Gawker has a brand new look as of today. Let's take a look around, shall we?

The biggest difference between the old version of the site and the new one you're seeing today is that the front page is now dominated by one big story (or a roundup of several different stories), and a list of headlines appear in a column down the right side of the page. This allows us to display big, gorgeous images and videos on the front page of our site. And it allows readers to easily scan headlines without having to scroll down the entire page.

The redesign is a work in progress, and we'll be fixing bugs and improving things in the weeks to come, but here's what you need to know to get started:

Navigating the site

When you come to Gawker, you often just want to scan through a number of stories at once. Now you have two ways to do that. You can flip through pages and you can scroll through headlines.

[There was a video here]

If you like flipping through stories and glancing over the full text, video, and pictures for each one, you'll want to use our "next post" button. It's on the left side of the navigation bar at the bottom of the page. Clicking it takes you through the day's stories one at a time. You can also flip through the pages using your keyboard: Just use the right and left arrow key to page through the day's stories.

If you'd rather just scroll through headlines, you can use your scroll button or up/down arrow keys to move through the stories in the right-hand column, which are displayed in reverse-chronological order. There is also a "next headlines" button at the bottom of that column, which will allow you to scroll through a bunch of headlines at a time. (See the video above for a little demonstration.)

At the top of the right-hand column, you'll see three icons: a house, a flame, and a magnifying glass. What do they do? Click the house if you want to see today's stories. Click the flame for today's most popular stories. Click the glass for search.

How can you tell how many people have viewed a particular story or how many comments have been posted? That information appears at the top of each story. You can also see the info display when you hover over each headline in the sidebar.

What's new for commenters?

There's much more space for your comments now. That means your commenter name is bigger, your comments are a lot easier to read, and there's more space for your pictures and videos that you've uploaded. You'll also find that it's easier to change comment settings. The big navigation bar at the top of the comments section makes it a lot easier to choose whether you'd like to see all comments, or just one featured comment thread.

Looking for our more popular discussion areas, such as tips or crosstalk? These are now comment forums and they'll be much more readable and flexible from now on, but the address you'll use to find them has changed:

gawker.com/tips/forum
gawker.com/crosstalk/forum

Problems?

The new site isn't perfect. We're aware of that. Our tech team is busy fixing the bugs in the system and you can expect to see many refinements and tweaks in the days and weeks to come. If you're experiencing problems with anything from posting comments to logging in, please mail our help desk at help@gawker.com. You can also share your thoughts about the new design by emailing feedback@gawker.com.

Prefer the traditional blog format?

We wanted to make the front page lighter and simpler to scan, while also emphasizing bigger stories that we've produced. But we realize that some of you don't like change, so you can always read the site using the "blog" view, which looks that's a lot like the way the old site looked. You can access the "blog" view by clicking on the button at the top of the page. It will continue to show you that layout in the future, unless you click on the button again.

As always, feel free to share your thoughts and questions in the comments below. We're here to address your concerns, answer questions, and help you adapt.