Big Bang Redesign: Smashing Magazine’s 2017 Relaunch, a Case Study
You’ve been there: big bang redesigns are usually a very, very bad idea. Redesigning and rebuilding an existing website from scratch is risky and unpredictable, and in many cases the level of complexity is highly underrated and underestimated. In mid-2016, Smashing Magazine has decided to make a big switch from the existing WordPress setup to an entirely new design, entirely new architecture (JAM Stack) and an entirely new, GitHub-based, editorial workflow.
In this talk, Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Smashing Magazine, will share some of the insights into Smashing Magazine’s Relaunch in 2017 — with decisions made, failures, successes, lessons learned and shady’n'dirty techniques used along the way. Among other things, you’ll learn how Smashing Magazine uses HTTP/2, service workers and serverless architecture with static site generators to boost performance, with a dash of React, Flexbox, CSS and the peek into the new GitHub-based editorial workflow here and there. Beware: the session will contain at least 27 illustrations of cats!
Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. Originally from Minsk, Belarus, he studied computer science and mathematics in Germany where he has discovered his passion for typography, writing and design. After working as a freelancing designer and developer for 6 years, he co-founded Smashing Magazine, one of the largest online magazines dedicated to Web design and development. Vitaly is writer, co-author and editor of both Smashing Books. He is now working as the editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine in the lovely city of Germany, Freiburg.