It's possible to access the old Reddit's design without creating an account by changing the domain name from www.reddit.com to old.reddit.com, or, if you have an account, by changing a setting in your setting's page.
What's Reddit's Old Design?
Reddit is a rather old website that has gone through various changes in its design, some of them rather unpopular and controversial. One of the major changes was what turned Reddit into "old Reddit." This old Reddit was more text-focused, rather than the new image-focused layout, and it didn't rely on Javascript as much.
In traditional websites, clicking on a link actually goes to a different webpage, making the web browser reload a lot of things. Some websites think this is bad for some reason, so they go through great lengths to look as if no loading is happening, even though it still is, and in doing this they end up breaking a lot of functionality that comes with the browser, such as scrolling behavior, back button behavior, etc.
Old Reddit also allowed subreddits to use custom CSS, which Reddit has promised to allow in the redesign, but never really did. Notably, /r/mildlyinfuriating used CSS to make each comment appear slightly rotated by 1 degree, so a comment 5 replies deep into a thread looked 5 degrees off. This kind of customization doesn't exist in the new Reddit design, but it's still visible in old reddit.
Some users even claim that the only reason they haven't stopped using Reddit yet is because there's still old Reddit, and the instant Reddit stops supporting it they're going to leave. These same users still call the current design "new" Reddit despite it having been released years ago.
On the other hand, some features available in the new Reddit aren't available in old Reddit. Simply put, it isn't getting any updates, so features added to Reddit after the redesign, like posting images inside comments, aren't available in old Reddit, unless someone makes a browser extension that makes them work.
Tutorial
Changing the URL to old.reddit.com
The first method we have is to simply change a Reddit URL, replacing the www.reddit.com domain name with old.reddit.com.
To do this, all you need to do is access a Reddit webpage's normally, then click on your address bar, and changing the www subdomain to old. Then press Enter to make the web browser load the edited URL
For example, if the URL is:
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/Change it to:
https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/"Opt out of the redesign" in the Settings
If you have a Reddit account, you can permanently revert back to old Reddit's design so you see it even if you access the site normally. To do this, follow the following steps:
First, click on your profile picture on the top-right of the webpage to show your profile menu.
In this menu, you'll see the options "View Profile," "Edit AVatar," etc. At the bottom, there's a link to "Settings." Click on it.
This link goes to the settings page (https://www.reddit.com/settings/). You can try this URL if you haven't found it. Note that while you can access this URL without an account, the setting won't work unless you're logged in.
At the bottom of your "Account" settings, there's a section labelled "Beta Tests." In this section, you'll find the option "Opt out of the redesign. Revert back to old Reddit for the time being."
This setting should be a switch (a button that toggles on and off), and, logically, it should be toggled ON to opt OUT. However, due to some bug, it may look like it's toggled on even if it's actually toggled off. Click on it anyway.
A dialog box will appear asking if you want to opt out of the redesign. Click "Opt out."
After you do this, the page should reload automatically and you'll see Reddit in its old, deprecated design.
How to Revert to New Reddit
To change back to the new Reddit design, follow the following steps:
First, click on "Preferences" in the top-right of a webpage. This is a link to https://www.reddit.com/prefs/.
At the bottom of the page, there's a checkbox labelled "Use new Reddit as my default experience." Check it. Doing this won't save the change or reload the page automatically like it does in new reddit.
To save the changes, click on the "save options" button at the bottom of the page.
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