Wikipedia is getting ready to roll out a major redesign that has been in the works for over a year now. There are plenty of changes, among the most noticeable are the brand-new theme, a much-needed refresh over the current aging design, a revamped logo and plenty of usability changes. The redesign has been in testing for several months, but it is now being rolled out for the English language version of the site.

“Wikipedia has some new improvements, thanks to the hard work and dedication of over half a million beta testers and volunteers who worked with the Wikimedia User Experience team over the last year!,” an announcement at the Wikimedia blog read.

“This is the first major initiative the Wikimedia Foundation and its volunteers have ever undertaken for Wikipedia’s interface. And there’s more to come,” it said.

The most obvious change and the easiest to spot is the new theme. Called Vector, it is the result of research conducted by the Wikimedia UX team and of many months of testing. In total, 635,000 people tested the new theme before it went live for everyone and the foundation is pleased with the results.

Apart from the visual refresh, the new theme should make navigating the site easier as well. Some of the elements are better defined and easier to find. And, in case you don’t like the new look, you can revert to the old theme at any time.

The single biggest change is the new position of the search bar, now in the upper-right corner, a much more natural placement. The search feature itself got an upgrade with suggestions now helping you get to the pages you want faster.

Another big update is the new edit box. A great emphasis was laid on making Wikipedia pages easier to edit, especially for new users. Since there seems to be a dwindling interest in adding new content and improving the existing one, the move can only help. A couple of new tools also make it easier to edit wiki pages.

Another new feature, which was actually introduced last week, is the Presspedia book creator tool, which enables users to print books around any topic utilizing content from Wikipedia. Finally, the famous Wikipedia puzzle logo got a new touch of paint, fixing some of the errors and adding more languages. The new Wikipedia is live for the English version and will be rolled out to other languages over the coming weeks.