After more than 2 years online, your favorite Chine travel site has received a well-deserved refresh. Several reasons for this: increasingly high traffic, a desire to break away from the classic design of the previous version and better showcase articles, and above all a commitment to making your navigation easier... Here's an overview of what's new!  

Redesigning a website is always a delicate undertaking. It can lead to genuine headaches that make you wonder if it's worth the effort. If the site is running smoothly, why change it? Why risk losing everything that's been accomplished so far? In our case, this version 2 is a natural continuation of our project. More and more of you are reading and appreciating our articles, and we felt obligated to offer you a more pleasant and user-friendly interface as a token of our appreciation. Our most loyal readers will remember the minimalist design of the previous version. Although feedback has always been positive, we couldn't help but see yet another blog struggling to stand out from the rest. A few articles on the homepage, an admittedly elegant carousel but positioned above the fold, and especially an overly simplistic menu.  

Out with the old, in with the new!

As you may have noticed over the past few days, the site looks completely different from before. We took great care to completely rethink the website interface, both in terms of graphics and overall usability. The design remains clean, with the goal of giving your already tired eyes a rest from websites stuck in 1995. The dominant yellow and black of v1 have given way to red and black, a way of honoring Jeanne Mas and Chine. The more perceptive among you will have noticed that the logo is somewhat different from the old one, perhaps inviting more of a sense of travel... You be the judge. The presentation of news and blog articles on the homepage may seem somewhat chaotic at first glance, but it allows us to better highlight the different current categories. Not to mention the slider that lets you stay informed of the latest news published on the site simply by scrolling left to right... The menu also plays an important role in your navigation, so we were keen to give it a proper overhaul. Small icons now enrich the category titles, and subcategories should appear in a dropdown menu shortly. You may also have noticed that this bar follows your scrolling progress, always remaining within reach no matter where you are.  

Deeper pages also get the treatment

Let's move on to the internal pages if you'd like. Besides the presence of a breadcrumb trail that makes your navigation easier, articles now take up more width and appear less dense. Following these articles are reading suggestions related to the current piece, in addition to voting and social media sharing buttons already present before. The sidebar highlights popular articles and links to our Facebook, Google+, and Twitter pages. Like the menu bar, this sidebar follows your scrolling progress, encouraging you to join our Facebook page if you haven't already! The Chinese recipes section, meanwhile, a flagship new feature of our site, is now presented much better and should inspire you to cook Chinese cuisine... The best is yet to come—a functionality that will enrich the Chine Guide section, which we felt was too austere. All we can say is that Google Maps should be worried... On the technical side, many optimizations have been made to serve the site faster to you. Nevertheless, the new features certainly add weight to the site, and load time may vary depending on the whims of the shared server that sometimes acts up. While we wait for a migration to a better hosting provider, please don't hesitate to share your feedback! Many new features are also on display, but we'll let you discover them as you navigate.     We can only thank you for your loyalty, you the 517 fans, the 1286 followers, and the occasional readers of this site! Love