Scripps moves Knoxnews to Ellington

The last redesign of Knoxnews, way back in the heady days of April 2005, was one of the first projects I helped drive as a corporate online executive at Scripps. So I'm thrilled to see the latest evolution of that site, newly in the Ellington content management system with a freshened design as of this morning.

We at Scripps have worked down to our last few sites -- including some of our largest -- for Ellington conversions. Where most of the sites stuck closely to derivatives of the design architecture originally rolled out for Evansville, the Knoxnews project represents, I suppose, Version 1.1 of the design framework.

Since the old Knoxnews design was fairly recent, generally well maintained and thus not "broken," this time around we could focus on more evolutionary changes to presentation and user interface. Text is a pixel larger, has better line spacing, and is in more readable screen fonts in many places. The design emphasizes multimedia, especially video, more. The Knoxnews content team gets more design options for the first screen of the home page, to reflect news of the day.

But we didn't monkey much with the basic imagery, colors and other site furniture -- so the change isn't jarring at all.

My pal Jack Lail, longtime site content chief, shows and tells how Knoxnews has evolved in recent years. Also check out the site notice to readers on the redesign, as well as reaction from KnoxViews. If you're just desperate for background on Scripps' history with Ellington and the Django framework on which it rides, I've posted much on that subject over the past 18 months.