New LDS.org Goes Live Beginning January 30, 2007, the first thing visitors to LDS.org will notice is the new look. After several years of research and planning and more than eight months of beta testing, the new LDS.org has finally gone public. But the changes to the site are far more than just cosmetic. The construction of the new site addresses issues with navigation, functionality, and accessibility, as well as smoothing out the behind–the–scenes workflow. Church instructional designers spent several months studying and testing the site's navigability. The result is a more user–friendly organization of information, beginning with six major channels headlining the home page and a more consistent navigation system throughout the site. Included in the new site is the redesigned Gospel Library, launched on the beta site a few weeks ago. Consistently one of the most–visited sections of LDS.org, the Gospel Library is home to over 100,000 pages of information ranging from the scriptures, to Church magazines, to general conference addresses and existing curriculum. Making that information more useful was a top priority. In addition to being able to read the text, users can choose audio, video, pdf (full graphic layout), or other versions of selected content . The search function on the site has also been greatly improved. Whereas only the Gospel Library was searchable on the old site, the new search engine is farther reaching and has advanced capabilities allowing the user to fine–tune the search. Users won't see but will still benefit from the new content management system upon which the site is now built, facilitating collaboration between the many different Church departments involved in updating and maintaining the site as quickly and as cleanly as possible. While all these changes were important in their own right to make the site more accessible, construction of the site took into consideration another kind of accessibility. "We needed to redesign the site to efficiently translate it and provide it in more languages," says Larry Richman, director of Internet coordination. Although the new site is currently available only in English, the changes will allow the Church to make the entire site available in nine more languages (Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish) with some sections of the site providing content in many additional languages. The scope of the redesign task was enormous. Long past are the days of the original five–page LDS.org first launched in 1994. The most recent version was launched in June 2000 and over the next six years grew to thousands of pages, not including Gospel Library. The changes just made public will be the first of several phases to be rolled out as they become available. Users will find that some links will still take them to old pages from the old LDS.org until they can be rebuilt and integrated into the new design. Over the next several months, the Church expects to make refinements and add new features. The general conference section will be updated, several more languages will be added to the scripture site, and material will be added to the Gospel Library in 40 more languages. Users can stay up–to–date with the latest changes to LDS.org, as well as other new product releases, by clicking here or through the What's New e–mail. Subscribe for free by clicking the "Free E–mail Subscriptions" link at the bottom of every page.