DURBAN - Reddit has undertaken their first website redesign and the changes have already started to roll out, according to The Verge.
Reddit is a US social news aggregation, web content rating and discussion website that was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
This redesign is the first time in a decade that the company has decided to change its interface.
1% of users will be able to view the new design today and then over the course of a few months, the design will be available to all Reddit users and lurkers.
As of now, users that have seen the change can still switch back to the old Reddit.
The new design replaces the navigation bar with a menu on the corner which looks like a lot trendy website templates available on Squarespace, Wix or Tumblr.
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The menu opens up to show links to feeds, subreddits you follow and user profiles.
Users can also select to view Reddit in three classic modes:
Classic view: This mode looks more like the Reddit we know today.
Card view: This mode vaguely looks like Facebook
Compact view: This mode is for more densely packed information.
To make things more intuitive for new users, different fonts will identify whether a link is heading out of Reddit or leading to another post. To promote the creation of content, a big blue button prominently sticks out on the main page, r/all, inviting users to post something new.
Posts will open up in boxes so you stay on the main page so that each new links does not take you away from the page.
With the improved site, Reddit designers have also reimagined the website's mascot Snoo. The mascot has been redesigned as a more 3D cute mascot who's traversing planets rather than just standing there in the logo.
New Reddit users get Snoo as a default profile photo until they choose to change it.
Steve Huffman, the Reddit CEO, explained more about the redesign five months ago by posting on the site.
He said that many evangelise Reddit and tell people how awesome it is... then when those new people check out the site they find a dystopian Craigslist. Huffman said that they would like to fix that.
The response from Reddit users indicated that older Redditors might not be fans of the redesign.
One user who moderates a subreddit for stocks responded that old users will hate it if they can not use the old Reddit.
According to a Reddit announcement, they do not have plans to do away with the current site but they also want to give users more choices on how they can view Reddit.