Say Hello To The New Car Throttle Homepage

Back in 2009, when Car Throttle was a tiny blog run from my University bedroom, my dream was to create a destination for people like myself; car enthusiasts who were part of a new generation of internet addicts, constantly refreshing their social media feeds and addicted to their mobile phones. Some members of the press even called us ‘TopGear for the Facebook generation‘.

And on some level, I guess we’ve succeeded. Car Throttle has become a vibrant platform, with community members who called themselves CTzens, who continue to host great quality car conversations, and who ultimately are able to connect with like-minded petrolheads.

Along the way, we’ve learned to embrace social platforms; to create content that reaches people not only on CT.com, but on Instagram and now increasingly Snapchat. We reach over 10 million people every month on YouTube and over 50 million people every month on Facebook. When you put that in context, we reach more people than live in the United Kingdom. And that to me, is still mind-blowingly crazy.

And so to show new community members and even existing CTzens exactly what we’re up to across all these platforms, we’ve decided to give our homepage a lick of paint. Here’s your guide to the new Car Throttle homepage…

Our best content, front and centre

When you land on the new CT homepage, the first thing you’ll see is the story of the day splashed across the top of the page. This is a way for us to highlight breaking news or long-form features that you definitely shouldn’t miss.

Below this are three sections: the first shows new visitors exactly what content we produce, and where we distribute it; the second highlights top user discussions from the user-driven communities; the third showcases all the awesome videos that we create, with some behind-the-scenes extra goodies thrown in for good measure. This is now the archive for our best original series.

Below this is a chronological stream of content from our editors, bringing you breaking news and hot stories as we get them. We hope this will encourage more of you to keep visiting our homepage throughout the day, to find out what’s going on in the car world.

Easy access to communities

The old homepage, with the many communities and popular users you follow, still exists, unchanged, just a click away via the navigation or the discussions links. A lot of the community feedback from earlier versions centred around the desire to view editorial news quickly, with community posts separated out. We hope this update will make it easier to find the content you want, without losing any of the functionality of the community platform we built.

iOS and Android apps are unchanged

This is important to note, but the iOS and Android apps will continue to run in their current formats, with no expected changes. You can continue to browse our latest editorial posts and community discussions, but you’ll need to use the web or mobile sites to view the fancy video pages.

Hours of car videos at your fingertips

We’ve now put all your favourite videos in one place. Now you can regularly browse videos from the playlists you love (whether that’s Project MX-5 or Readers’ Rides), sort them by date, and find more related content with video thumbnails next to comments.

Browse content by manufacturer or topic

We understand that some Nissan fanboys (myself included!) want to dig deep into news and discussion from their chosen manufacturer. So we’ve now added a list of manufacturers to the left pop-out sidebar with a topic slider too.

What’s next for Car Throttle?

With a new office in New York, and our existing team operating from our home in London, we’re still committed to bringing you - today’s generation of car enthusiast - the most enjoyable, relevant and informative automotive content wherever you are. You’ll see more of our content than ever before on the social platforms you frequent, and as always, the best community discussions will continue to live directly on the Car Throttle platform.

Any questions? Fire away in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer as many as I can. And thank you for continuing to be the best supporters we could wish for.