I’ve been at Yahoo! now for over two years, and for almost all of it, I’ve not been able to talk about what I’ve been working on. I started out on the My Yahoo! redesign and then moved onto the front page redesign. Today, the new front page design goes into public testing and I can finally tell everyone that this is what I’ve been working on since the start of the year. This is the reason for late nights, early mornings, and funless weekends. And you know what? It’s totally worth it. We have a truly amazing international team of people who have been working tirelessly and around-the-clock (literally) for the past nine months, and I’m proud to say I was part of that team. To go from nothing on January 1, 2008 to having a viable product on September 18, 2008 is nothing short of amazing.

There’s tons of press already about the new front page design:

• Yahoo’s All New Home Page a Mix of Old and New (TechCrunch)
• Yahoo Tests Home Page Using Outside Content (Wall Street Journal)
• Yahoo! Starts to Roll Out New Home Page (Download Squad)

In case you’re wondering (or haven’t read the articles above), not everyone will see the new front page yet. We’re doing random testing trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Random means I have no idea who’s going to be in the tests and who’s not, including myself. It’ll certainly be fun to see the results.

Disclaimer: Any viewpoints and opinions expressed in this article are those of Nicholas C. Zakas and do not, in any way, reflect those of my employer, my colleagues, Wrox Publishing, O'Reilly Publishing, or anyone else. I speak only for myself, not for them.