New Features

Home Page

The home page might be the place you come to most frequently on Chabad.org. We wanted to make sure that it was engaging and easy to use.

• Completely redesigned. Crisp, new look.
• Wider array of content featured.
• Newest content always accessible and updates in real time.
• Features like "Today in Jewish History," a daily Jewish quote and daily meditation, delivered fresh each day.
• Common functions, such as Shabbat times and Chabad-Lubavitch Locator, more easily accessible.
• "Most commented articles" puts your finger on the global pulse.

Navigation & Browsing

Restructuring the content of the new site to help you more intuitively and expeditiously find what you are looking for demanded thorough, rigorous, meticulous planning, coupled with precision programming.

• Entire site reorganized, utilizing a more uniform structure.
• More easily accessible and user-friendly menus.
• Search integrated into primary menu bar.
• Featured content is now accessible directly from within menus.
• Quick access to specialty sites (e.g., TheRebbe.org, Jewish.TV, theJewishWoman.org, etc.) from every page.
• Access to daily features from the footer of every page.
• Sorting and filter options on index pages to make it easier for you to find what interests you.
• Easier access to common functions from every page, including the Jewish date, weekly Torah reading, Chabad-Lubavitch locator and other tools.

Reading Experience

Making it more enjoyable to read your favorite articles, blogs and features was a primary goal in our redesign.

• Larger fonts and a cleaner layout make reading more enjoyable.
• New and improved related content offerings, grouped by audio, video and text, make it easier to find related content that interests you.
• Better indicators of the section you are in to help you find your way around the site.
• New indicators to let you know when content is available in one of seven other languages.

Reader Comments & Discussions

Chabad.org comes alive for many in the discussions engendered by our thought-provoking content. Important topics are debated, advice is shared and the global Chabad.org community connects right here.

• Submitting reader comments does not take you off the page you were reading.
• Reading  reader comments is easier as you can scroll through all the comments below the article without ever leaving the page.
• Ability to sort reader comments.

Video Experience

Tens of thousands of hours of video are watched each day on Jewish.TV. People laugh together. Cry together. Study together. And are entertained together. And now the Jewish.TV experience is about to reach a new level.

• Completely redesigned site.
• Improved navigation pages.
• Larger video players.
• "Additional videos" more easily accessible below the video player.
• Rewritten algorithms to provide related videos based on what you are viewing.
• Easier access to more videos by the same presenter.

Search

Let's face it. Chabad.org is huge. Sometimes even our own team gets lost in the wealth of content offerings. We wanted to make sure that the new Chabad.org has simpler, quicker and more intuitive ways for you to find what you are looking for.

• Improved underlying search engine technology.
• Improved search result algorithms
• Integrated prominent search tool into primary menu throughout site.
• Enabled searching within sections and books.

Calendar

The Jewish Calendar is vital to Jewish observance and is one of the very popular tools on Chabad.org. Incorporating your suggestions for ways this tool can be more useful was a key focus of our team.

• Improved user-friendly calendar design.
• Completely redesigned all calendar tools and date converters, making them easier to use and more intuitive.
• Setting your location for Candle Lighting and other Jewish times much easier via a new AJAX driven location system.

Technology

Serving millions of people from across the globe can be challenging. In our new site, we aimed to improve performance, reliability and the response time of pages on our website -- no matter where you are visiting from.

• Completely rewrote millions of lines of code.
• Employed newer and faster servers.
• Deployed even better caching models to decrease load times.
• Faster loading pages no matter where you live, using a global CDN (Content Delivery Network).

Beta Site Transition

The biggest challenge in any upgrade and transition to a new site design -- especially one of this magnitude -- is minimizing the impact on our regular readers and subscribers. We went to great lengths to ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible.

• Both versions of the site, new and old, will continue to operate for some time, allowing you to transition to the new site at your own pace.
• Easily accessible links to view any page on the old site, giving you time to get accustomed to the new layout -- and go back if you are not ready for the switch.
• Easily accessible feedback link that allows you to submit comments and suggestions without leaving the page you were on.