Welcome to the New & Improved Articulate Website

“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
-Charles Eames

Ever since I saw that quote on the much-respected and popular Signal vs. Noise blog, it’s really stuck with me. And during the past month or more that I’ve been involved with the major effort to redesign our Web site, the more that quote has rung true.

So as you’ve probably noticed by now, something is vastly different around here: The entire Articulate Website has had a facelift. Aside from the obvious improvement in elegant design, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than you may realize — and it’s all in the spirit of improved usability and access for you.

We revamped the site with these goals in mind:

• Usability
• Aesthetics
• Simplicity

The new site also brings all our Web content under one virtual roof. For the past 3 years, all our support resources — the support site, the Word of Mouth blog, the Knowledge Base, the Community Forums, etc. — all lived on a dedicated support server (hence all the subdomains we used to have, for those of you keeping score at home). Now everything is unified on one server and one domain.

Some key features of the new site include:

• Better and faster-loading design, including customer testimonials on every product page
• Fully integrated product support, forums, and blog
• Faster server for support site with all content on one server, one domain
• Easier site navigation
• More reliable blog subscriptions via email or RSS feed (subscribe here for email updates, or look for the orange RSS Subscribe button in your Web browser () or on any blog page)
• Improved Word of Mouth blog search functionality

We launched the new site on Saturday evening, but as Gerry was quick to notice, we’ve been working out the kinks throughout this week. If you come across anything that doesn’t seem quite right, please let me know.

Big congrats and thank yous to the entire project team who helped with this effort — our fearless president, Adam, whose vision led the charge and who never let a detail slip by; our rockin’ designer, Matt, whose talent for both design mockups and code implementations was unmatched; our copywriter, Brian, whose incredibly effective and no-nonsense approach to copy made our mission clear; our developers, including Jesse, who ensured that critical site elements like free trial downloads and product registration continued to function in the transition; our ever-reliable sales & support admin, Sarah, who helped flesh out the Knowledge Base; and countless others, who helped with QA and feedback along the way. It was an amazing team effort, and we should all be proud.

For those of you who now get to experience the results of this team effort: Enjoy! And look for new features we’ll be adding in the future, including an even better support search engine.

(And for historical reference, our previous Web site design was launched in June 2005. R.I.P., Articulate Website of 2005-early 2007.)