I am proud to introduce to you a fresh, new Rewire! 

This latest incarnation of the leading daily reproductive and sexual health and justice publication comes just ahead of our five year anniversary.  Before I continue I want to take a moment to thank each and every one of you, the amazing members of the Rewire community.  We are a diverse gathering of professional advocates, citizen activists and those simply seeking information and frank discussion about the wide range of important issues we cover.  Rewire would not be possible without each of you.

In five years Rewire has grown steadily from about 40,000 visits per month in 2007, our first full year of publication, to about 225,000 per month today.  We reach even more readers every month by publishing content at several progressive publications in an effort to raise the profile of reproductive and sexual health and justice issues.  A large part of our growth is fueled by each of you sharing Rewire articles with your networks via email, Facebook, Twitter and more.  Again, thank you for your continued support.

One of our guiding goals for this redesign of Rewire was improved content organization.  We have separated out news, commentary and analysis articles into separate columns on the front page.  Every article is also now published in one of 13 primary topic areas.  You will notice the primary topic for each article is listed just beneath the byline.  You can find all articles for a given topic using the drop-down Topics menu. We’ve also added an archive page that can be used to browse articles by date.

Another new addition to the site is the RH Wire.  This simple but very useful feature presents much of the best news and commentary on our issues from around the web.  The RH Wire page itself lists every hand-picked piece while a section on the front page and the sidebar of inside pages features those we deem to be the most important reading for the current day.

The way we handle video is much improved.  For the past couple of years we have highlighted a video related to the issues we cover on the front page.  However, only one video was available at a time in this space.  Videos are now posted on their own pages, complete with comments, just like an article.  We’ve also added a video page where you can easily browse and watch the best reproductive health and justice related video we can find on the web. 

Reader diaries are here to stay, though we will be moderating all reader diary submissions from now on to reduce spam submissions and allow us to ensure entries are presented in a consistent manner. 

We’ve also added another type of community content.  All Rewire readers with an account can now add to our action archive of online petitions and offline events and rallies. 

Finally, we’ve improved profile pages, adding easily browsed lists of the articles, reader diaries and comments a reader has made on the site.

Let us know what you think of the new and improved Rewire and any suggestion you might have for future improvements in the comments.