Valley Public Radio is proud to announce the re-launch of KVPR.org, with a new “responsive design” that delivers a customized user experience tailored to your individual device. The new design also features a cleaner layout, easier navigation, and most importantly more space on the homepage for highlighting the station’s local content, as well as highlights from NPR. All current site content is retained with the new layout.
The move is driven by the wide adoption of mobile devices in recent years, which of course have a variety of screen sizes from large tablets to medium and smaller sized phones, not to mention conventional desktop computers. Even with the old design, a growing percentage of the station’s users visit the site on mobile devices. We expect this growth to continue in the future. The new site not only automatically adjusts the layout when viewed on a smartphone, the design also adapts to become easier to use on a touch screen device.
The new layout is also more visually appealing, and features a greater use of photos and less clutter, letting station reports stand out. It also includes improved multimedia tools to let Valley Public Radio’s journalists share their work in new ways.
The new design is also an example of the efficiency of Valley Public Radio’s partnership with NPR, and the network’s digital services division, which provides the software and support that makes the website run. By sharing these costs over a group of hundreds of stations, we’re able to deliver a great website at a fraction of the cost of building one by ourselves. Likewise, NPR employs many of the best minds in the digital news field and we’re constantly looking to bring new improvements to the site as time goes on.
Among the other changes to the site is an improved FM89 Calendar. Now available at kvpr.org/calendar, what was once a maze of confusing listings spread out over six different calendars is now elegantly simple. Two easy to navigate calendars, one for Kern County events and another for Fresno/Tulare/Kings/Madera/Merced/Mariposa County events make up the page which is now powered by Google Calendar. You can now easily pull up a map for each event and find the venue location, and other important information with just a click or tap.