Alright, so, it’s been up for a day now, and we’ve been tweaking away at it in the background, and now it’s time to officially introduce you to our new blog.

TA-DA!

So, despite the obvious changes (like, it being white), most of it’s the same Raw! you already know and love. But, there are some new things, and some old things we never really explained right that’re worth knowing. So, let’s get going!

1. [CHANGED] That whole big white strip up top? That’s the new search box. Looking for relevant material on something? Give it a quick search.
2. [CHANGED] We’ve cleaned up the categories, making them simpler and broader, and we’re cleaning up what’s filed where. So, when you want news about DSLRs, that’s what you’ll find.
3. [UPDATED] Podcasts! We’ve offered two podcast feeds for ages now, one for audiocasts (The Voice of Raw!) and one for videocasts (Raw Footage). We also post these to the blog, so here’s a tip:
   1. In the upper left of all posts with an audiocast will be this icon (click image to see larger).
   2. If you subscribe to the feed available in the upper right of the blog (using iTunes, Zune, or your other favorite podcast software), then the content from these posts will show up on your device when you sync. No further effort required.
   3. The same goes for video posts. Subscribe to both.
4. [NEW!] What’s Hot? New to the blog, don’t want to read through the whole archives? The “What’s Hot” section in the sidebar will show the five posts that have been viewed the most recently.
5. [NEW!] Taken to liking the works of one of our bloggers? Like their style? Click on their name in the header of any post to see all posts by only them, and a brief bio to boot.
6. [NEW!] You can now respond to specific comments/commentors on our posts. Just look for the small black “reply” box below the comment you want to address!
7. [UPDATED] When viewing a single post, at the bottom of the post are a collection of social icons. Click any of them to quickly and easily share, bookmark, or email using your favorite social sites and services.
8. [NEW] Better links. At the bottom of the site, on every page, you’ll find links to all of our most popular things. Our Monthly Photo Contest, the Flickr Group for Nick and Derek’s Photo Walkabouts, our YouTube videos, you name it. They’re all down there. Up top are bold icons to our four most used social services.

So, as you can see, there’s quite a lot of nice stuff going on so far with this new site. A few things were removed, like the star ratings (no one really used them much) and the archaic Tweet This link (replaced by the social icons in the single post view, slicker, friendlier, better.) But, by and large, we think you’ll find the new look to be much better for pretty much everything.

Got thoughts on the matter? Hit us up in the comments.