Welcome to metal fabricating’s redesigned digital home

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Today, thefabricator.com relaunches with a new look.

The FABRICATOR staked its claim on the World Wide Web in February 2001 when it launched thefabricator.com. It was considered a “portal” in the sense that all of the content from the publication and its sister publications (The WELDER, STAMPING Journal, and The Tube & Pipe Journal) would populate it, creating one supercharged metal fabricating technology website.

Two major redesigns later in 2005 and 2010, thefabricator.com has emerged as one of the more robust manufacturing sites on the internet. The website logged more than 5.8 million page views in 2018, and it’s on pace to top 6 million page views in 2019.

And that’s not spiders and bots being counted. That’s actual human activity. The FABRICATOR’s technical team employs software that filters out all spiders and bots that are programmed by search engines to “crawl” across internet sites. We think our web analytics are the truest in the metal fabricating sector.

That’s important because thefabricator.com is a valuable tool for gathering information about the metals industry and the technology and processes used to produce metal parts, assemblies, and end products. According to a 2019 Harvey Research Study, 94 percent of our subscribers use the internet when making purchasing decisions.

The new website sleek and easier to navigate compared to the previous version.

This redesign addresses two major factors:

1. The site is more mobile-friendly. While the previous version of thefabricator.com was responsive in being displayed on a mobile phone or tablet, the redesigned site was actually created with mobile technologies in mind. We can’t ignore the fact that almost 98 percent of millennials use a smartphone, and almost three-quarters of younger boomers (50-64 years old) own a smartphone as well. Visitors who access thefabricator.com on mobile devices will find a site that is much cleaner, making it easier to find specific information or just browse.
2. The portal approach is no longer. The FABRICATOR will now share the spotlight with its sister publications. The WELDER, STAMPING Journal, The Tube & Pipe Journal, and The Additive Report each have their own homepage. Fans of these titles can mark those publications as their homepages and get quick access to the latest news and technology developments occurring in these metal fabricating segments.

While FMA Communications still believes and invests in its print products, we understand that a growing portion of the metal fabricating community wants access to information in a digital format. We think the redesigned thefabricator.com provides it.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at dand@thefabricator.com.