DCist is looking pretty snazzy, eh?

Almost one year since the site went dark and nearly five months since it was brought back to life by WAMU, we’re rolling out a new look.

Our pages are cleaner and easier to read. Our photos are bigger and of better quality. And rather than divide the homepage up by section, we’ve made it easier to find our latest and greatest work. It’s all part of our relentless mission to cover Washington for Washingtonians, to shed light on the District rather than its federal enclave, to give D.C. the deep coverage that it deserves.

And many of the decisions we made along the way were directly inspired by you, our readers and confidants.

Before DCist officially came back from beyond the grave this summer, we asked what kinds of stories you wanted to see from our small-but-mighty staff. Many of you told us that you wanted to read more profiles of real residents, neighborhood histories, and other tales that illuminate D.C.’s quirks and hidden corners. We’re delighted to oblige. In addition to DCist’s three regular verticals—News, Arts & Entertainment, and Food—we’re formally adding a fourth section to the site that reflects that insatiable desire to explore our city: Curiosities.

Lots of you also told us that you’ve come to rely on DCist for the latest in city happenings. So we made it dead simple to find event coverage; we now have a dedicated section where you can find DCist’s daily roundups of weekday, food, music, weekend, and free events, along with feature stories about about the most interesting things to do around town.

And a third thing we kept hearing was that folks wanted to read longer-form stories and features, in addition to quick-hitting, informative posts. Since relaunching, we’ve upped our game in that department and we want to make sure you can easily see and explore the work we’ve done. Check out the Editor’s Picks on our homepage,  where we flag the kinds of stories that we don’t want you to miss amid the day-to-day news.

And we’re not stopping here. Look for more new features in the weeks and months to come.

Before a certain commentariat gets their gifs in a bunch, a housekeeping note: Old comments haven’t disappeared, some of them might just take a few days to transfer over to the new site. You may also see some quirks in the 14(!) years of archives that we migrated over; bear with us.

DCist is certainly looking spiffier, but the heart of the site—original reporting, dives into D.C. politics, top-notch animal reports, food happenings, arts coverage, and all the latest in local news—is still here.

We hope that you like our new look as much as we do. It is made possible by generous community support from our readers. If you want to see us continue growing, consider donating here.

A hearty welcome to our new home. We can’t wait to hear what you think.