• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 15, 2008

The familiar red border remains, but much else within the Time.com home page has been revamped in the news site's latest incarnation unveiled today.

That doesn't mean the new version necessarily represents a further break from its pedigreed parent. Among the main changes are a look and feel that more closely resembles the print magazine, a prominent new "Must Reads" box and the elimination of a separate blogs section.

The redesign is the first since Time.com Editor Josh Tyrangiel and General Manager John Cantarella upgraded the site in January 2007, shortly after assuming their current roles. Tyrangiel, who also serves as assistant managing editor of Time, called the previous site redo "rushed." "We inherited a design process that was really a mess," he said.

The earlier effort sought to inject a sense of urgency into the site by emphasizing breaking news and adding a batch of new blogs from Time writers and breakout blogging stars like founding Wonkette editor Ana Marie Cox.

This time around, Tyrangiel said the underlying goals were to incorporate more design flexibility into the site, and to make it more stylish and more in sync with the magazine. "The spirit of the magazine redesign needs to be at least felt in the site redesign," he said.

The venerable title's relaunch in March 2007 created four new sections organized under the headings of Briefing, The Well, Ideas and Arts, and more short items throughout the magazine. If the print overhaul acknowledged the Internet's media-snacking culture, the site redesign may reflect a meeting somewhere in the middle.

To that end, the iconic Time logo has been moved front and center on the site, and the page has been given a more clearly defined three-column structure. News headlines have been moved from the center to the right--making room in the middle for what Tyrangiel called "our best journalism," featuring more in-depth analytical stories or interviews.

In the left column, above the fold, is "Must Reads," a box highlighting key stories or blog posts from across different editorial sections. Gone is the separate box on the left side dedicated to Time bloggers, whose contributions will now be more seamlessly integrated into the overall content.

"Rather than calling out a blog section, we're just going to blend it in," said Tyrangiel. "People don't necessarily come looking for a certain type of content; they come looking for good stories." People will still be able to link to Time.com's Swampland team of political bloggers including Cox, Joe Klein, Karen Tumulty and Jay Carney.

Added below the fold is the Daily Briefing, a Web version of the magazine's Briefing section, featuring shorter, punchier items typical of front-of-the-book articles. In a nod toward the YouTube generation, Time.com now boasts a discrete multimedia area offering news- and feature-related videos.

"It's a no-brainer,' Tyrangiel said. "The fact that we haven't had it has been driving me a little nuts." Visitors will now be able to click to play a video from the home page rather than having to leave the page.

But don't think for a minute that Time.com is turning into TMZ.com or Heavy.com. "It doesn't say 'fun,'" said the otherwise effusive Tyrangiel, of his new creation. To further streamline the design, the listing of stories by section at the bottom, which had taken up 40% of the page, has been dramatically compressed.

What's new for advertisers? Time.com has created a new "pencil" ad unit in the upper right corner that slots into a new "Inside Time.com" strip across the top of the page touting three or four stories. A standard 300 x 250 display unit now also appears on the right side above the fold.

Canterella said the site would continue to offer custom ad placement such as the latest ads in Apple's "Get a Mac" campaign, showing the cool Mac guy and nerdy PC guy interacting in tandem skyscraper and leaderboard units on Time.com and other sites.

In the last year, traffic to Time.com has been relatively flat at close to 3 million unique visitors monthly, according to comScore. Time executives instead point to Nielsen Online figures, showing average monthly visitors of 5.5 million--a 34% increase over 2007. And monthly page views up are up 44% to 80 million, according to Web analytics firm Omniture.

The Time.com leaders both stressed that the new design would give them greater ability to make changes on the fly in response to user feedback and other demands. "The geometry of the site is much more flexible," Cantarella said.