Christopher Schwartz (Managing Editor - English) and Oliver Dams (Technical Manager) having a polite conversation about the relaunch.

The wait is over — welcome to our new site!  We’ve worked hard to increase user-friendliness and content organization.  The English and Russian language editions of the five country blogs have been combined into a common “dual site”: content from the country blogs will be aggregated into our new Homebase, but you can also still follow each country individually by clicking on their name in the new navigation bar.

The local language editions of the Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan blogs will still have their own unique sites.  You can reach these via the logo in the upper righthand corner.  Eventually, we will also reactivate our Uzbek and Tajik blogs, as well.  Additionally, all local language blogs will eventually undergo a “facelift” like the rest of the site.

We’ve also brought you enhanced browsability with a new system of topical and media categories.  Right now there are five topics (Business and Economics, Cultural and History, Politics and Society, Media and Internet, and Cross-Regional and Blogosphere) and three media types (Photoblog, Videoblog, and Podcast); in the future we will be expanding these.

We’re still tweaking elements here and there, so keep your eyes peeled for “Under Construction” signs. ;)