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Friend,

Have you noticed?

Over the last two weeks, Common Dreams rolled out a website redesign
alongside crucial upgrades and improvements to the underlying platform
the site is built upon.

Many readers have asked us: "Why? If it wasn't broken, why fix it?"

Well, frankly, it was very broken. And it was time to fix it.

The two main problems?

First, we built our platform upon a content management system that will
soon no longer be supported with security or programming updates. When
that happens, new bugs and threats go unfixed, resulting in reader
messages such as "Warning: This site is not safe."

Second, until recent years news websites (like Common Dreams) were
designed primarily to be viewed on desktop computers. Consequently, our
site has been performing very poorly on mobile devices.

In 2007, when we began using this platform, 99 percent of our readers
came to us via desktops, and mobile traffic was less than 1 percent. In
2014, when we last did a major site update, mobile readers had increased
to 17%. Last month, 62% read Common Dreams on smartphones, 33% on
desktops, and 5% on tablets.

Our former website had run its course, and our mission was suffering as
a result.

Like a new restaurant "soft opening," we've held off announcing that we
were "open" to allow us to work out the bugs and kinks that were not
seen until the new site went "live." Some known tweaks and fixes remain,
and our team will continue to work them out in the coming days.

We're at the stage now where we want to ask you for your feedback.

What do you think? Please take our very brief survey:

Start the survey

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While we understand that our new look may seem drastic - and in some
ways, it is - this more modern Common Dreams will better serve our
mission into the future.

Thanks for your patience and your support,

Craig Brown

Co-Founder

for the whole Common Dreams news team

PS

If you haven't visited recently, come check it out:

Common Dreams homepage.

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