Readers may have noticed that The Driven website – Australia’s most popular source of EV news – looks a little different this week.
We have made a significant update to the website as part of an important behind-the-scenes upgrade to keep The Driven secure, stable and properly supported into the future.
The short version is that the previous version of the site was built on an older WordPress theme structure that had become increasingly difficult to maintain safely.
To ensure we can continue making critical security updates, plugin updates and platform improvements, we needed to move The Driven to a fully supported modern WordPress block theme. The goal of this update is to to make sure the site remains reliable, secure and easier to maintain as The Driven continues to grow.
Unfortunately, the upgrade process also resulted in unexpected downtime on Monday, and we apologise to readers who were unable to access the site during that period. The outage was not planned, and we know that reliability matters, particularly for a news publication. Our priority was to get The Driven back online as quickly as possible while making sure the underlying upgrade was completed safely.
The new theme is based on the one we developed for our sister publication Renew Economy, which has already gone through a similar upgrade process. That gave us a stronger starting point, rather than rebuilding everything from scratch, while still allowing us to adapt the site for The Driven’s own audience, sections and content needs.
As with any major website change, there may be a few rough edges at first. Some pages, layouts, ad placements or design elements may shift as we continue refining the new setup. We are already working through those issues and will keep improving the experience over time.
Our aim is not just to make the site look different, but to make it more robust and easier to evolve. Over time, we plan to continue to optimise navigation, article layouts, mobile usability, performance, and other reader tools.
You may have noticed that we have made a significant update to our EV models page, which we hope will make it easier for readers to find key information on electric vehicle models in Australia. And our most popular page, the monthly EV sales data, will be updated as normal.
We have also made it easier to find articles by subject – so we have a separate section for charging and V2G, another for Reviews, and another for road trips – as well as for multi-media posts such as podcasts and videos.
The Driven’s core mission has not changed. We will continue covering electric vehicles, charging, batteries, policy, transport and the broader shift away from fossil-fuelled transport with the same independent editorial focus.
Thanks for your patience while we work through the transition. If you notice something that is not working as expected, feel free to let us know, reader feedback is useful as we continue improving the site.
