ELIZABETHTOWN — The Bladen Journal is unveiling a faster, cleaner website tonight.

The new bladenjournal.com, which will debut at about 9 p.m., will be quicker to load and will feature more logical organization than the previous design.

“With the redesign, the goal was to make every view on our website a better experience for our visitors. With better load speeds and a cleaner design in particular, visitors should find navigating bladenjournal.com easier than ever,” said Rick Thomason, publisher for the Bladen Journal.

“We’re excited about this new website getting started,” said W. Curt Vincent, general manager/editor of the Bladen Journal. “We’re hopeful users will see it as a tremendous upgrade.”

Readers can still find top stories and the latest news updates at the top of the homepage, but more news, sports, features and opinion content will be visible as soon as the reader arrives at bladenjournal.com.

“Also with the new design, you will see a fairly simple layout compared to most of the web. That simplicity also means there is less back-end clutter that can cause browser crashes and freezes,” Thomason said.

The new design features more photos than the Bladen Journal’s current website and makes it easer for readers to share articles on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Reddit.

“We know many of our hottest stories are shared via social media, particularly Facebook,” Thomason said. “We appreciate that our most avid readers share frequently and hope that they find the new design’s social media features several steps better and less cumbersome.”

The new design has already been deployed at some of Civitas Media’s other properties around the country.

“This should be a markedly better user experience for our readers and website visitors. If you experience problems with the site, please let us know. This design has been rolled out at sister properties for a couple of months and vetted there for functionality issues, but if you find bugs, please do not hesitate to shout,” Thomason said.

Staff report