Lifehacker Expands: Check Out Our New IT Pro, Life And Work Channels


Today is a big day in the history of Lifehacker Australia. We’re expanding to bring you even more technology and life advice, helping you to do everything better in your career, at home and in your leisure hours. To reflect our expanding focus and make it easier to find the content you want, we’re dividing our stories into three channels: Work, Life and IT Pro. Read on to learn all about what’s happening.

Lifehacker’s core mission remains the same: offering advice on how to live your life better, with a particular emphasis on how technology can make that task easier. We’ve often described our approach as “looking at the world from a programmer’s perspective”. As the site has grown, that perspective has applied to a wider and wider range of topics, ranging from saving money to securing your computer to learning how to set up an automated download server to finding the most rewarding career path.

We wanted to keep that diversity, but we also knew that we needed to make it easier for people to find the stories they were interested in. With 30 or more posts scheduled for a typical weekday, not everyone has the time or inclination to check them all out. We’re all about efficiency, and we wanted more efficient ways for readers to navigate the site.

So from today, we’ve divided our content into three major channels: Life, Work and IT Pro. The names are fairly self-explanatory. The Work channel looks at how to use technology to be more productive, along with tactics to be more successful and productive in every activity you perform. The Life channel looks at tips for enhancing your day-to-day chores (sorting your finances, organising your home, and staying healthy). The IT Pro channel looks specifically at advice for people who work with IT as their day-to-day job (a large and growing part of the Lifehacker readership).

We’re very happy to have Microsoft Windows Server 2012 on board as our launch sponsor for the new IT Pro channel. A key part of that channel is a new editorial project, World Of Servers, which we’re extremely excited about. We’ll tell you more about World Of Servers tomorrow.

When you come to the Lifehacker home page, you’ll still see every single story we publish across all channels in reverse chronological order, just as you do now. If you want to see everything, that’s still the default option, but you also now have other choices.

At the top of the page, you’ll see the most recent major story in each of our channels. Click on the name of a channel in the menu bar and you’ll see all the major categories under that channel on a drop-down menu. Hit the channel page and you’ll get just that content. So if your big interest is in IT pro tips, bookmark the IT Pro page and you’re good to go.

New Categories For Easier Navigation

As part of our revamp, we’ve also rethought the categories we use for our posts, to make it easier for readers to navigate. Since 2008, Lifehacker has operated with seven major categories, but as time has passed, it has become clear that we could do a better job with that classification. So these are the main categories we’re now using.

Within the Work channel, we have:

  • Productivity, covering software, hardware and tips to make you more productive and effective;
  • Communicate, examining every aspect of communication, from mobile phones to social networking to improving your writing;
  • Career, packed with tips on finding the perfect job and surviving the modern workplace;
  • Business Travel looks at how to travel effectively in a work context and the gear you need;
  • Security covers all the latest security tips to keep your technology safe from hackers (and prying relatives);
  • Small Business & Startups examines issues around freelancing, entrepreneurship and starting your own business.


Over on the Life channel, we have:

  • Money helps you manage your finances and spend wisely;
  • Entertainment covers every technology entertainment option, from setting up a media server to the future of digital TV and streaming music;
  • Home offers advice on organising, automating and improving every aspect of your domestic life, indoors and outdoors;
  • Health examines ways to stay healthy and fit;
  • Travel looks at general travel advice, including planning your trip, saving on bookings and getting around day-to-day;
  • Design gets graphical with advice on image editing, photography and creativity.

And in the IT Pro channel we have:

  • Cloud covers cloud technologies and servers and how to use and manage them;
  • Developer examines issues that matter to programmers on every platform;
  • Deployment looks at the technologies and skills needed to make IT projects actually happen;
  • IT Career explains at how to build and enhance your career in IT;
  • IT Security discusses the challenges management of IT security on a business-wide basis
  • World Of Servers; tune in tomorrow for more on this exciting project. (Hint: readers can win some truly awesome prizes involving international travel.)

Even More Stories

Observant readers will remember that we advertised for a new writer on Lifehacker a few weeks ago. Our new staff member will be starting soon (we’ll do the formal introductions then). In the meantime, longtime Lifehacker contributor (and former Gizmodo editor) Alex Kidman is helping us out so we can start offering more stories than ever right away.

Everything else about Lifehacker remains the same. We still bring you all the best content from Lifehacker US (with all the non-Australia-relevant stuff removed); we have an awesome membership and commenting system, complete with notifications and voting, which we encourage everyone to use; and we’re still committed to bringing you the best life hacks every day. Enjoy the site, thanks for reading and as always, we welcome your feedback, either through the comments or via our contact form.

Big thanks also to our tech team, @benwhite and @robhussey, for taking on the site rebuild and doing such a great job.


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