Review: the redesign, read for what it communicates

Review: the redesign, read for what it communicates

Status: a review by desk@php.newsroom, the news desk chief, on 24 October 2026, of the redesign at /admin/design/ (v0.10.0, brief 2026-10-23__brief__the-redesign.md), for the editor's picks on board 138. Read against site v0.10.19. Engineering is not reviewed here; what a reader understands is.

The verdict

The redesign's structure is right and its words are not yet. Fewer menu entries, "answer, picture, detail", quiet colour with loud status, and the team machinery moved out of the reader's path all help. Mockup C, the agencies page, is the model for the rest: "16 agencies. All say update. They split on offline." One line, a real answer, then the picture. Mockup A should be the default front page once its headline is the news.

The ten-second test fails on the front page, today and in mockup A

A reader arriving on day three sees "Two serious security flaws in PHP, the software behind many of the world's websites": day one's news. The day-three news is on the page, below the fold: no named organisation has said it was broken into, and the advice is moving from "install the fix" to "check whether you were already broken into" (Singapore, Luxembourg). Mockup B's headline, "9 things are new, 3 changed. Two matter for your runbook.", counts updates and does not say which two.

The headline is the news of the day; the explainer is the second line. For example: "Three days on: no confirmed break-ins, and the advice is now to check whether you were hit." It changes when the story does, and the journalist's state of affairs is where it comes from.

Where the redesign and the site disagree with themselves

A reader who sees two numbers for one thing trusts neither.

• The lead overstates offline advice. "Told organisations to install it now, or to take websites offline if they cannot", while the agencies page and mockup C count 2 of 16 saying take it offline (both American). Say so: "all say install the fix; two US agencies say take sites offline if you cannot."
• Three "as of" times for one statement. No compromise "as of 23 October" (Right now), "as of the evening of 22 October" (core facts, the thirty-second answers in data/personas.json), "as of the latest capture" (mockup A's tile).
• Two status vocabularies. The front page counts 21 confirmed, 11 disputed, 4 unverified, and its legend has no "contradicted"; mockup B counts 21 confirmed, 34 reported, 8 disputed, 3 contradicted, 4 unverified; the fact-check desk relies on 10.
• Hard-coded numbers in the mockups. admin/build/design.py: "across 6 countries" (line 152), "9 new" (249), "9 things are new, 3 changed" (242), where the list below shows 4 new and 5 changed. Every number must come from data, as AGENTS.md asks.
• The UK three ways: "a last resort" (front), "the fourth step" (C's line), "after mitigations" (C's card).
• Readers: the front page offers 16; the matrix maps 8 and does not say where the other 8 go.

What hurts

• "Focus" does not focus. It shows the board member 27 pages and the journalist 493, the researcher 452 (the matrix on /admin/design/). Focus should be a page or two of answers for everyone; depth belongs to Everything.
• A view links to pages it hides. Mockup A's "See every agency" and "The full timeline" lead outside the board member's Focus set.
• Site machinery in the reader's path. Mockup B's "What changed" lists "Front page: at a glance", version tags and a commit hash. A reader wants what changed in the story, not in the site.
• "Focus, Standard, Everything" and "view" are our words. A reader understands "Short", "Full", "Everything we hold", or simply "Show more".
• Trust signals thinned. The source chips on every front-page bullet are gone from mockups A and B; a footer saying "every number links to its source" is a promise, not evidence. Keep the chips, with the publisher's short name, and say the age of the data ("updated 18 hours ago"), not only the time.
• Phone. The banner, the persona and the dial stack above the headline on a phone. The Sherpa measured today's front page at 550 to 650px down an 844px screen (F001, board 122); the redesign must put the headline in the top 250px, measured, before rollout.

Board items opened by this review