Inside the new KansasCity.com
Welcome to a new KansasCity.com on your desktop and mobile devices. We’ve taken what is already the biggest and most in-depth news and information source in town and made it better. You’ll find more headlines, more information, more choices.
On our home page, you will see top stories, blog posts and videos. We're curating today's news and features from all of our departments to give you an overview of the most important and engaging stories in the Kansas City area and beyond.
We’ve also improved our dropdown navigation on the site with additional options for content, advertising and deals. If you hover over the section labels under the Kansas City Star flag, you'll get a full navigation field with the latest headlines, blogs and columns. The menu gives you a shortcut to the top headlines from your favorite sections. We’ve added a bigger blog section in the middle of the home page to highlight the day’s top blog posts. Under the “News” menu, there is a new Crime section.
KansasCity.com’s responsive design is a perfect fit for your reading habits and your life. The site will dynamically resize to fit your screen, whether you’re viewing it at work, on your phone or on your tablet.
At the bottom of the home page, we offer an improved Events module, links to Ink magazine, and an easy way to access Press Release Central. In addition, we’ve added a Star Extras carousel at the bottom to highlight other Star publications, such as Star TV and KC Weddings, as well as contest opportunities.
Subscription and customer service links can be found at the top and bottom of the main page.
We’re adding a new Royals newsletter to publish Monday and Friday mornings. You'll find a roundup of game coverage, blog posts from Ball Star and Judging the Royals and major-league baseball stories. The sign-up process is much simpler for all our newsletters — find the link here.
Our mobile apps continue to evolve, too. In the new version for iOS and Android (both phone and tablet), we have updated the design to provide a stronger presence for visuals and made infrastructure improvements to dramatically reduce the publish time to your device. There is a video section in the Android app. E-Star links appear across all channels.
As part of this new version, we are also transitioning from an outsourced vendor to internal development. That will result in our Windows app going dark for several months as we rebuild it. We apologize for the inconvenience, but it will allow us to bring the app back with a much better user experience.
These are only the first steps in improving and adding content to our digital channels. You will continue to see enhancements over the next several months. Please share your thoughts on the changes, and we hope you enjoy the new look and functionality.
Email us at kcsfeedback@kcstar.com or contact Public Editor Derek Donovan at publiceditor@kcstar.com. You also can give us feedback on our Customer Service page.
This story was originally published June 3, 2014 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Inside the new KansasCity.com."