Conservative Principles Now

The Heritage Foundation unveils our redesigned website this morning with a modern look and feel, better organization of our policy research, greater integration of our multimedia products and our blog, The Foundry.

The redesigned website is a significant step forward for Heritage. It presents an innovative new platform for a varied tapestry of people — from Capitol Hill legislators to our more than 600,000 members — to have greater access to our best-in-class conservative policy research.

More than a year of planning and development went into the creation of the new Heritage.org. We interviewed key constituents on Capitol Hill, members of the media, coalition partners, and most importantly, Heritage supporters like you. The feedback we received drove the new design and direction of the new Heritage.org.

While the look and feel of the site is dramatically different from the previous website, we will continue to carry out our traditional mission of offering sound solutions to contemporary problems.
Heritage staff worked with professional experts in visual design, user experience and content management to build the new site. Some cornerstone pieces include:
1. Simplified navigation that allows users to quickly access the content they are seeking. We now have tabs for both Issues and Research in the navigation, giving you the option to browse by public policy issues or, for the more familiar Heritage.org user, by the type of content.

2. The visual design showcases the strength, credibility and stature of The Heritage Foundation, our people and our work, while also encouraging users to explore our site. This is reflected in the multi-tonal Heritage blue color palette, uniform bands of content throughout the site and the introduction of visual icons that work in tandem with the new navigation.

3. An improved search function and new way of organizing our research should make finding content faster and easier. We’ve taken these two major steps to in response to feedback from our users. The new search engine is more robust and allows visitors to filter content by issue, paper type, author and more. In addition, we’ve introduced a comprehensive structure for organizing all of this information, allowing us to expand the number of issue areas from about 100 on the old website to nearly 1,000 and growing.

4. Our multimedia section features Heritage videos, info graphics and audio in one place. Whether you’re looking for one of our original productions such as “Let Me Rise” or a recent TV appearance of a Heritage analyst, you can now find it easily by clicking on the links above the search on each page.

5. We’ve introduced customized audience pages for the conservative community, government staff, press and media, job seekers and young leaders. By tailoring our content to these groups, we hope to better serve their needs. You can access these pages in the footer of every page.

6. The new footer gives Heritage an opportunity to showcase some of our signature research papers and communications products on the bottom of every page. Given the large amount of traffic Heritage.org received from search engines, we realize that not everyone entering the site is coming through the homepage.

These improvements are similar to ones we recently made on The Foundry, where we made navigation easier, added features, connected with social media and improved content to make the online experience more enjoyable for all who visit. With nearly 150,000 subscribers to the Morning Bell, it is evident that our daily dose of conservative analysis is an important part of your day. We trust that the new Heritage.org will provide you even more opportunities to engage with our team.

Please navigate and explore the new Heritage.org. This site is built for you, our readers, members and researchers. Its launch marks an exciting moment for The Heritage Foundation as we continue to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

If you have questions or comments, please send us a note at redesign@heritage.org.

Quick Hits:

• Minutes before midnight on Sunday, House Democrats released a 2,309 “reconciliation” bill that the Budget Committee will pass early this week. The bill is a replica of the bill reported to Ways and Means last year, except with a government takeover of the student lending industry tacked on. This entire shell of a bill will be scrapped and replaced with the real reconciliation bill Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is writing behind closed doors.
• Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) outlines “what real health reform should look like” in today’s Washington Post.
• Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) is expected to introduce his financial legislation bill today.
• At least 10 House members are spending more than $1,000 a month in taxpayer money to lease cars.
• Despite President Barack Obama’s self-professed commitment to openness and transparency, a National Security Archive report released Sunday finds “progress slow and erratic” while the Government Accountability Office found information released “missing or unreliable.”

Marc Thiessen, former Bush White House official and author of the new book “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and how Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack“, gave a public lecture at The Heritage Foundation today. In his speech, he highlighted portions of his book and provided a spirited defense of President Bush’s prosecution of the War on Terror. He also explained why he thinks President Obama’s decisions have made America less safe.

Before his speech, Thiessen sat down with us for a short interview. He spoke about his concerns with our current national security effort and why he views the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were used under the Bush Administration as not only effective, but also moral.  Describing the CIA interrogation program as “most effective tool that we had in the War on Terror,” Thiessen went on to argue:

We stopped attacks on our consulate in Karachi, they were planning to blow up our Marine camp in Djibouti, they were planning on repeating 9/11 in Europe by flying airplanes into Heathrow airport in downtown London they were planning on flying a plane into Library Tower in Los Angeles and other planned attacks that were foiled as a result of this program. If you think about it … under the Bush Administration we went 2,688 days without another terrorist attack. So there’s only two possibilties as to why that’s the case: either the terrorists lost interest in attacking our country or we found out what their plans were and stopped them. Now clearly the latter is the case.

Visit our event archives to watch the speech in its entirety or browse the Foundry archives for more “In the Green Room” interviews.