Oh, hello there. You've probably noticed we've made a few changes around here. Feeling lost? Here's everything you need to know.

Welcome to our new home. It's called Kinja. It's not only a redesign to Lifehacker's front page, but an entirely new blogging platform that anyone—yes, even you—can blog on.

You Changed Stuff. Where Is Everything?

We've returned to a more traditional blog format, because we know you guys missed it oh-so-very-much. You can scroll endlessly through the front page, seeing a chronological view of the tips and tricks we post every day. It comes with two views:

  • The Recommended view is the default page when you first visit Lifehacker. It showcases all our bigger posts that we want to highlight, which is perfect for those that aren't familiar with the site or just want to see our best stories.
  • The Latest view shows you everything, in chronological order, just like the old-old Lifehacker. If you go to the Latest view, returning to Lifehacker within 24 hours will bring you to the Latest view again. You'll only be shown Recommended if you haven't been here in over a day. (Tip: If you always want the latest view, then just change your bookmark to http://lifehacker.com/latest.)

You can toggle the view by clicking the links at the top of the page. We're still working on this feature to make it a little easier to use, so let us know what you'd like to see.

So Now I Have a Blog?

If you already had a commenter account on Lifehacker, you still have one—nothing's changed there. The difference is that your old profile page is now a full-blown blog, where you can write about whatever you want. Want to write about how much you hate the iPhone/Android/Windows/chimpanzees? Go nuts. Want to post nothing but videos of people making Aeropress coffee to dubstep music? You can do that too. You can even write a blog completely devoted to making fun of Apple's Mighty Mouse. We'd probably read it.

You can publish posts, follow (and be followed by) other users, and more. Your comments on other blogs will also show up on your personal Kinja page. You can even "republish" any post from other Kinja blogs (including Lifehacker) to your own blog, and we can republish your posts. That means if you share a really cool tip or trick on your blog, we can put it right on Lifehacker—with all the traffic and credit going to your blog (not to mention your own byline on Lifehacker). You guys have always been our best source of tips, so we've tried to make it even easier for you to share awesome stuff with us.

As we look for the next generation of Lifehacker writers, we'll be looking at Kinja.

I Don't Want to Blog. What About the Comments?

That's fine! You don't have to. You can just keep commenting on Lifehacker as normal. You have a few new features at your disposal too, like the ability to "follow" other users (including the Lifehacker staff), annotate images (see the image at the top of this post), and more.

The best part? We've improved our commenting system to weed out those pesky trolls, spammers, and other useless comments so you don't have to see them. When you comment, you'll go into a pending queue, and if your comments contribute to the discussion, we'll approve your account. Spammers and otherwise useless comments will get no such treatment. For more information on how this works, check out our FAQ entry on the subject.

What Happened to the Tips and Open Thread Forums?

We've taken our beloved forums and turned them into their own blog called Hackerspace, run completely by you guys! We've already got a few of our most prominent tipsters posting over there, and we'll be opening it up to more of you over the next few days. You'll need official permission to become an author (we don't want the place overrun by trolls and spammers), but we'll make sure it's easy to share your tips no matter what. Keep an eye out on Hackerspace for more info!

I Don't Like [Feature], Why Did You Do [This Thing], or Why Is [Bug] Broken?

This whole thing is a work in progress. We want to make the best site we can for you guys, so we have to let you actually use it so you can tell us what you want! (It wouldn't be very good if we just did it all ourselves and handed it over).

To start, check out our FAQ if you have questions. If something isn't working properly, shoot an email over to help@gawker.com or open a ticket at our help desk. The more feedback you offer, the better we can make this site for everyone.

Happy hacking!

Photo by Andrei Niemimäki.