Want To Bid On Search Engine Land’s Redesign & Redevelopment Project?

Search Engine Land will be going through a redesign in about two months, which we think will make it easier for people to find the vast amount of content we have here and publish each day. Our design and development spec is all set. Now it’s just time to find a company or companies to help us make it a reality. While we have a short list in mind, we wanted to put out a public invite to anyone who reads us and thinks they’d be perfect for the job. Interested? Read on…

Scope of Project

With the performance goals listed below in mind, we are looking for a crisp, clean redesign of the site overall, and the segmentation of various news units within our site. Emphasis is on usability and ease of content navigation throughout site, keeping the site uncluttered but visually appealing so as to increase user interaction at the site, repeat visits, and decrease bounce rate. Given the types of content on the site, we will need 3-4 different page layouts/templates (custom WordPress template pages).

Additionally, we want to migrate away from the current platform (Movable Type) and adopt the WordPress platform to power the blog and serve as an overall CMS for the site. The emphasis here is on security, usability (front and back-end), search engine friendliness and performance. We will want a number of plug-ins used to achieve this, but each to be vetted based on those priorities.

The sharp eyed will note we’re moving away from Movable Type to WordPress. I wanted to add a personal note about that. I love Movable Type and used it as my first blogging platform. I think the additions made to it for MT4 were fantastic. I’ve loved the fact that MT is like the Mac of blogging software from a security standpoint — WordPress seems constantly under fire, since so many people use it. And while we have some performance issues with MT, we’ve also withstood heavy traffic from Digg and other places that I’ve seen completely wipe out WordPress blogs.

I spent a considerable amount of time looking at both the latest versions of either platform before deciding to make the jump to WordPress. The simple reason is that we use WordPress for other blogs in the Third Door Media family of sites, plus many of our contributing authors are more used to that platform. So we’re standardizing. But I still happily recommend Movable Type to other people who are considering it (and WordPress as well).

OK, blog platform rivalries aside, interested in giving us a bid? You’ll want to contact our technology director Michelle Robbins using this form. Give her 5-7 links of recent portfolio work. She’ll review what comes in and get in contact with selected companies.