• Bay Bridge

    Behind the scenes of Alley’s redesign and replatforming the Bay Area News Group sites

    In early September, Alley launched three sites for Digital First Media properties in Northern California, known collectively as the Bay Area News Group. The redesigned MercuryNews.com represents the long-standing paper of record covering the San Jose and South Bay area, while EastBayTimes.com and SiliconValley.com focus on the East Bay and the tech industry, respectively.

  • Ad blockers and the myth of “good UX”

    Consider a hammer. You don’t have to think about where to hold it or which part is supposed to strike the nail. It’s not a perfect device — you might still whack your thumb — but it’s pretty intuitive.

  • Replatforming People.com

    Earlier this year, Time Inc. started the process to migrate People.com from three separate content management systems into one consolidated site, hosted by WordPress.com VIP. A team at Alley lead by Partner and Chief Strategy Officer Brad Campeau-Laurion and Director of WordPress Platform Services Tom Harrigan has directed that effort since March.

  • A look under the hood with the new Guggenheim.org

    Recently it was our great privilege to unveil the new WordPress-based website for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum. It was a long and highly educational road to launch, and I want to provide a bit of a window into what happened behind the scenes.

  • Don’t Punish Journalists for Software Problems

    Jotham Sederstrom’s public reaction to being fired cold by the New York Daily News for appearing to publish plagiarized content is remarkable in its candor and its acceptance of blame but belies the pressing issue at hand for those of us who build news websites. Jotham would still be toiling away for his teetering employer if not for a harebrained Content Management System…

  • Gaining clarity on design systems

    A couple of weeks ago, I attended Clarity Conference in San Francisco—a conference focusing on design systems and style guides. Design systems are useful for any company with multiple people working on a single project, but at an agency like Alley, a design system proves particularly useful and effective.

  • SXSW, virtual reality, and how beta testing can help media

    Since its inception, the online media industry has been forced to adapt and reinvent itself based on the whims of fast-moving technologies. For publishers, the problem is that if they don’t adapt, readers might go somewhere else that will. However, even — especially! — for major publishing incumbents, the path to adaption has often been…