Welcome To The New 2009 Model Year Jalopnik!

You may notice things look a little different around here this morning. We're just rolling out the new model year. Click more for the scoop on the new and improved Jalopnik for 2009.

Follow Jalopnik on Facebook, Twitter or sign up for our breaking news e-mail alerts!

So here's the deal. For a long time we've been hampered as a site by our "blog" format, unable to fully stretch out our legs and show you all our amazing content all at once. When you're writing 30-40 stories per day, to show you everything on one page would have made the site load like an underpowered semi-truck, stuck waist deep in molasses.

That's no longer an issue with our new and more "condensed" front page design — allowing you to see all the stories of the day at a glance. It's a format where you choose what stories you want to see and skip over the ones you don't. The way we look at it is it's a more information-friendly home page. We hope you'll like it.

But let's talk about a couple of the new things we've got going on here.

View
For starters, there's the View tab above. In it, you can switch between the old n' busted "Expanded" view or the new hotness of the "Condensed" view. You'll also see the Display tab. Run your mouse over that and you should see a drop-down showing off some frequently-used tags that'll pull up all the stories on those topic areas.

Most Recent
Next, head on over to the "Most recent" tab. Move your mouse over that and you should see a drop-down menu allowing you to choose between the most recently published posts, most commented and most popular — it'll basically let you see who the cool kids are and what they're talking about.

Commenter Buttons
If you've already signed up as a commenter, you'll also see the "Logout" and "Profile" buttons. If you haven't signed up as one, don't you think you should e-mail Pete and fix that?

Flame On!
Now let's move to the right hand side of the page. Do you see those little icons? One looks like an unlit flame. That's the popularity meter. It'll light up and become more red after it hits 10,000 views. The icon of the empty thought bubble next to it? That's the commenter meter. It'll light up once the post hits 100 comments. So it's an instant way for you as the reader to see what's hot and what's not.

So those are the new features. See a problem? Need a question answered? Like the new format? Don't like the new format? Comment below or send us an e-mail at the tips line.