It was in January, 2007 that I first announced the coming overhaul of Abort73.com. As it turned out, the new site wouldn’t begin to take shape for almost a year! Thankfully, the first two months of 2008 have already seen significantly more progress than in all of 2007. The first Abort73 website was replaced after a year. Version 2 has now been around for more than two years, but the third rendition of the Abort73 website is scheduled to go live this May. I can’t wait! You can preview the behind the scenes progress by visiting Abort73.com/preview. As the new site is built, page by page, and video by video, you can see it develop online. When all the new pages are in place, we’ll make the switch and remove the old site altogether (Oh, happy day!).
Here’s a quick primer on the most significant improvements: The new site will be chock full of what we call “companion videos”. Each of the main content pages in our “Case Against Abortion” will be accompanied by a short video that highlights the most important information from that particular page. By embedding these videos from Abort73’s YouTube account, the videos will take on a life of their own beyond just the Abort73 website. The first of these companion videos (Medical Testimony) went online in early March and received more than 4,000 views in a matter of days (and it isn’t even on our main site yet)! Each of our new content pages will also be “comment-able”, meaning that registered visitors to Abort73 can comment directly on the bottom of each page allowing for a running dialogue between Abort73 users. Eventually, everyone who buys Abort73 gear will be registered for their own Abort73 profile page and be able to earn credit towards future purchases by uploading pictures of themselves in Abort73 gear or adding Abort73 links to their various social networking pages. Structurally, the new site runs off a Content Management System, which makes all of these user-driven features possible and ...