Apr 3, 2018 4:29 PM

Welcome to the New Reddit

The "front page of the internet" is rolling out a massive redesign. Here's what to expect.

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YOUR FEED, THREE WAYS

On the "new" Reddit, users can view the site in multiple ways: This is "card view," which looks a little like Facebook.

JUST THE FACTS

'Compact view" is for the RSS-feed fans—it lets you scroll through content as fast as possible.

THE WAYBACK MACHINE

And if you really can't handle change, there's always "classic view," which borrows the design language from current Reddit.

SUBREDDITS BEFORE...

When it came time to reconsider the subreddits themselves. Perez and his team looked at Reddit's top 2,000 communities—like this one, r/Europe—and tracked the things their moderators had done to customize the style.

For more than a year, 20 Reddit designers worked on what became site's first visual refresh in over a decade. From iconic mascot Snoo to the newsfeed itself, it's been a slow, careful process. "If you redesign Reddit," says Diego Perez, the company's head of design, "you're inherently changing the internet."

01
YOUR FEED, THREE WAYS
On the "new" Reddit, users can view the site in multiple ways: This is "card view," which looks a little like Facebook.
02
JUST THE FACTS
'Compact view" is for the RSS-feed fans—it lets you scroll through content as fast as possible.

03
THE WAYBACK MACHINE
And if you really can't handle change, there's always "classic view," which borrows the design language from current Reddit.
04
SUBREDDITS BEFORE...
When it came time to reconsider the subreddits themselves. Perez and his team looked at Reddit's top 2,000 communities—like this one, r/Europe—and tracked the things their moderators had done to customize the style.

05
...AND AFTER
The new version doesn't look drastically different, but little things—like new fonts, or a subreddit's overview being more prominently displayed in the upper right-hand corner—contribute to a cleaner, more unified aesthetic.
06
A FASTER ON-RAMP...
Even the process of posting to Reddit has been simplified. Before, formatting text posts required the use of Markdown; now, there's a WYSIWYG toolbar. You can add images and links more easily, even embed videos.

07
...AND VALUABLE CONTEXT
The new posting flow also surfaces the community guidelines of the subreddit you're posting to, which helps new users understand the rules so they don't accidentally get their post nuked.
08
*IT'S HARD TO* imagine a Reddit veteran caring about any of this. But for someone brand new to the site, it's the difference between finding the confidence to make that first post or closing the tab, walking away, and never coming back.

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Arielle Pardes, a former senior writer for WIRED, covers people and products in Silicon Valley. ... Read More

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