From “Huff Post Updates”
to a masthead that says HUFFPOST

Our oldest capture was saved on the evening of launch day in New York (just after midnight, May 10, in UTC). The page itself is dated May 09, 2005.^[1] The welcome note names the group bloggers on the front page, including Senator Jon Corzine, Larry David, John Cusack and Walter Cronkite, and signs off with So come in and make yourself at home.

The left column is the blog. Larry David's post is titled Why I Support John Bolton and ends with a complaint about a cup of coffee with way too much milk in it. Below it Walter Cronkite asks Democrats: What Do They Stand For? The right side looks like a wire service: an exclusive about an embargoed book on Saudi oil, and New York Times to Start a Blog.

The small print already uses the short name. The email box says Huff Post Updates:, and in the page's code the tips box gives an AOL Instant Messenger name, HuffPost. The footer, also in the code, reads © 2005 TheHuffingtonPost.com, LLC. One thing is missing from this replay: the masthead image at the top never loads.

By July 2006 the masthead has loaded, and it is odd. THE HUFFINGTON POST is set in black capitals with wide gaps between the letters, and a small hand-drawn figure stands at each end. The motto has moved under it, in green. A tab bar reads HOME, THE NEWS, THE BLOG, EAT THE PRESS, CONTAGIOUS FESTIVAL and CONTACT US.

The lead story is about the war in Lebanon, under a photo of Tony Blair and George W. Bush. In the right column, two orange JUST IN labels sit over agency photos, and one video carries the credit From youtube.com.

In March 2007 the tabs are bigger and one of them is new: FEARLESS VOICES. A box at the top left says SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BRIEF, and the motto now reads DELIVERING NEWS & OPINION SINCE MAY 9th 2005.

Orange QUICK READ links sit under the lead and several news stories. The lead is three National Guard soldiers with their heads down, under the headline National Guard "Not Ready". Keep the word Fearless in mind. It comes back in 2025.

By our March 2008 capture the serif masthead is green and its letters sit closer together. A new line under them explains what the site wants to be: THE INTERNET NEWSPAPER: NEWS BLOGS VIDEO COMMUNITY. The tab bar now has POLITICS, MEDIA, BUSINESS, ENTERTAINMENT, LIVING and a tab called 23/6. At its right end a dropdown says More on HuffPost....

The headline is getting louder, too. Live, From New York...It's Hillary Clinton! runs two lines over a double photo, in type far larger than the 2005 lead.

February 1, 2009 is Super Bowl Sunday, and the page shouts OBAMA'S SUPER VOW in red capitals the width of the column. The vow is in the red line under the photos: a 'Substantial Number' Of U.S. Troops In Iraq Will Be Home For Next Year's Super Bowl. Above the masthead a blue banner counts OBAMA'S FIRST 100 DAYS, and the second nav row ends with MAKE HUFFPOST YOUR HOMEPAGE. The short name is in the navigation again.

In October 2010 the splash is purple: DON'T LEAVE YOUR HOME, over a BANK OWNED sign. A giant headline in the middle of the page is in every capture from here to 2026.

This capture is dated February 8, 2011. The day before, AOL had announced it would buy The Huffington Post for $315 million, about $300 million of it in cash.^[2] Nothing in our screenshot mentions it. The splash is about Egypt, FREED GOOGLE MANAGER FIRES UP PROTESTERS, and under it the page asks for tips by phone and at EGYPT@HUFFINGTONPOST.COM.

The navigation still fills two full rows. Next to POLITICS and BUSINESS there are COMEDY, RELIGION, COLLEGE and a section called DIVORCE. A Facebook button counts 217K likes.

The blog column opens with a list of names, Rhea Perlman... Rev. Jesse Jackson... Ayaan Hirsi Ali..., and the sidebar labels include MOST POPULAR ON HUFFPOST and SAY IT ON HUFFPOST.

In 2012 HuffPost's David Wood received the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for Beyond The Battlefield, a series about severely wounded American soldiers.^[3] Part 1, posted on October 10, 2011, is still there in our 2026 capture, so we can open that one article at a few points in this story.

In our capture from the day after it was posted, the article sits under its own series banner, BEYOND THE BATTLEFIELD and REBUILDING WOUNDED WARRIORS, with a stacked HUFF POST to the left. Above the first line runs a row of reaction buttons: Important, Funny, Typical, Scary, Outrageous, Amazing, Innovative, Finally. Then the story begins: July 4, 2010, was a bad day for Tyler Southern.

The May 2012 page adds a dropdown, Edition: U.S., and a row of FEATURED links: GPS FOR THE SOUL, ELECTION 2012 BLOG, GOOD NEWS, BLACK VOICES, LATINO VOICES. A Twitter Follow button sits at the right. The masthead is still the 2008 serif and the same tagline. The splash below is two lines of blue capitals, the second stretching across most of the news column.

The September 2013 splash is still blue: TOP SENATE DEM: SYRIA PLAN TOO BROAD. By March 2014 it has turned heavy and black. PUTIN POUNCES runs across the page above a photograph from Crimea, with a red line of smaller capitals underneath.

Our 2015 capture is dated July 18. On July 17, The Huffington Post told readers it would cover Donald Trump's campaign in its Entertainment section, not in Politics.^[4][5]

The front page the next day still puts him near the top. Under the splash, GOP GIRDS FOR ABORTION BRAWL, the first story in the middle column is Trump On McCain's War Record: 'I Like People Who Weren't Captured', followed by Major Backlash... Curtains For Trump?... The tag under them says Elections 2016. Further down, Meghan McCain Skewers Trump Over Insult To Her Father is filed under John McCain.

The rest of the page has spread out. The top bar links to an iOS app and an Android app, a strip says HUFFPOST LIVE, and the section line runs from Black Voices and Gay Voices to Horoscopes, OWN, Dr Phil and Quiet Revolution.

The August 2016 page is a new design. The masthead turns white and sits on a full-width dark green bar, with a new line in small capitals: INFORM • INSPIRE • ENTERTAIN • EMPOWER. The two crowded rows of tabs are gone. One airy row says NEWS, POLITICS, ENTERTAINMENT, WELLNESS, WHAT'S WORKING, VOICES, VIDEO and ALL SECTIONS.

The splash has changed its voice. CONSERVATIVE LAW EXPERTS SHUN TRUMP: SCOTUS ISN'T WORTH IT! is set in thin capitals, three lines over a photo of the candidate.

Look at the browser tab, too. In our 2008 to 2015 captures it read Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. In this capture it is just Huffington Post, without the The.

Two days before this capture, on August 11, Arianna Huffington announced she was stepping down as editor-in-chief to run her new company, Thrive Global.^[6]

The May 2017 page has a black header, and in the middle of it, in bold italic capitals between two mint-green slashes: HUFFPOST. The browser tab says HuffPost. A week earlier, on April 25, the company had made the change official, with a new logo, bold italic type and a lighter shade of its green.^[7]

Look at the two slashes. Work-Order, the agency behind the rebrand, says they form an H that bookends the wordmark, and HuffPost said the slash was also the one in a web address.^[8][7]

The agency called the new name a nod to the site's commonly used nickname.^[8] Its brief had a line about the headlines, too: keep the provocative headlines front and center. They did. This capture's splash is white type over a full-width photograph: ROSS JOKES: SYRIA STRIKE WAS ‘ENTERTAINMENT’.

The January 2018 page keeps the black header and the photo splash: LIVE: SHUTDOWN SCRAMBLE, in white letters over a photograph.

The bigger change is one you can't see on the front page. On January 18, two days before this capture, HuffPost announced it was closing its unpaid contributor platform.^[9] The 2005 front page had opened with that idea, a column of posts from its group bloggers.

Our 2019 capture is the first one in this set saved at huffpost.com. The September page opens with a full-width satellite photograph of Hurricane Dorian, with HURRICANE DORIAN THRASHES THROUGH BAHAMAS in white letters across it.

The Pulitzer article moved too, from its dated huffingtonpost.com address to huffpost.com/entry/. In our February 2015 capture it still sits under a section masthead, HUFF POST POLITICS, with a serif headline. By February 2020 the headline is a large sans serif, an italic note below the byline calls the work a 10-part series exploring the challenges that severely wounded veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan face after they return home, and the sidebar shows live Nevada caucus results, As of Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020.

In November 2020 the splash shrinks to one underlined line, DON JR. COVID CASE.

Two days before this capture, on November 19, BuzzFeed and Verizon Media announced that BuzzFeed would acquire HuffPost. The buyer was led by Jonah Peretti, who had helped start The Huffington Post in 2005, so the deal would bring it back to him.^[10]

From 2021 to 2023 the splash has a uniform: heavy black capitals with a thick underline, three lines deep. March 2021 reads NYC MAYOR PILES ON CUOMO: GOV ‘LETTING HIMSELF OFF THE HOOK’! The September 2022 page says TONIGHT: BIDEN SOUNDS OFF ON GROWING TRUMPISM THREAT.

In our April 2023 capture the masthead has lost the top of the screen. A TRENDING strip of photos sits above it, and the black HuffPost bar starts almost halfway down the first screen.

By our November 2024 capture the header is white, and the wordmark is dark with mint slashes. A row of photo cards called MORE FROM HUFFPOST sits above it. A green banner asks Who will win on Election Day? Submit your predictions and compete against other HuffPosters! Its readers are HuffPosters, a word built from the short name.

The splash is led by TRUMP'S CLOSING PITCH, in blue bold italics, the slanted capitals of the 2017 logo.

Our 2025 capture is from May 10, twenty years and a day after launch. The masthead is green again, like the rules on the 2005 page, and the wordmark is enormous: white bold italic HUFFPOST, with no slashes. A line above it says Twenty Years of Fearless Reporting, next to a pink button, SUPPORT THE FREE PRESS. The word Fearless, last seen in the 2007 tab FEARLESS VOICES, is back in a birthday slogan. The main headline is one word: CEASEFIRE.

The October 2026 page keeps the green masthead. Its splash is three lines of black capitals: 'CRIMINAL': TRUMP TRIES UKRAINE MIDTERM EXTORTION. The lead-photo area is blank in this capture.

The footer, in the page's code, says Part of HuffPost News. ©2026 BuzzFeed, Inc. And just before the masthead the code carries a label with the old full name: 21 Years of The Huffington Post.

Part 1 of Beyond The Battlefield is still there in August 2026, under the same green masthead. A small line above its headline says This article is more than 15 years old. The byline still gives the original time, Oct 10, 2011, 12:58 AM EDT, and the story still opens with Tyler Southern's bad day.

2006 · THE HUFFINGTON POST2006 · Then2026 · HUFFPOST2026 · Now

◀◀

The 2005 page joked that the site had been delivering news since, well, a few hours ago. Twenty-one years on, everything on the screen says HuffPost, the name from the email box.