In order to bring you even better, more timely news, The Sofia Echo has gone through a number of changes over the past year. The editorial teams of the online and the print editions have been unified, the newspaper redesigned, and now we’re ready to present the redesign of sofiaecho.com.

Reflecting editorial changes, sofiaecho.com no longer has its own logo, but is now simply The Sofia Echo online edition.

Two things take centre stage in the new design; our news and our readers. This has resulted in a number of changes, especially in the structure of the site and opportunities for you to share your opinion.

Structure
We have greatly simplified the structure of the website. Gone is the separation of daily and weekly news. In its place is now a structure of 12 categories that cater to different interests.

The different categories all have different colours, which give you an immediate idea of where you are in the site. The colours are used for all elements in the page design and have been chosen to be readable in link-texts in the different font sizes we use.

Different shades of blue are used for the homepage and Bulgarian news. Red is used for foreign news, different shades of green for eco and sports, fancy purple for the features section and yellow for opinions, for example.

Fluid
News, like anyone’s interests, is fluid and ever shifting. This is why websites have evolved to become less linear and more about context. In the redesign of sofiaecho.com, this has been introduced in a number of ways. Beyond additional relevant information and related articles, the redesign makes use of a new system of tags to sort related content.

Click on any tag at the bottom of an article to be taken to a list of other articles that have the same tag. Also, instead of an unwieldy archive structure, we have made extensive use of the site’s built-in search engine. Throughout the site’s pages, you will find links that lead to search result pages presenting you with just the information that you are looking for. Whether you want to read more articles by a certain author or all the news from a certain day in a specific category, you will find links throughout the site that help you find what you need.

Special Topics
Keeping track of the latest developments on longer-running stories can be a challenge. So we have created the Special Topics category. Whether it is the latest developments on the global financial crisis, upcoming elections or the construction of the Belene nuclear power plant, it is never more than a few clicks away.

Your opinion matters
Comments are one of the most direct ways of letting readers have their say. The redesigned sofiaecho.com has a much improved comment system that does not require registering or logging in.

Your comments will be displayed instantly, giving you an opportunity for immediate feedback.

But we have taken it one step further; registered users can personalise the way their comments look, by adding pictures and standard signatures.

More than one site
The registration system is integrated with the registration system of all other Economedia websites.

If you have already registered at Dnevnik or Kapital, for example, you will be able to use that registration to access sofiaecho.com as well. The other way around, your registration at sofiaecho.com does give you full access to archived publications of both Dnevnik and Kapital.

More to come
These are just a small number of the features that we have implemented to make using sofiaecho.com even easier and more fun. Browse around the site to find out what else is new.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will be adding more features to the site. Check the Sofia Echo Development Blog in the Special Topics section for the latest on what is keeping us busy besides bringing you the most comprehensive selection of news about Bulgaria and South Eastern Europe in English.
And please do let us know what you think.