This week we celebrate the three-year anniversary of this site. And, in what’s become an annual tradition, today we’re unveiling an updated design and new features in preparation for the upcoming year of Razorback sports.
Hopefully you’ll find, however, that we didn’t just mix things up for the sake of change. We also wanted to make a few improvements, as well.
Updated, cleaner design — The biggest design change is on our home page. We’ve added a new ‘Top Stories’ area to visually highlight the best content on our site and from around the web. We’ve also tweaked our old design to better separate the sections of each page and (hopefully) improve readability.
Mobile web — As we all stay more and more connected on the go, we’ve updated our site to include a mobile version that will display quickly no matter what network you’re on or what phone you’re using.
If you want to view the new mobile site, browse to our address from your phone and toggle the “Mobile Theme” switch at the bottom of the page. But don’t worry…if you have a great phone browser and want to view our entire site in its ‘normal’ look and feel, that’s the way it will continue to display by default.
Social links – In the upper right corner of every page, we’ve provided quick links to the other places we update on the web. We’re pretty pumped right now about the possibilities of building an even stronger community through these sites.
Whether we’re posting breaking news on Twitter, connecting with ‘fans’ through our Facebook page, or syndicating content through our web feed, we want to make sure it’s easy for our readers to stay in touch and discuss all things Razorback.
We’re excited about these changes and hope to put in another new feature or two as we move into football season. Feel free to let us know what you think we could be doing better by leaving a comment or using our contact form.
In the meantime, we just want to thank all of you again for helping make this site come alive with your participation. Even after three years, we continue to be amazed and appreciative of all the people who take time to hang out here.
GO HOGS!
TipsterHog, you know you can always count on me to point out a few flaws but before I do just let me say that ya'll are doing an awesome job here.
Now, to the "flaws"!
1) Usually, bigger is normally better especially with video. I like the pictures at the top but generally, these aren't going to tell me much of a story outside of the prime action season (football and basketball). Even then, I'm looking for content not pretty pictures.
2) Sometime back, I noticed your trend of reducing the content as they aged so as to keep more totally content on the main page. I like this in concept but you've take it too far now. That is, the most recent posts should have full content to make the experience easier for users. If they want to post, they'd need to open that entry and then post. There are many postings that I just read and never post to… why make me click "Read More" for each posting?
3) My last one is an older issue… I kinda of always liked to see the time on your postings. On some stories where there would be breaking news, it helped me understanding the timeframe of the item.
Just a few of my thoughts on the current design. Keep up the good work there!
2) from above… I'd recommend that you set a period of aging all content (3-5 days) with at least the last post maintaining full content.
4) I like how you have center the content within the browser window. The problem with this is that if you have you browser window full screen and it was centered it causes rights to be weird when you restore back to a small window by using the Restore Down icon (second from the top right corner). It isn't a big issue going from small to large as it maintains a left justification.
Hope this helps.
Looks great! I like the 'less dark' template. Light and airy gives the site a fresh look. OwassoHog suggests the picture is too large at top. Hmmm. Maybe so. But I dig the slideshow and clean, crisp images.
Bottom line: Successful. I bet it even works in Firefox.
I'm viewing the updated site for the first time on my WinMo phone and have to say it looks great! The site always looked great on my PC but had a black background when viewed from my phone. Thanks for not making me buy an iPhone to read my fav site on the go!
Oops… I forgot another item on issue #1… on sites that use this type of rotating picture, I think it is helpful to know visually the number of pictures in the queue. Even better if they have somesort of thumbnail viewing to preview what's in the queue.
As for Firefox, it seems to function as expected.
Thanks everyone for the great early feedback! Unlike last year (oops), we definitely tested with more browsers this year: IE 7&8, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari. (We would recommend anyone using IE 6 to upgrade.)
Owasso, it wouldn't be a redesign without you giving us feedback!
As for #3 and #4…those should be things we can quickly fix.
The changes you mention in #1 and #2 are definitely a work in progress. It was a big change for us to move to 'post excerpts' on the home page but we hope people will eventually warm up to it. We wanted to move to a more dynamically changing home page and, to be honest, we don't write enough blog posts to keep it that way.
Over the next few weeks, we'll track how people use the site and adjust if needed. That's another change we didn't mention…this design is a little more flexible and easier to update on the fly.
I've lived all over Europe the past 10 years with a fortune 500. Needless to say, finding College Football, much less, Razorback Football is next to impossible. I continue to enjoy your site as it keeps me updated to all things Razorback. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Thanks Razorsharp! Good to hear from you again.
#5 – Filed under Arkansas Razorbacks, Blogging… why is this important to maintain on the main page? Per my #2, I'd give this up to gain space to at least keep the last posting in full on the main page.
Site looks really nice – keep up the great work!