We’ve gotten questions from a few readers about why the Berkeleyside app is no longer available or supported on your phone.
That’s because we did a big redesign in January and rebuilt our website to be “mobile first.” So you can just point your mobile browser to Berkeleyside to see things beautifully. Just open up Safari, or whatever app you use to navigate the web, and visit Berkeleyside.
We may try to create an app down the line, but the focus for us this year was to create a mobile-friendly experience — and we’ve heard stellar feedback from people about how we did. So there is no app for now.
If you’d like a more succinct view than the homepage, you can use this link to see just the current day’s stories.
It’s also very easy to create a bookmark on your phone to take you straight to Berkeleyside. Just follow the directions below, for iPhone users. (Android users, we’ve added instructions after the iPhone directions.)
Here’s how it works (iPhone).
- Make sure you’re in Safari, then click one of the following links to open Berkeleyside’s homepage or the “today” view.
- Tap the “share” button at the bottom of your screen.
- Tap the “add to home screen” option (you may need to scroll over to find it).
- Give the shortcut a name you’ll remember, and click “add.”
- Find Berkeleyside right on your home screen and click on it to visit us anytime.
Here’s how it works (Android)
- Open the Chrome browser, then click one of the following links to open Berkeleyside’s homepage or the “today” view.
- Tap the three dots in the upper right and select “Add to Home screen.”
- Edit the name if you want (the default is Berkeleyside – Berkeley, CA’s independent news site, which is a bit long).
- And that’s it (hah, fewer steps than the iPhone).
The redesign is just one aspect of our ambitious development plan for Berkeleyside, made possible in part by our 1,200 or so supporting members, and by the 226-and-counting readers who have invested in our journalism through our innovative direct public offering. We accept support at all levels, on a one-time or continuing basis, and hope you’ll take a look.
Since creating a mobile-friendly website, we’ve seen our traffic consistently climb, and far outpace the audience we’ve seen in past years. Berkeleyside has averaged more than 1 million pageviews each month this year, and more than 400,000 unique visitors. Put another way, we’ve seen a 55% increase in monthly pageviews, and our uniques have nearly doubled, since 2016. Mobile traffic accounts for nearly half the monthly pageviews.
And that’s not all. We also hired a second full-time reporter earlier this year, which has been a huge boon to our coverage. We still have to make tough decisions every day about how to focus our resources, but we’re confident that we are providing Berkeley with top-notch, timely and accurate coverage of the most significant stories in the community. And we will continue to strive to do so.
As we’ve said before: We are truly grateful to the community for your support since we launched in 2009. We have more exciting steps to take and couldn’t take them without you. Stay tuned to learn more.
Have questions or suggestions? Let us know in the comments section. Or email us directly, via editors@berkeleyside.com.
