blog: add blog about the redesign

src/content/blog/2026-04-27-a-new-look-for-express.mdx

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+---
+title: 'A New Look for Express'
+tags: ['announcements']
+authors:
+  - name: Sebastian Beltran
+    github: bjohansebas
+description: Discover the redesigned Express.js website and our brand-new logo, built from the ground up with Astro.
+---
+
+Express has been one of the most important frameworks in the Node.js ecosystem for over a decade. Millions of developers have built their first API, their first web app, or even their first startup with Express. Yet, while the framework kept evolving, the website remained largely the same for years.
+
+In 2024, the Express project went through a [major reboot](/en/blog/2025-01-09-rewind-2024-triumphs-and-2025-vision). A new team, a fresh vision for the framework, and a clear path forward. That momentum inspired me to start contributing to Express with a simple goal: improve the documentation experience. Good documentation helps everyone, from beginners building their first server to experienced developers looking for the right API detail, or even those building frameworks on top of Express. In early 2025, that goal started to become a reality when the [redesign of the Express documentation](https://github.com/expressjs/expressjs.com/issues/1787) officially kicked off. What began as a documentation effort eventually grew into something much bigger, a complete redesign of the website and a brand-new logo for Express.
+
+In short: we rebuilt the Express website, improved the documentation experience, and introduced a new logo and visual identity to match where the project is headed.
+
+## A New Website
+
+Rebuilding the Express website was not only a visual refresh. It was also an opportunity to rethink the foundations of how the documentation is organized, generated, and maintained.
+
+![Side-by-side comparison of the current Express homepage and the redesigned version](/images/blog/redesign/before-after.png)
+
+### Picking the Right Stack
+
+Choosing the technology behind the new site was not a quick decision. The previous site was built on Jekyll, and moving away from it meant picking something that could carry Express forward for years to come. We went through a long community discussion weighing different options, tradeoffs, and long-term maintenance costs. You can read the full thread here: [Choosing the new documentation framework](https://github.com/expressjs/expressjs.com/discussions/2019).
+
+In the end, we chose [Astro](https://astro.build). It gave us the flexibility we needed for content-heavy pages, excellent performance out of the box, great i18n support, and a component model that made it easy to build the new design system without locking us into a single UI framework.
+
+### What's New in the Documentation
+
+The redesign was also a chance to bring long-requested improvements to how the documentation works.
+
+- **Improved versioning.** Documentation pages now support multiple versions of Express side by side. You can read the docs for the version you're actually running, and the content stays stable as new versions are released. The previous site didn't make this easy to achieve, which often led to confusion between versions. This is especially helpful now that Express 5 is the latest stable release and many projects are still on Express 4.
+- **AI-powered search.** The new search is built on top of [Orama](https://orama.com) and goes beyond keyword matching. You can ask questions in natural language and get contextual answers drawn directly from the documentation, which makes finding the right API or concept much faster.
+- **`llms.txt` support.** Every section of the documentation is now available through an `llms.txt` endpoint, following the [llms.txt](https://llmstxt.org) convention. This makes it much easier for language models, AI assistants, and other tools to access accurate, up-to-date Express documentation.
+
+### Built by the Community
+
+This new site wouldn't exist without the people who showed up to make it happen. The effort was led by [Sebastian Beltran](https://github.com/bjohansebas), and built together with [Francesca Giannino](https://github.com/g-francesca), who drove much of the design and UI work across the site.
+
+A huge thank you goes to the entire [Orama](https://orama.com) team for sponsoring [Francesca Giannino](https://github.com/g-francesca), [Angela Angelini](https://www.linkedin.com/in/angeliningl/), [Michele Riva](https://github.com/micheleriva) and [Davide Spaziani](https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidespazianitesta/) to help us through the redesign, and for all the time, feedback, and support they contributed to the project.
+
+From the Express side, many contributors helped shape the redesign: [Ulises Gascón](https://github.com/ulisesgascon), [Rand McKinney](https://github.com/crandmck), [Jon Church](https://github.com/jonchurch), [Shubham Oulkar](https://github.com/ShubhamOulkar), and the rest of the [Express Technical Committee](https://github.com/expressjs/express#technical-committee), alongside everyone who left feedback on issues, discussions, and community channels along the way.
+
+The full story, including every PR that made it into the redesign, lives in [the pull request](https://github.com/expressjs/expressjs.com/pull/2169).
+
+This redesign is the result of more than a year of work. In open source, things don't always move fast, decisions take discussions, design takes iterations, and reviews take time, but step by step, a community can build something it's proud of. This launch is one of those steps.
+
+## A New Logo
+
+One of the most visible changes is the brand-new Express logo. This wasn't something we designed in isolation. It came out of a collaborative workshop with the [Orama](https://orama.com) team, where community members and the Express Technical Committee came together to define who Express is today and where it's heading. The entire process was handled publicly, so anyone in the community could participate and share their voice.
+
+Before jumping into the visual identity, we worked together on the foundations that would guide every design decision.
+
+### Vision and Mission
+
+We started by asking ourselves two simple questions: what is Express today, and where do we want it to go? The answers became the vision and mission that now guide every decision, from the framework itself to the documentation and the new visual identity.
+
+![Express vision and mission: Express is a minimal, scalable, and stable web framework for Node.js with a welcoming community that empowers developers of all levels. Our mission is to make it easier for developers to build great software by clearing away the complexity of server-side development in Node.js.](/images/blog/redesign/vision-mission.png)
+
+### Brand Values
+
+With the vision and mission in place, we distilled them into three values that describe how Express shows up for its users. They anchor the new identity and set the tone for everything the project communicates.
+
+![Express brand values: Established, Dependable, and Approachable.](/images/blog/redesign/brand-values.png)
+
+### The Logo
+
+With that foundation in place, the design work was led by [Angela Angelini](https://www.linkedin.com/in/angeliningl/) and [Davide Spaziani](https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidespazianitesta/) from the Orama team. Over several months, multiple logo proposals were shared with the community for feedback. You can still explore all of them in the [original discussion](https://github.com/expressjs/express/discussions/6670).
+
+After gathering feedback from the community, both on the OpenJS Foundation [Slack](https://slack-invite.openjsf.org) and across social media, we landed on the logo and favicon you see today:
+
+![The new Express logo and favicon](/images/blog/redesign/logo-favicon.png)
+
+It represents a fresh chapter for Express while staying true to the minimalism and clarity that have always defined the framework.
+
+## What's Next
+
+This redesign is a milestone, but it's not the finish line. The documentation will keep growing, translations will keep improving, and new features will keep landing. Express has always been shaped by its community, and the new site is designed to make contributing easier than ever. If you spot something that could be better, an unclear explanation, a missing example, or a translation that needs love, please [open an issue or a pull request](https://github.com/expressjs/expressjs.com).
+
+Thank you to everyone who has written code with Express over the years, to the people who helped build this new site, and to the broader community that keeps the project alive. We can't wait to see what you build next.
+
+Welcome to the new Express.