Hey StormCloud—

I’d love for you to check out some of the latest updates now live on our staging site. I'm curious whether you think a simplified format like the one on the staging site is a better starting point towards a larger redesign, or if I should just implement some of the changes on the staging site and carry them to what we have now.

I think I also got a step closer towards us moving on from the Forum with a plug-in I created that will allow all readers to write articles- something that seemed impossible before and was the primary reason for building the Forum. 

🚀 1. Say Goodbye to the Forum — And Hello to “Cast a Bolt”

Ditching the Forum will enable discussion to take place in the Article comment sections. Have a topic you want to start. Click the "Cast a Bolt" button, and you'll be able to write your own article or topic that will go right to the Home Page. The old forum lacked basic features like:

• Highlighting unread replies

• Real-time refresh

• Recency-based sorting

• Consistent formatting

And because it ran on an entirely different codebase, it caused major styling issues compared to the rest of the site.

🧪 It’s still a work in progress — a little rudimentary in design — but the core functionality is already in place and working well. Note : the articles will display based on the publishing date and not based on comment activity - but I'll tool around with a way to address this - or perhaps the "recent posts" sidebar that the Forum had can still be used in the sidebar of the Articles. I will be looking into this more.

*Look closely, the sarcasm button is there!

👉 Try it here:
🔗 Cast a Bolt

🎨 2. Fresh Design, Smoother Experience

We're also tinkering with a full visual overhaul of the site to make StormCloud faster, cleaner, and easier to navigate — especially for mobile users. The new staging homepage already features:

• A sleeker layout

• Better category organization (Fan Posts/Bolts currently stored as "Recent Posts" but this will be re-named).

• Soon to be implemented Twitter feed that will track recent Twitter posts from our favorite beat reporters, with a built-in "Cast a Bolt" button to start a new article with the Tweet already embedded.

• More intuitive navigation for newcomers

Check it out and let us know what you think:
🔗 Staging Homepage Preview

🗣 Your Feedback Matters

I'm trying to do my best to implement changes you have been requested and really hope to have this churning soon. Article pages haven't been formatted yet on the staging site, and there are still some "buggy" elements I'm ironing out, like the Twitter posts not embedding in the "Bolt" articles thus far. As far as feedback is concerned, I'm looking more for whether you'd like a more simplified site like what the staging site offers, or if you'd like me to try and blend some of the core concepts and features of the new design into what we already have. 

Thanks guys! Have a great one!