The 123Reg blog has been live since January 2006 and has produced over 7 years worth of content for you! I’ve personally been following the blog for most of that time, and am honoured enough to have also written a handful of posts for it too!
What I’m more honoured about is that 3 Door Digital were selected to build the new Content Hub for 123Reg. We developed 123Reg’s design and integrated it into a WordPress theme not only to update the look and feel but also to help you get the best from the Content Hub. So let me tell you why…
Socially Ranked Posts
You may notice that the homepage is no longer a list of latest post. The top section shows you featured posts as chosen by the editor but in the red section you will see 4 posts which are ranked by social shares. This means that the more times a post is shared on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ the higher they will rank in that section so you’ll never miss a popular post again!
You will also notice that these posts are also listed in the sidebar to the right, inclusive of how many shares that post has attracted.
Easier and More Social Ways to Connect & Comment
To help rank these posts, it’s up to you to help by tweeting, liking and sharing the post on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. This has now been made even easier for you to do by clicking the tweet, like or +1 buttons at the top and bottom of any blog post.
As well as this, before you could only comment underneath a post using the form to enter your name, email and comment. Now it’s even easier to comment on a post and connect with the author by using your Facebook or Google+ login and sharing your comment in your profile. So, for example, if you’re logged into Facebook you’ll already see that you’re logged in so you can comment straight away and post that comment to your wall.
Follow your Favourite Authors
All authors in the Content Hub now have their own author profile page meaning it’s much easier to view a list of all posts written by one person. So, if you like what Iain Lee has to write for 123Reg then all you have to do is visit his author page and bookmark it (you can use your keyboard to bookmark too using CTRL + D).
Tablet & Mobile Friendly
The new theme has been developed so that you can view the Content Hub from your desktop, tablet and mobile and have the same great experience. Using something called “responsive design”, the site now knows that if you’re browsing on a mobile it will automatically show you content in one column so now there’s no need to use your finger and thumb to annoying zoom in all the time!
There’s other stuff too…
As well as all the above, we have made a lot of geeky improvements under the hood to make sure that the Content Hub runs faster and helps both Google and social networks with the way they handle the site. One thing that we have done is make sure editors can set what is known as social structured data into each post. I have talked about this at BrightonSEO, a free conference held twice a year for the Search industry, where we’re able to set the image and text of a post that is liked on Facebook or tweeted on Twitter.
Now… Connect with the Content Hub!
I hope you enjoy what both 3 Door Digital and 123Reg have produced – after all it’s for you to enjoy Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Why not tell us what you think of the new Content Hub below, and what you want to see from it in the future…
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