Reddit is redesigning its desktop site inside and out, but only a select few users will be able to experience the new design.
The lucky few were chosen at random, and they can opt out any time. According to the Reddit Redesign team, they're still testing the load on their servers, but they hope to bring in anyone who wants to opt in over the following weeks.
Reddit Redesign Is Going To Be Feature-Packed
This marks the first major redesign in over a decade. Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder of Reddit, first stated their plans of refreshing the website with something new yet familiar about a year and a half preceding this announcement. After carefully reviewing comments, posts, feedback, and the input from the team, version 1 of the new Reddit is finally up.
"The main reasons why we started this project in the first place were to allow our engineers to build features faster and to make Reddit more welcoming," says the Reddit Redesign team.
"It has been a massive undertaking, but we started by putting users and communities first—building our designs based on feedback from moderators, longtime users, beta testers, and other redditors every step of the way."
The new Reddit still doesn't have all the features of the current website, as the team says that they are still working on the users' feedback. The team also promised new features coming soon, such as a dark theme and keyboard shortcuts.
New Reddit Design Comes In 3 Views
The new Reddit removed the navigation bar at the top and replaced it with a new menu at the left-hand side of the page, which shows feeds, the users' subscriptions, and profiles. Along the top, at the bottom of the banner, there are three buttons corresponding to the three views: card, classic, and compact.
The card view looks similar to Facebook with each post in its own card; the classic view looks more similar to the current Reddit, and the compact view provides a denser look at the topics. In whichever case, the new Reddit looks more organized and clean, exactly what a website should look in today's standards.
For the 1 percent who were chosen, they still have the option to browse in the old format by visiting old.reddit.com or via a banner at the top of the page. Meanwhile, the team urges users to keep commenting and submitting feedback on r/redesign, where they will also post progress of the new design.
