Two of Andrew Breitbart’s closest friends and business associates are stepping in to take over the roles he held in his eponymous media company and carry out the expansion plans he made before his sudden death earlier this month.

Steve Bannon, formerly a board member at Breitbart News Network, has been appointed executive chairman, while Laurence Solov, formerly president and chief operating officer, will take over the CEO role that Breitbart held.

“We are continuing,” Solov said. “Andrew and I had a vision for this company. Andrew was very clear with this vision, and I shared this vision, and I’m going to make sure that the company continues to pursue it.”

The company relaunched its network of “Big” sites -- Big Government, Big Hollywood, etc. -- under a single Breitbart.com landing page just four days after Breitbart died. Breitbart had been working on the relaunch for a year, often as much as 10 hours a day, Bannon said.

The new site represents a major step forward, technologically and aesthetically, from the scrappy “Big Government” site that famously posted a shirtless self-portrait taken by Anthony Weiner. The company hired Navigation Arts, the McLean-based web designers that have done work for NPR, PBS, and Discovery, to lead the overhaul.

“Andrew wanted this aesthetically to look as good as anything on the left,” Bannon said.

Since it launched, traffic has tripled, Solov said, though he declined to give specific traffic figures.

The company also formally announced the appointment of Joel Pollak as editor-in-chief, a role he has played since last fall, and Alex Marlow as managing editor.

“It was always Andrew’s vision to unite the various 'Big' sites under a single front page, but he wanted new technology to do that, so he had spent the previous year working  with our technical team on developing a new infrastructure for the site and for the front page,” Pollak said. “And the rationale was to have, over time, Breitbart.com transition from a blog site that occasionally broke news to a comprehensive site that led the news cycle.”

The new Breitbart.com has already made waves. The site’s “Harvard Tapes” story, though partly scooped by Buzzfeed, landed Pollak on Hannity and drove coverage of the story for days. On Sunday night, the site’s story about Eric Holder saying he wanted to “brainwash” people into thinking about guns differently was cited by Drudge Report.

Breitbart.com is also building out its Los Angeles newsroom, with Solov at the helm, and looking to add new hires to its roughly 20-person staff. It will also maintain its D.C. offices near the Capitol, a rented townhouse dubbed “The Embassy” for its lavish decor.