi Today. They had launched a very basic site using Largo a few months ago to get their new publication off the ground but then asked us if we could do some more custom design work for them.

The result was some illustration work by our very talented design apprentice, Gabriel Hongsdusit, and some other custom design work to polish up the typography and develop a more refined color palette and style patterns for use throughout the site.

Gabe wrote an excellent post about his process earlier this week.

In the process of building the new site, we also added a neat new feature to Largo that makes it easier for developers to add interstitial donation messages and signup widgets in rivers of stories (on the homepage, topic pages, etc.). Using this feature in conjunction with our Super Cool Ad Inserter Plugin now makes it easy to add these sorts of messages (or advertisements, if your site has them) directly in the flow of the content on your site where they're more likely to be noticed.

Kinsey Confidential

Earlier this week we also launched a new website for Kinsey Confidential, a project of the Kinsey Institute and School of Public Health at Indiana University. They run a podcast and blog providing research-based sexual health information to college-aged readers. We worked collaboratively with a designer at IU, Alan Milner, and then did some additional design work, content migration and development to migrate the site to Largo.

Here's the before/after:

The Observatory

One more Largo site launched this week, The Observatory. This is a project at the University of Wisconsin journalism school that it teaching students how to improve their fact-checking while also developing a statewide resource to hold those in power accountable. We built the site using Largo and then added some additional functionality to make it easy for students to rate fact-checks on a four point scale and display appropriate graphics for site visitors.

City Limits: ZoneIn

Last but certainly not least, launching today is the new project ZoneIn from City Limits, funded by the Ford Foundation, where they'll be covering a series of zoning proposals in New York City.

We worked with City Limits to develop a new section of their website (which was already using Largo). We extended the custom landing page functionality in Largo to provide a more focused experience for the project pages that almost feels like a site within a site.

They're also making use of Largo's optional series and post types taxonomies and an additional Neighborhoods custom taxonomy to create landing pages for each of the zoning proposals that include recent news, project status, a listing of public meetings and more. They're also accepting community commentary and hope to have a vibrant discussion about each project over time.

Work With Us

Want to join our team and work with us to build and support projects like this? We're hiring.

Want to hire us for an upcoming project? Get in touch.